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TMQ Vol III.ii - tim

1. c Lf c 3 puts Test n into one expression That example doesn t look quite right somehow but the idea is the important thing Fm Adam Rubin Thanks for your reply Les I think I see what s going on with and Il and when you d want to use each I have an example in my previous message to Jim Beard Most important I see why both were included in the language as C doesn t seem to include any redundant operators Hmm the course instructor told us not to assume that true would be any specific value I gather some of IBM s mainframe C compilers return 1 for true or something Fm Adam Rubin Thanks for your reply Hardin I can see where non zero amp non zero could often be zero e g 2 amp 4 but non zero non zero will always be non zero or true Now I see though that amp amp and Il stop at the first false or true respectively but amp and will cause all the expressions to be evaluated regardless A few more programs and I think everything that was covered in the two day course will be a lot clearer The Tower of Babel 43 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 Volume IIL ii Fm H Brothers Adam Another thing if you assume that True 1 Since always returns True or False it is easy to count the occurrences of true statements in a loop if you use Il Code could go something like this true count 0 for i 0 i lt max_val i
2. KIBGN INC LD INC by bypassing KIBGN1 vector wakeup KILOOP ho a p CLDCB hook and enabl WAM hook MISOSYS Products Tidbits See if INC CALL PUSH KBD JR THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 2700H PROWAM MiniTerminal 3 13 0 IROW ICOL HIGH SHL 8 48 256 0 Copyright c 1988 MISOSYS Inc HL 0 Window origin 1 save screen 2 TYPBUF HL DE 24 SHL 8 OR 80 Reset CL buffer Z OK B 2 One beep for no window DE LC Get CL DCB pointer NZ EXIT2 CLDCB HL IY Save Reg IY HELLOS DE WAMS Find PRO WAM resident Z GOTWAM Go if found NOWAMS KIBGN1 Set to not HL Point to WAMHK HL JR offset HL Disable PRO WAM HL filter test SETWAKE Set our wakeup IY Save previous Scan for key NZ CLLOOP the keystroke is a PRO WAM function key CALL LD EQU JR If we found WAM module e WAM CALL JR POP PUSH LD CTL DSPLY KEY POP JR TESTKEY DE 5 5 2 NZ KILOOP1 Not FKey don t then unhook wakeup ENAWAM Enable PRO WAM Z KILOOP Ignore if no IY Restore old HL wakeup C 4 ENABLD Now allow a keystroke HL Recover WAMHK pointer KIBGN re engage input loop continuation KILOOP1 SNDBRK CLLOOP CLLOOP1 HOMECLR EXIT2 pRKKKK CP JR CP JR LD PUT JR DI LD CTL LD PAUSE PUT EI CKBRKC
3. Visacard was just the trick to release a copy of this spell Prowam to me Some weeks later it arrived I opened the package with nervous fingers there 1t was inside complete with spell book I was indeed happy There followed many hours of learning Prowam is indeed powerful The Sorcerer was pleased with my increasing skills and gave me a new spell Superlog to try out With my skills now rapidly advancing I endeavoured to use the power of Prowam to influence the magic of Superlog How could I produce a sorted Superlog file The answer came one day as I was mixing potions in the kitchen a powerful drug called Coffee Of course I spake aloud several small furry creatures running panic stricken at the sound of my voice use Psort The spell Psort is powerful and useful magic by itself if only I could fool it into influencing Superlog After much pondering I came up with a plan so cunning even the Sorcerer was impressed My plan for sorting LOG files is chronicled below gt The following spells are needed to perform this operation they are FED CMD or FED6 CMD better still is Elesfed BASIC CMD PERASE6 CMD or ERASE CMD or similar spell PSORT CMD which comes with PROWAM The course of action is as follows first create a file of 1024 bytes The way I chose was with a BASIC program along the following lines MISOSYS Products Tidbits THE MIS
4. Volume III ii In order to avoid the Thanksgiving Christmas rush this issue was prepared early lt goes to the printer on November 8th with luck it will get out in the mail by November 15th I hope to continue to pull up the mailing date of succeeding issues until the target delivery is close to the beginning of the season The TMQ coupon has a field for entering your receipt date If you are returning the coupon please note the receipt date on the coupon and get it back to us Unfortunately for the last issue a few folks recorded yes instead of the date of receipt If you send me back the coupon I certainly know that you got the issue Boy 1 really have to make things simple the DATE OF RECEIPT folks TMO advertising If you are interested in reaching a dedicated 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 placing your advertisement in our publication TMQ is read world wide Our subscribers are predominantly in the United States however we do have a significant number in Canada Europe and Australia Space rates are as follows Full page Half page Quarter page We accept only black amp white ads however ads for our inside covers are printed in the same color as the cover TMQ alternates between PMS colors green 354 purple 266 blue 293 and red 199 If you would like to place your ad in THE MISOSYS QUARTER
5. DOS Subjects Volume IT ii BASIC FOR NEXT loops Fm Steve Brewster Two questions 1 what is the difference in the way model 3 DOS and LS DOS 6 3 BASIC handle for next loops If I run this simple sample program 10 For I 1 to 30 20 If I lt 21 then next 30 next 40 Print all done LS DOS 6 3 returns an error next without for in 30 Second question Why do you get an error duplicate definition in line xxxx when a LS DOS 6 3 basic program halts because of an error and then when you type run the error message is printed Line xxxx contains a DIM statement The only way I seem able to run the program which runs ok on the first time through is to return to system mode and the invoke basic again Any insight into these questions would be most helpful and appreciated Fm Shane Dawalt In LS DOS 6 3 BASIC 1 1 1 only one NEXT can occur for any FOR NEXT loop This is a standard programming practice Model 3 BASIC allowed multiple NEXTs for one FOR statement This should be illegal After all the statement is a FOR NEXT loop not a FOR NEXT NEXT NEXT NEXT loop I got bit by that nasty programming incompatibility too But it certainly forces one to keep up with structured programming Your second question needs a code example Typically when you type RUN BASIC clears all variables so no duplicate definition error will occur Have you tried to enter CLEAR at BASIC Ready when you get this duplicate definition
6. Fm Shane Dawalt Les I m thrashing about in a problem which 1 can t seem to find any reference too in any book 1 read What is the storage type of the standard device names i e stdin stdout stderr I have had the notion these are integers Are they Reason why I m asking is I m trying to redirect files inside the program I m using handles What I m trying is this int handl handl open filename O_RDONLY O_TEXT Lets assume it s ok dup2 handl stdin close handl As I understand it I open the file and get handi then I do the dup20 which will automatically close stdin and dups handi onto stdin Finally I close handi to freeup the file space Unfortunately the compiler gets quite angry at the notion of using stdin as a handle It insists this is a type mismatch error The function prototype of dup2Q is int dup2 int oldhandle int newhandle If I use dupQ instead of relying on dup20 to close stdin for me then I must close stdin myself The compiler complains about the type mismatch on this too Have I missed something somewhere I was always under the impression that the standard device names were actually handles and thus were integer types Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaola Shane The stdin stdout stderr names are streams of type FILE rather than int file handles ala open dup2 close fdopen can turn a handle into a stream but I think that you should just look at freopen Fm Les Mikesell
7. One last point although it costs 9 bytes I did include a memory header instead of enlarging the FD module It looks nicer when running MEMDIR Anyway total length of low memory additions is only 121 bytes You will find 3 files dealing with this subject XLR8I ASM XLBOOTA FIX XLSYSOA FIX The I stands for International as I have provided the data for French and German versions of LS DOS 6 3 Hence the A for American Like anyone I was annoyed by RAMDISK DCT taking up so much space in low memory I wrote a program called ERAMDISK CMD which has a few interesting features its invocation is parameter driven it supports 3 drive types like DiskDISK up to 30 banks and a HIGH parameter can either force high memory usage or force low memory usage H N or let the program try lomem first and use himem if no lomem It is even possible to disable it and recover memory should the need arise Typing ERAMDISK without any parameter will display a syntax help screen At the very beginning of the source file you will find a full list of all features If you examine the source code you will see that a lot of error checking is included I almost forgot to mention that it uses SVC 108 EXMEM being kind enough to set the SVC vector in the event the EXMEM module being sysgened and not yet reactivated Roy if you had numbered it 125 or 126 or 127 you would not have all those questions about The Hardware Corner 79 THE MISOSY
8. t in the experimental mood so this was never done The article in TMQ reminded me about that thought plus gave me confirmation on my suspicions It s 1 30AM and just got done buttoning up the M4 I ran my CPU speed test program amp now my M4 is whisteling away at 4 05 MHz Before the hardware change it was at a slugish 3 31 MHz I would like to suggest that pin 7 the pin which is bent up be terminated in a 1K ohm resistor tied to 5V This keeps the possiblity of noise on this line from thrashing about the logic threshold amp causing spurious operation There s a capacitor near the chip with a 5 volt pad Quite handy you d almost think it was put there on purpose On my system it s C98 Rats wanted to fetch the board s serial number while I was in there and forgot it Anyway thanks for printing that article Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo Shane Not that this hasn t been discussed here LDOS forum before but note that the Z80 not just the Z800 has more stringent memory cycle requirements during the M1 memory cycle Some machines may not work or worse have rare almost indetectable pattern sensitive memory fetch errors with the M1 wait removed Fm Shane Dawalt Joe I am fully aware of the Z80 op code fetch requirements In fact that s why I hesitated when I first decided it was pin 7 of U3 generating the slower clock speed Since it was documented to actually work on some machines I decided there was a
9. 0p Instead of sending you the KIAZ4 DVR file AZ stands for AZERTY as you have come to know I decided to muscle it a bit and came out with KEYB CMD which is an universal international keyboard driver you invoke via KEYB FR M4 Type Jcl Delay d Rate r Wait w Type Jcl Delay Rate are the same parameters as standard KI DVR with same effects including re using memory if already resident Wait is a special parameter which changes the value used when calling PAUSE it is aimed at Model_4 with XLR8er if needed for debouncing purposes M4 means Model_4 Model III is default FR means French keyboard it may be replaced by GR for German and even US for English US is the default It is installed as a CMD file because it did not fit in the SET driver region and it is for KI anyway the DCB being a documented address The beauty of this is that all 6 different cases cross US GR FR vs M4 M3 are handled by a unique driver with minor mods being performed DOS Subjects Volume IIL ii at load time which always reinstalls itself in same memory when invoked subsequently and as it does not use x 4df2 x 4df4 x 4df8 it does not interfere with KI DVR or KI4 DVR modules although it does set KFLAG bit s Which means that it is possible to try them all with RESET KI between them but prepare 2 one line JCL files one with RESET KI another with MEMORY as you will loose ac cess to the asterisk in both
10. 1X Map File name up to 23 characters Compute descriptive statistics includes error t trapping for too few observations for a variable 80 FORMAT 1X Output File name up to 23 and zero variance characters DO I 1 NX 90 FORMAT 23A1 100 FORMAT 14 IF NS I GT 1 Mapfile formats 110 FORMAT 80A1 MEAN 1 XSUM I NS 1 120 FORMAT 10A8 VAR 1 X2SUM I Screen message formats NS 1 MEAN I MEAN I NS 1 1 0 200 FORMAT 0 Reading data file IF VAR I LE O 210 FORMAT 1X Initial calculations complete 220 FORMAT 1X Job done SD I 0 0 230 FORMAT 0 Rerun program Y N 240 FORMAT A1 ELSE Output file formats 300 FORMAT 26X DESCRIPTIVE SD I SORT VAR I STATISTICS Variable 7X N 8X Mean _ 4X Variance 8X S D 4X Minimum 4X Maximum 310 FORMAT A8 18 3F12 4 2F11 3 ELSE END MEAN I XSUM I VAR I 0 0 SD I 0 0 MIN I XSUM TI Sample data MAX I XSUM 1 Person Person Routine to limit REAL variable output Person to 4 decimal places Person DO I 1 NX Person Person MEAN 1 MEAN I 10000 MEAN I AINT MEAN 1 MEAN 1 MEAN I 10000 VAR I VAR I 10000 VAR I AINT VAR I VAR I VAR I 10000 SD I SD I 10000 SD I AINT SD I SD I SD I 10000 MIN I MIN I 1000 MIN I AINT MIN I MIN I MI
11. Cut at a right angle to the cable length if you don t have a craftsman s eagle eye mark the cable first with a soft pencil crayon or tape and a square to guide you A correct cut will help when you fit the connectors Whenever you handle those flat cables treat them tenderly as Crushing or tugging may render them unusable Whenever you plug a cable underneath the computer be sure it isn t twisted and carefully lay the computer down again to avoid damage I found that the most convenient arrangement with twin drives purchased in an enclosure is to mount them so the disk slots are vertical and in fact the drive cases came with rubber feet to position them this way which allows cooling air to circulate freely through the grilles When inserting a disk you would then do it with the label facing left so probably the best place to sit the drives is to the right of the computer Left handed users may prefer the left side but then the disk is inserted with the label out of sight Whichever way it is done think of this when estimating the length of cable to cut The cable has to be just comfortably long enough with a few inches to spare to connect computer to drives without tugging but no longer This cable may pick up or radiate RF interference so avoid excess length If you have drives outside the computer in more than one enclosure keep the enclosures separated at least an inch from each other and from the computer case t
12. Did I detect that look on your face just then Yeah you re right I didn t point out the nice features like RPN ever wonder why they don t call it NPR Now you ve got me doing it and the ever lovin stack Fm Kevin R Parris Bill Thanks for the response But this term threaded is not totally clear to me Does it have to do with multi tasking by chance Fm Bill Brandon Kevin No it s just an obscure way of saying that each command or function in FORTH is defined in terms of other commands or functions Commands functions and the like are called words in FORTH by the way What this means is that execution of a program consists of calling a single word which incorporates all the words in the program It s analogous to subroutines though not the same Get the book FORTH like most elegant solutions takes a long time to explain well and I m not sure I can do it justice Another alternative to getting the book if you can find a copy of the next issue of Science Software published by John Wiley amp Sons you will see an article on FORTH by yours truly Not that I d ever stoop to plugging my own writing of course Fm Hardin Brothers Pete A bumper sticker that the Forth user s group was handing out at the West Coast computer Faire a couple years ago read this is true Forth Love If Honk Then Fm Bill Brandon Hardin What a GREAT piece of bumper clutter I wonder if the group has any left Was t
13. Shane stdin stdout and stderr and the others peculiar to msdos are of the same type as FILE You can either use the integer values 0 1 and 2 respectively The Tower of Babel 41 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 Volume 111 11 some compilers define STDIN STDOUT etc as the int fd values or use fileno stdin or use the freopenQ function instead of doing the dup and fdopen yourself Fm Shane Dawalt Well Joe I m have a rather nasty problem with the data being buffered when I don t want it to be I m talking to a printer device When I send it initialization information I MUST be sure it was dumped to the hardware and not lounging around in a buffer Streams imply an internal buffer I was under the impression that handles and assorted functions are nearer the system level I reasoned then that there is less chance of buffers getting in the way if I use handles rather than streams Also I m attempting internal redirection so handles make a little more sense than streams at the moment I ll tackle streams at a later date lt sigh gt Combine that with the fact that I m not comfortable with dupO and dup2 so I m sorta programming in the dark Then I had convinced myself the standard device names were handles rather than streams I can really throw myself in the toilet and flush at the same time can t I Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaola That should be fflushQ rather than a simple flush Fm Shan
14. bytes and an internal hardware stack limited to eight levels We re talking antique here To ensure supply he made a one time buy for an estimated ten year sales and repair period Why Because he understood the cpu its limitations and bugs He felt that there weren t any surprises left to find Fm Adam Rubin Joc perhaps the term software quality is more clearly defined than I d realized It seems to me that there s more to the quality in the traditional sense of a piece of software than the number and seriousness of bugs found For example I couldn t consider a word processor with neither bugs nor an insert function very high on the quality scale Maybe Id better read some of those dozens of books on software quality before I start getting confused here Letters to the Editor THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 10 Volume IIl ii Model 4 speedup Fm Shane Dawalt Roy By now you are probably tired at hearing how nice the TMQs look Well this last issue is no exception As I read from the front to the back cover at 3AM last night night person you know many things caught my eye One that almost pulled them out of their sockets was the reprint about speeding up the model 4 by bypassing the incorrectly programmed PAL chip I had pondered this chip U3 before Wondering why Tandy had done this weird thing and I had hypothesized that to get full speed all I need to do is bend pin 7 up Unfortunately I wasn
15. control of the stack and move it into its own work area The first thing that Pro Wam does after initialization is to present the user with a menu and prompt for a keyboard input using the system SVC facility The use of any SVC facility will pass control to the system while the SVC request is being processed Readers familiar with LS DOS may have notice that Pro Wam keeps its stack in the VDU keyboard overlay area and if the stack stayed there while the VDU keyboard is switched in the stack would disappear probably resulting in a crash The system is clever enough to realize this and if it detects that the stack is above OF300H then it will place the stack somewhere safe There is only one place where the system can place the stack and that is in its own stack area however because it is an SVC and SVCs can be called from anywhere the system will preserve its own main stack by MISOSYS Products Tidbits THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 63 Volume 111 ii place this second stack half way down the main stack area you will have guessed by now at 0340H Anything else in that area will be overwritten which in this case is the return information for Superlog to get back to the system Now you may argue that any windowing program must preserve the stack of the foreground task Both Pro Wam and Superlog do exactly that however who expected one windowing program to run inside another The system does the right things and th
16. current stack contents at 6CF4H via a LD 6CF4H SP Using FED2 or similar look at the last sector for the transfer address record 02 02 xx xx Make note of the address xx xx and find that location If the code is as mine then change the 4 byte LD nnnn SP instruction to 31 00 26 00 and then change the targeted location of the original instruction to 00 26 This will force AL to use the area immediately below the AL program as a stack Then test out the program You may have to also examine Electric Webster for the same kind of stack problems as I don t have that package Fm Brad Stiles Thank you for your prompt reply letter and help over the telephone 1 have implemented your suggestious re modifying Alwrite to alleviate overflow of the system stack and eventual crashes Specifically I have applied the following patch AL1 FIX Patch to AL CMD version 1 13 dated 10 16 87 Relocates the Alwrite program stack to 2800H Eliminates Alwrite s use of the normal system stack space Ref Letter Roy Soltoff MISOSYS to BT Stiles 28 09 88 Usage Patch al cmd all fix D48 CA 31 00 26 00 F48 CA ED 73 17 6D D47 68 00 26 F47 68 00 00 EOP DOS Subjects Volume IIL ii Since applying this patch the system has performed abolutely flawlessly The DEVICE B table has not been clobbered I have had no further hung computers etc Naturally I am extremely pleased One final note In response to your Sa
17. in the same way that your Model 4P would be useless without its video display and keyboard I m not familiar with the Commodore 64 but your description of its Plug n Print socket makes me think it drives printers through a serial port For that reason the Plug n Print module you already have will not work with your 4P You need a Plug n Print which supports your 4P s Centronics parallel port I don t think OKIDATA makes Plug n Print modules for TRS 80 computers the rest of the world seems to think that TRS 80 computers don t exist any more but OKIDATA s Plug n Print module for the IBM PC should work without problems I tested that theory by unplugging my Okimate 20 from a Tandy 1000 SX and reconnecting it to a TRS 80 Model 4D Everything worked perfectly The only Letters to the Editor Volume IT ii adjustment I had to make was to flip a DIP switch to enable automatic linefeeds after carriage returns but that s nothing unusual You will have to use Tandy s printer cable instead of the one that comes with the Plug n Print module I doubt that the computer end of an IBM printer cable will fit into a TRS 80 I think you can order Plug n Print modules from OKIDATA Supplies P O Box 573 Chester NY 10918 Their telephone number is 1 800 524 8338 If you would rather look for a module locally you can call 1 800 OKIDATA for the name of your nearest OK
18. it uses eight bytes if no pending string is available The interrupt handler is going to be active If an interrupt occurs at the lowest point in a device call the maximum amount of stack will be used The task processor uses 20 bytes minimum Maximums may add another 8 10 bytes The Alpha Tech patches I released will also use about four bytes on every interrupt Certainly excessive usage of the system stack is causing you problems PROSOFT may not be able to do anything about that without a revision to ALLWRITE It could be that the EW program also uses the system stack and shouldn t Okay what can you do about it You also mention a problem in KSMPLUS keys interfering with ALLWRITE s macro keys That will always occur There is nothing which can prevent that The two programs are mutually exclusive You will have to RESET the KI device prior to invoking ALLWRITE in order to disable KSMPLUS If you want to re activate PRO WAM then FILTER KI WM That will provide the correct filtering for PRO WAM You can do the same kind of thing for KSMPLUS after using ALLWRITE Perhaps with KSMPLUS out of the way you may have less stack usage Also try to avoid invoking the ancillary programs from other than AREA 0 of ALLWRITE When you use the AREA command of AL to get toa second or third text buffer AL permanently resides that memory bank This of course DOS Subjects THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 30 Volume IM ii will
19. no problem also doesn t matter which six If I try to link all 7 overlays with the root MLINK doesn t report any errors but it fails to write any of the globals variables or text to the root in the first sectors And of course the program will fail to run The root is the same number of sectors in length whether 6 or 7 overlays are linked I have tried compiling and linking a small root with seven overlays and there were no problems This rules out the number of overlays as a factor I suspect size of the overlays themselves or something wrong with the handling of the symbol table I have recovered MLINK VMF and it is 70 5K in size I have also linked it using a disk as the VMF location boy you are right that takes a looong while with no difference in output I can link the longest chain of 6 overlays saving the biggest OV file and then relink using the one overlay left out previously After renaming appropriately everything works correctly MISOSYS Products Tidbits Volume II ii The language is ProMC and MLINK is 1 0b I think with all patches to the MC programs MRAS and MLINK current I am out of ideas how about you Em MISOSYS Inc Well David is my face red Turns out that the problem read as bug was easy to find but difficult to fix The virtual memory file uses a logical record length LRL of 1 All access of data to and from the VMF is via GET PUT single character I O functions That
20. the library overlay region Can t understand why SET180 runs at x 7000 Also SETX will display previous and new status when a modifying parameter is invoked It does not try to modify FIXALL module as SET180 does Also included is HITACHI ASM which builds macros for some of the new opcodes INO OUTO TST MLT XLR8I GET s this file As some other ASM files need it I included SVC ASM which is a list of all 6 3 SVC equates plus SVC macro definition As you can see I wrote a whole set of programs to go with the XLRg8er I wrote them in January 88 got the board on 31 dec 87 because as I said I was not satisfied with the original ones If you find them good especially the patches to SYSO and BOOT take them I give them to you commented source code included As I said last year I am not in the software business I wrote the programs for me but when I compare them with some that are published either in TMQ or commercially I find they are rather better Take them as a gift for the birth of Benjamin Here is the short report on speed tests From TMQ II 2 p54 Rubin s test interrupts enabled yields 131_s for newer Model 4 112 _s for Model 4P 70_s for 4P with XLR8 I ran the test interrupts disabled on a non clustered Model 4 and a clustered 4P both with French keyboards Old Model 4 rated 124 6_s and newer Model 4P 108 0_s Theoretical timing should be 107 6_s with no wait state and 124 1_s
21. true count a i b il If you want to allow for the possibility that True 1 on some machines simply do abs true_count as you exit the loop This is the kind of condensed expression that tends to drive Basic and Pascal programmers up the wall but I don t find it any more difficult to read and understand than say TrueCount 0 FOR I 0 TO MaxVal IF A I lt gt 0 OR B 1 lt gt O THEN TrueCount TrueCount 1 END IF NEXT I In fact I think the C expression makes it clearer that the loop is testing for non zero values in either of two arrays Fm Jim Beard Adam One last comment the associativity of the logical operators and amp is left to right but you can t depend on executing all expressions in a logical expression involving a string of s This is left to the implementation and is explicitly discouraged in K amp R section 2 12 Precedence and Order of Evaluation Side effect expressions are explicitly discouraged where implementation may affect program execution This is done so that implementation can be determined on the basis of hardware architecture So a given implementation MAY increment c and or send Test n to standard output Your example of the correct usage of Il is right on the mark though The purpose of Il and amp amp is to allow the usage of side effect expressions in logical expressions The usual logical value for TRUE is 1 all 1 s so that NOT TRUE wi
22. well Fm MISOSYS Inc Please pay attention now DATECONV has been provided on LS DOS 6 3 to convert disks which use pre 6 3 dating conventions If you use a JCL to install the RAMDISK just add the DATECONV command line That s totally transparent No patch needed per se Certainly one could be constructed But you do have a solution Fm Frank Slinkman Well Roy it ain t quite as simple as that I tried several times BEFORE putting the question on the board and kept getting the Can t convert dates on non 6 3 SYSTEM disk message Finally AFTER reading your reply to the question I tried it AFTER backing up the SYS files to the RAMDISK but before establishing it as the system disk and that worked However your answer DID push me into experimenting a bit so the problem is now solved and I thank you for that Fm MISOSYS Inc Don t know why you would have gotten that message from DATECONV On the other hand LSI s implementation has been known to fail like that That s why they put in the parameter CS If you do a DATECONV d CS then that will force the date conversion regardless I believe that it is noted in one of the addendum It may have also appeared in a TMQ DOS Subjects THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 28 Volume III ii VIDTXB FIX Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaola Here is the complete text of the patch for comparison purposes VIDTXB FIX 12 Jan 1988 Developed by Joe Kyle 76
23. 26 24 0d 26 12 d0d f4 18 FE 6C 10 04 58 4C 52 38 E6 fod 4 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 d0e 04 03 30 OA AFi ED 39 38 79 E6 7E XLR8A63 JCL f0e 04 6d b6 6d b6 6d b6 6d b6 6d b6 Procedure to patch an LSDOS 6 3 diskette for use d0e 14 28 30 6F 2C 3E 80 07 2D 20 FC with an XLR8er Drive to be patched 0e 14 6d b6 6d b6 6d b 6d b 6d b6 must be given on JCL command line d0e 24 05 28 1A 05 28 OA 05 3A 02 02 I needed parameter O N may be included f0e 24 6d b6 6d b6 6d b6 6d b6 6d b6 same meaning as PATCH d0e 34 ED 34 20 OA B6 18 02 2F A6 77 IF d f0e 34 6d b6 6d b6 6d b 6d b6 6d b6 DO XLR8A63 D d O N d0e 44 E1 C9 21 05 80 39 El 38 E3 07 QUIT f0e 44 6d b6 6d b6l 6d b6 6d b6 Ed b6 END d0e 54 38 C3 DB 08 ED 38 38 B7 CA 42 IF O 0e 54 6d b6 6d b6 6d b6 6d b6 6d b6 DO XLR8A63 D d o o d0e 64 CD 42 OD E3 ED 21 38 El C9 ELSE f0e 64 6d b6 6d b6 6d b6 6d b6 6d DO XLR8A63 D d e0p END Diskette in drive d is about to be patched Press ENTER to continue BREAK to abort ALERT 7 7 IF O patch sys0O sys lsidos d using xlsys0a fix o o XLR8S2 FIX Patch to SYS2 SYS Apply via PATCH SYS2 SYS LSIDOS XLR8S2 D00 E4 12 F00 E4 09 D00 EE 40 F00 EE 20 DO1 04 40 F01 04 20 eop patch patch patch patch ELSE patch patch patch patch patch END ALERT 0 0 1 5 0 2 eop boot sys lsidos d using xlboota fix o n sy
24. Any suggestion how to correct that PRO MC Overlays Fm Richard Watkins I am working on a fairly large pro gram which is entirely written with PRO MC and I am going to have to break the program up into either separate programs and chain them with cmdi or use overlays I have never used overlays before I have read the part in the manual several times and a couple of questions come to mind If I understand it right whenever an overlay exits the return code is ignored Does this mean that I can only return information from the overlays with global variables I also would like to know if anyone else has used PRO MC with overlays and could tell me if there are any bad things lurking around Fm David Huelsmann Richard XARC4 Version 02 00 01 uses overlays in PRO MC No bad things lurking about to my knowledge with overlays Just be sure that ALL library routines that are to be used across the overlays are declared extern in the root The overlay can access any function in the root passing the appropriate values that the root function might need However return values from ovmain are ignored In other words when your current overlay has finished execution and is retuming to the root any return NOERR type coding will be ignored MCOPT Bug Fm David Huelsmann Roy I may have found a problem when using MCOPT 1 6a When the following code is compiled without using MCOPT the expected value of 39 is obtained for numnodes Ho
25. Ascii files using ANY DOS When it s time to print the source is simply ported to TRSDOS for Allwrite or MSDOS for EROFF systems If you are looking for something in the MSDOS world which is easier to use than EROFF consider Microsoft WORD Unlike most of the systems which claim to support laser printers but do so only incompletely Word Perfect is a good example WORD is quite powerful supports 90 of the HP fonts and also runs at a credible speed if you turn OFF the WYSIWYG screen graphics WORD is also bug free so far as we have discovered and the successive versions of it from Microsoft are good evidence of this company s intention to stay with it and support it with future enhancements If what you have is a Model 4 and are wondering about laser printers you need not be ashamed of TRSDOS or the Model 4 Allwrite is a formatter more powerful than almost anything currently available even in the IBM world and it is easier to use than anything that comes close to it in power on any system at all On a personal note I have a home workroom which contains a Model 3 Model 4 and a Zenith Z 158 system all with hard drives all in frequent use DOS Subjects Volume IIl ii I purchased last year a Tandy LP1000 laser printer which emulates a Hewlett Packard laserjet I had a technician build me a parallel selector box which would enable connection of all three micros to the laser printer I have purchased personal copi
26. EE LB L 50 510 74 95 5S amp H FIELDS win vere eon Sa Now activate PRO WAM from FIELDS using reverse video New virtual PHRASE access for export newly compiled LB release MISOSYS Inc gt New TODO list manager with who does it hardware restrictions apply P O Box 239 Plus many other vital applications Sterling VA 22170 0239 M C and VISA accepted PRO WAM M 51 025 74 95 S5S amp H S amp H 5 6 Canada 15 pe 800 MISOSYS or 703 450 4181 TRS 80 MODEL 4 MODEL4D MODEL 4P Drive your Model 4 into the future with the XL he A The XLR8er provides the roer i oa following j o Improved speed up to 8 MHz a Z80 equivalent Be e Expanded ram 256KB additional high speed ram memory optional e Expanded 1 0 optional o Software utilities TRSDOS CP M or LDOS one included with New pricing the XLR8er Additional 15 00 neg SIU win ge Ral e Simple plug in installation 255 00 o Full one year warranty os gare add 5 S amp H 4 when ordering please specity computer model i e 26 1069 MISOSYS Inc P O Box 239 Sterling VA 22170 26 1069A 26 1070 and if HIRES graphics is installed For 26 1069 note Revision of motherboard an MISOSYS DED86 Version 2 Powerful features in Version 2 When you need to travel through your disk drive why settle for a tool that isolates you from t
27. FIX Then make a backup copy of CED CMD Jei in case Finally apply the patches by typing PATCH CED CMD USING CED FIX Now every tab expands to a more reasonable four spaces and all text following an apostrophe remark statement is immune to capitalization Incidentally to make room for my modifications I shortened CED s sign on message from EnhComp Line Editor etc to CED 1 4 I hope that doesn t bother anybody I was careful to leave all copyright and authorship notices intact DOO 4F 43 20 31 2E 34 00 FOO 4F 45 43 4F 4D 50 20 D00 57 FE 02 OE 01 FE 22 C2 39 32 C3 A8 32 F00 57 4C 65 20 45 64 ee 74 6F 72 20 56 65 D08 BF C3 00 F08 BF FE Fl D09 49 00 F093 49 CB D09 50 00 F093 50 87 The Reviewer Volume III ii DOS Subjects LDOS 5 3 DIR Fm Richard VanHouten 1 found another little bug in the LDOS 5 3 library commands this one in the DIR library command It is counting the Filespec Time line twice once when it displays this 63 character string terminated in 03H the second time when it sends a carriage return 1 suspect the string was originally 64 characters long and the carriage return was sent to the printer only and then was patched This can be corrected by patching the CALL 58EC at 591D to NOP NOP NOP actually if the 03 at SAD6 is changed to OD the 8 bytes from 5918 to 591F can be eliminated Fm Roy Soltoff You hit the nail on the head the LDOS 5 3 s DIR command w
28. FREE KILL and ROUTE and added CLS and TOF commands UTILITY Enhancements e We ve added TED a full screen text editor for ASCII files e LCOMM now gives you access to LDOS library commands e PATCH supports D amp F patch lines with REMOVE capabilities e DATECONV converts older disks to the new date convention BASIC Enhancements e Editing now includes line COPY and MOVE e Very flexible INPUT added for screen fielded input e We ve added a CMD V to dump a list of active variables with values including arrays For 34 95 S amp H the LDOS 5 3 upgrade kit includes a DOS disk and documentation covering the enhancements Specify Model 3 4 or MAX 80 If you don t already own LDOS 5 1 4 get our USER manual for 33 additional MISOSYS Inc PO Box 239 Sterling VA 22170 0239 AN 703 450 4181 MC VISA CHOICE a 800 MtSOSYS 1P 5P EST Monday Friday Orders Only VA residents add sales tax S amp H US 2 Canada 3 Foreign 6 Volume IlIl ii The Reviewer Pro EnhComp Mark Allen Reed Reeds House of Color Gien Road Plaza West Lebanon NH 03784 Pro EnhComp is an excellent BASIC compiler for the TRS 80 Model 4 The extensions it makes to the BASIC language are just what every programmer has been waiting for Its unique in line assembly language capability eliminates DATA state ments string packing and USR routines forever Once you ve seen your BASIC programs operate as stand alon
29. Fred I saw your reply to another user here having trouble with his Model 4 s video and recently my Model 4P has developed a similar problem I am wondering if you can help The problem is as follows If you boot up the system without a system disk in drive O then the message about closing the drive door appears on the screen and this looks fine But if you boot with a system disk in the unit once the unit activates the disk drive the video goes bad After the drive completes its access the video continues to shake from side to side slightly I have tried cleaning the pots on the video board and adjusting them but it didn t help I suspect the trouble to be on the power supply Any help you can give will be appreciated I am electronic technician so tearing into the unit is no problem and I also having the tech manual around here somewhere Fm Fred Oberding Steve it appears that you probably have a video Phase Locked Loop circuit going out of sync It reads OK in 64 character mode but not in 80 character Your 4P is a non gate array I believe There is a small trimmer capacitor C 231 usually orange near IC U 148 that needs to be tweaked with a nonmetallic screw driver Near the trimmer cap you will find a jumper on stakes E1 E2 move it to the stakes marked E9 E10 and adjust the trimmer until it locks or nearly locks in and then move the jumper back to E1 E2 The display should stay locked in In rare instances you may need to chang
30. GR and FR modes and the letter M in FR mode By the way I used the undocumented GTMOD rst system call As usual a lot of error checking is performed Now the module is longer than KI or K14 596 bytes vs 366 or 401 but as I reduced the type ahead buffer to 128 bytes 64 key strokes one line should be adequate and optimized the code my Type and JKL modules are 287 and 71 bytes long vs 436 and 86 for TA and JKL which totals up to 954 bytes for KEYB T J vs 923 for KI4 T J not that bad Note that I put great efforts in making the up arrow key code available to SAID a one byte patch to patched SAID should be ok IKI module name vs KI same offset for both Model II and 4 modes as Model III mode KI I did not support toggling between x 5B and x 1B for up arrow sorry Roy If you wonder how I got the German data well here in France when we bought either the graphics board or the hard disk kit we got 3 versions of the supporting software the regular TRSDOS_6 x version plus the TRSDOS_6 xF and TRSDOS_6 xD versions I said that in the past tense as I wonder if anyone would care to buy them now the Model_4 is an unknown product in Tandy stores or Computer Centers By the way we never had a French 4D neither clustered arrows Model_4s they were made in France but the few last 4Ps had them I got one While speaking of French models yes Roy Tandy omitted the shields as no one cares about RFI here in Europe
31. I ve heard read a Microsoft representative say That bug is already known and fixed in the next release The response to When can I have it is When the next version is released Fm Shane Dawalt TurboC doesn t count Joe I realize word processing software is much MUCH different than compilation software But it all boils down to the same thing Software is software and bugs are bugs and fixes are fixes regardless of whether it is compilation word processing database management DOSes etc Besides when Tandy released patches for their SuperScriptsit they changed the version number Seems everyone should change any version number on ANY piece of software at the time of fix because it ain t the same version as was available before the fix was placed into it It may be a trivial change but it s a change to the code nonetheless Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo Shane Both Turbo C and a word processor are both software packages and similar maintenance procedures can be applied to both The difference is in the nature of the product the nature of the user and marketing to that target user User perceptions of a product s quality are just as important as the actual quality of the product itself if a product is to survive in the software marketplace That s the key factor being considered here The reason I said that Turbo C doesn t count is that a compiler is aimed at an entirely different market than a word processor
32. I used to disable PRO WAM Since I intend to write this up in the next issue of THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY I won t elaborate on that here The bottom line is that because PRO WAM is disabled for normal key input of TERM you can t export from PRO WAM back to TERM But why would you want to There is no reason whatsoever Exported text couldn t be sent to the COM line So there is absolutely no degrading of the interface I have tested out the revised version of TERM at 9600 baud and it appears to function properly Now for the other PRO WAM readers I am including the source code of that TERM here in TMQ for a number of reasons First It illustrates another PRO WAM application in source form for those programmers desiring to learn more about PRO WAM applications Second it illustrates a useful technique of disabling PRO WAM temporarily That may prove useful for other applications Here s the code TERM ASM 08 15 88 kk X Mini Terminal application for PRO WAM Copyright c 1988 MISOSYS Inc All rights reserved TYPBUF EQU 2700H BREAK EQU 80H ETX EQU 3 CR EQU 13 CURON EQU 14 LF EQU 10 DOWN EQU 26 HOME EQU 28 TITLE t lt Mini Terminal gt OPTION CI GET SVCMAC LIST OFF MISOSYS Products Tidbits Volume ITI 1i LIST ENTRY IROW ICOL NOISE OK ORG WCREAT JR LD SOUND RET LD GTDCB JP LD PUSH DSPLY See text LD GTMOD JR DSPLY JR alter WAM GOTWAM
33. ICL Apply by DO PDSMOD The LSFEDI FIX is a patch for the UPDATE command This updates the date but only sets the time to 12 00am After this patch is applied the programme will only work with 6 3 I have included a routine to trap pre 6 3 DOS MISOSYS Products Tidbits Volume MI ii Patches to PDS to allow date s up to 1999 Also patches PDS BUILD for 6 3 s APPEND Files PDS CMD PDS PDS663A FIX PDSDIR FIX PDSAPP1 FIX PDSAPP2 FIX At least 10k of disk space on drive 0 MUST be available to the system PAUSE Press ENTER to continue BREAK to abort pds c pds append append pds c pds build build pds c pds dir dir pds k pds pds append pds k pds pds build pds k pds pds dir pds p pds pds NOT THE ORIGINAL COPY Y patch build cmd pds633a o n patch dir cmd pdsdir The next patch s give a choice of date type either the date the file was Appended to the PDS file or the files original creation date ALERT 1 1 2 KEYIN Select Date type lt 1 gt System date lt 2 gt File Creation Date 1 patch append pdsappl 1 2 patch append pdsapp2 f append append pds pds lappend build pds pds lappend dir pds pds remove append cmd build cmd dir cmd cls Let s see if it work s pds d pds fexit PDSAPP1 FIX Patches to PRO PaDS APPEND to make it compatible with both old and new dating systems using system date X 26DD C3 75 2D X
34. JR CALL JR OR JR CP JR LD CP JR DSP JR LD DSP LD JR POP CALL POP CALL JR CALL LD PAUSE CALL LD WINDOW RET Volume IIL ii f OR 80H Z EXIT1 BREAK If BREAK send Z SNDBRK modem break C A CLLOOP Bc 2000H ya zero KILOOP CLBGN Scan for CL char NZ KILOOP Back if no char A Have NULL ignore it Z KILOOP i e no char OCH 2 HOMECLR C A LF Z KILOOP KILOOP c 28 Home is direct A 31 Set CLREOF CLLOOP1 IY Restore old wakeup SNDCTL4 IY Restore reg IY ENAWAM Enable PRO WAM CLOSE NOISE B 5 NOISE BC 8 SHL 8 OR 0 Routine to enable PRO WAM LD EQU LD OR RET DEC DEC OR RET EL Pick up WAMHK 2 pointer A H L 2 HL Enable WAM HL H by restoring filter test ee e Check the type ahead buffer for any character Kn kk CLBGN LD type buffer pointer pointer CLBGN1 60 LD INC CP JR OR RET PUSH HL TYPBUF zp u start of A HL Pick up PUT HL bump to GET HL the same NZ CLBGN1 H HL save pointer to GETPTR MISOSYS Products Tidbits Ra a een ee a a eee a ET II Se a A oe 9 PEEL Sis y Ma o te Volume IIL ii LD E HL p u offset to buffer INC HL pt to buffer start LD D 0 add offset to start ADD HL DE to point to char posn LD A HL GET the stored char POP HL Rovr GETPTR INC HL Bump by 1 for char JP P TYPAHD1 Ck on bump t
35. Model 4 Video Bloom Em Jim Beard Joe My Model 4 is showing a strange problem in the video The brightness has increased gradually over the last few months and for the last week I can t lower the brightness enough to blank the retrace The contrast is low but not terribly so The last day or so it has gotten worse as I work to the point tonight that it is obvious that within a day or two the screen will completely white out From the technical manual I estimate that the contrast is a simple gain pot on the video in and the brightness pulls down a CRT grid with a pot to ground So I don t see an obvious cause Troubleshooting the video board can be tough without a test Model 4 hacked up on the bench because it is so hard to reach when in place What would you suggest I could always get my other video board out of the parts bin which hasn t been touched in 3 years Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaola Jim I seem to recall a problem like this discussed before but I recall the solution as being one of the fixed resistors shifting in value or maybe one transistor going You can get enough slack in the cables to at least probe some points by flipping the case top on its side immediately to the left of the computer and leaving the screws out of the video driver board Fm Jim Beard Sounds like motherhood to me There is only one transistor a high voltage video amp supplied by an 80 volt source PI start with it if no resistors chec
36. are included in the SY053F ASM file All there is to do is PATCH SYSO SYS SYSTEM using SYSOS3F FIX SYSO53F FIX Patch to enable LDOS 5 3 to work on French Model III 4 Patch SYSO SYS SYSTEM using SYSO53F FIX x 4dca 08 KFLAGS scanner LD A 3808H adc b3 08 0c b3 01 x 4dcd 67 BIT 4 A d0c ba 67 0c ba 47 X 4e25 30 European chars d0d 12 30 f0d 12 38 X 507e 70 European chars d0f 73 70 f0f 73 78 x 4024 no space comp d01 97 01 01 97 00 X 4e4e CD 00 SF call 5F00H install high memory patch KI and PR d0d 3b CD 00 5F f0d 3b 21 ED 41 x 4ec3 cd b0 Sf call 5FBOH enter DATE dd mm yy at Boot prompt ad0d b1 B0 5F f0d b1 28 42 these last patches must be last for PATCH to function correctly note that the only restriction on the length of a line is the number of bytes x 5f00 21 ED 41 00 E5 3E 46 32 3B 3C 2A 11 44 22 68 01 2C 00 AF ED 42 22 11 44 22 11 44 23 E5 C5 11 SF D5 B ED 52 44 4D FD E5 FD 21 5C 5F FD 6E 00 66 01 7C BS 28 OF 5E 23 56 EB 09 EB 72 2B 73 FD FD 23 18 E FD El El Cl D1 ED BO 21 8B SF 22 E8 21 66 SF 22 F1 41 El C9 4F 5F 55 SF 6F SF 76 SF JO 00 18 06 91 SF 03 24 4D 48 CD 74 SF CD 24 30 F5 88 1D 42 06 03 4E 1A 77 79 12 23 13 10 F7 c9 00 DB F8 E6 FO FE 30 C9 x 5fb0 21 12 3F E5 11 D2 SF CD 28 42 E3 D5 F5 22 20 40 2A 26 42 7C 65 6F 22 26 42 3E 1E CD 33 00 F1 D1 El C9 1E 44 41 54 45 20 28 64 64 2E 6D 6D 2E 79 79 29 20 3F 20 03
37. better probability it would work on my machine Therefore I modifed the hardware As I stated I ran my memory tester MEMTEST and decided data storage wasn t affected by the hardware modification Just to see if things stayed stable I left the computer run for 8 hours and retested the speed and memory again Again no problems Of course MEMTEST doesn t test execution problems yet that s in the works but at least the system didn t crash totally Pll certainly be on the lookout for errors at any rate And ya know if you think about it why does that WAIT need to be in there If the RAM is speedy enough which I m almost sure Tandy designed for that then the only other problem it could be is support circuits Maybe there are some PALs which cannot run as fast as Tandy wanted them to during the design I don t have my PAL info handy so I cannot lookup the max speed of the PALs used I m sure Tandy used all LS devices Letters to the Editor Volume HT ii for TTL chips on the discrete logic Those are good to around 10 25 MHz depending on the chip complexity If I start having errors I think 111 start looking at the discrete logic Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo Shane I m certainly not saying that you are sure to have a problem only that the Z800 may not have been the only reason for the delay Tandy had a heck of a time getting some of the early CPU boards to run reliably and there are a number of errors out there Ano
38. decide as I did that you want all four to be new drives or if you only wish to replace drives zero and one you have to go further and open up your computer and get involved with its insides If you have previously been inside computers or if you are a good dabbler in electronics you should have no problem as what you have to do is fairly simple There is no soldering and no leads or connections to cut so it is easy to restore things to their original condition if ever the machine has to go to a service center for repairs However if you feel perhaps a bit scared of getting entangled enlist the assistance of someone who can help you guide you or even do the whole job for you In opening the computer you will be breaking the sticker that covers one of the screws which will void any existing warranty Tools and Supplies These are simple and vary according to the details of the job Specific items are stated under each heading You will need a medium Phillips screwdriver perhaps a simple set of jeweler s screwdrivers available at many hardware stores mainly for prying at close quarters a grounding wrist strap available from Tandy for a couple of dollars or so to prevent any static discharges which might damage the electronics which you should wear while working on the open computer some thin hookup wire bare or The Hardware Corner 69 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 Volume IT ii insulated available at Tand
39. even an online HELP facility PRO WAM works with all programs which use standard DOS keyboard requests and honor the DOS high memory pointer requires one 32K RAM bank about 2K of high memory and a small piece of low RAM If you have a model 4 then you must have PRO WAMI MISOSYS Products Tidbits Volume IIL ii A better TERM APP Fm Damian Kelly I have a problem with TERM in PRO WAM The COM DVR is installed as per page 117 of the PRO WAM manual I have a Model 4P used as a terminal to an SCO Xenix V system COMM works perfectly with or without PRO WAM loaded The 4P works well as a terminal to Xenix However if I try to use TERM rather than COMM the 4P drops characters and prints lots of garbage on the screen graphics etc Why does COMM work perfectly but TERM in PRO WAM does not Is speed 9600 a problem The manual is unclear as to whether TERM sets its own speed ignoring SETCOM What have I done wrong It is very handy to be logged in to Xenix and still have PRO WAM available this aspect works well providing I use COMM in LS DOS Note a direct line is used to Xenix no modem like a normal terminal Fm MISOSYS Inc Damien Let me relate to you why TERM behaved as it did Excuse the technical aspect of the discussion but if you have gotten used to XENIX you must be more than a plain user One of the features of PRO WAM is that it supports up to four nested applications up to four windows with one
40. fact even at 300 baud a stream of characters would result in some character loss I recently cleared enough things from my desk to find the time to attack the TERM problem I tried a few solutions until MISOSYS Products Tidbits THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 59 Volume I ii atriving at one deemed successful I first tried to establish a small wakeup interrupt routine in the PRO WAM stack area The purpose of that routine was to spot check a few bytes in the application program area to see if TERM was still resident If it was then it would continue the interrupt handling otherwise ignore it and return But that wasn t successful for a number of reasons I next considered the possibility of temporarily disabling the interrupt task by having TERM maintain a flag condition indicating it was doing an KBD Thus during the time of exposure to a PRO WAM application invocation the task could inhibit itself But that was considered to be back in the same boat of character loss Finally I arrived at the solution of disabling PRO WAM while within TERM But since I want folks to be able to invoke other PRO WAM applications while within an application I designed this version of TERM to examine the keystroke returned from KBD if one was entered If that key code was a function key value I would enable PRO WAM for one keystroke allowing the operator access to PRO WAM This whole scheme was simplified by the easy method
41. field in the report This file should be processed in the same fashion as the first one up to the generation of the AUTO JOB file The BASIC program which generates the AUTO JOB file should be modified as before except for the following additional lines or changes 40 PRINT 2 3 CHRS 13 enter update mode of LB 60 PRINT 2 e enter edit mode for each record 61 PRINT 2 LEFTS field variable LEN field variable x CHR 13 Was line 60 95 PRINT 2 CHRS 11 70 move to the next record for editing In addition the printing section lines 60 80 should be adjusted to include a PRINT 2 CHR 13 for each field in the LB data base that must be skipped over in order to reach the position for the new data being added Following the generation of the AUTO JJOB file LB can be started the data base name selected and 6 Run Automatically selected again This operation edits each previously populated record and adds the data that did not make the transfer on the first operation Fm MISOSYS Inc Thanks for the procedure on porting PFS FILE data over to LB Although quite involved you appear to have made excellent use of system resources That LIST using a starting line number with the PR device redirected to a disk file is one that I didn t think of to split a file ll use your writeup in TMQ Perhaps Pam will read that MISOSYS Products Tidbits Volume 111 ii HartFORTH HartFORTH DOS6 M 2
42. finding a mismatch goes merrily on its way To set up an ASCII file of any desired record length I now CREATE the file with one record of the desired LRL load the file into a text processor and edit and extend the file at will The DESCRIP Program The DESCRIP program presented here computes descriptive statistics Mean Standard Deviation etc for anywhere from 1 to 60 variables for each run It will read up to a 1000 line formatted data file in which each line contains the 1 to 60 observations for each case Instructions for redimensioning the program for even larger data sets are included in the source Zero or negative observations are treated as missing data and deleted from the computations The reader could incorporate a different missing value routine into the source code and or add a prompt that would allow for the specification of missing values at run time Output s to a disk file specified by the user After reading the data file and completing the initial computations the DESCRIP program conducts error trapping for too few observations and zero variance prior to attempting the final calculations RATFOR s ability to correctly interpret IF ELSE code blocks nested within larger IF ELSE code blocks is a tremendous asset for constructing this type of code T ncorporating Data Specifications at Run ime The program uses a combination of keyboard and Map File input to pass user information at run time K
43. in both the TRS 80 and MS DOS environments MS DOS users will need to make changes to the syntax of the I O statements to convert the program to MS DOS use LS DOS users whose I O statements are subjected to LRL logical record length checking by the operating system may wish to consider applying the patch discussed below to their working RATFOR FORTRAN system disk s LS DOS LRL Checking As a sometimes researcher who makes considerable use of RATFOR FORTRAN I have had abundant occasions on which to create ASCII data files of an LRL logical record length other than the system default of 256 When attempting to view or edit these files in a text processor I was prevented from doing so by LS DOS s LRL checking when opening a file Copying the file back and forth between the default LRL and its actual one or zapping and rezapping the correct byte in the directory entry or just switching to a text processor running under LDOS which does no such checking got to be a pain Ergo I examined The Source Vol I p 161 for a way to bypass this error checking without interfering with the DOS in any other way The fix I came up with can be installed as follows The Tower of Babel Volume ITI ii PATCH SYS2 SYS LSIDOS D02 C6 DD BE 09 F02 C6 FD BE 04 With this patch installed the DOS now compares the LRL value it has just placed in the File Control Block with itself rather than with the LRL listed in the directory and never
44. into a smaller file ROUTE PR OLDDATAB TXT d LIST OLDDATA TXT s P LINE xxx RESET PR where xxx is a record number approximately in the middle of the file Edit OLDDATA TXT and truncate the file block delete at a convenient recognizable record that is greater than MISOSYS Products Tidbits Volume IIL ii xxx Edit OLDDATAB TXT and block delete the first portion of the file down to the same record When the files have been edited checked and are ready for further processing they can then be recombined with APPEND OLDDATAB TXT to OLDDATA TXT For very large files this procedure can be repeated incrementally to get the file into small enough chunks Preparing AUTO JOB for LB At this point it should be noted that the file OLDDATA TXT is simply an ASCII file with data in columnar format The remainder of this procedure can be used on any such file for loading data from one application into a LB data base for storage and future retrieval Roy has printed a BASIC program which reads a data file and generates an AUTO JOB file suitable for auto loading into LB MQ Vol Li Summer 86 P 68 not on DISKNOTES V With a few small changes this program will also work on OLDDATA TXT created by REPORT LRL should be calculated to equal the sum of all the columns and the spaces between the columns in the report plus 1 for the carriage return at the end of the report line When printing the data back to AUTO JOB line
45. library member you have to prefix it with an exclamation point Thus in order to invoke the APPEND module which was extracted from PaDS enter the command line as APPEND program padsfile Drive searching Fm Robert G Strickland Roy A few questions about the XLR8 board now installed on my 4P With all the LC files loaded on Ramdisk and with Ramdisk operating as the System drive 0 drive I notice that the compiler DOS still looks for files on 1 amp 2 before using 0 the Ramdisk After a successful compilation if I run the same compilation again 1 amp 2 are not interrogated Any thoughts on this I imagine that it may have something to do with the speed of the memory chips I am running the XLR8 at 1 2 80 until I install the faster chips Fm MISOSYS Inc It may still look for files on drive 0 however without a red light on the RAMdisk which comes on when the drive is accessed how do you know it is being accessed You don t Folks fail to appreciate that when you INIT a file the DOS does a global search if the file does not exist It will stop as soon as it finds the file If any program LC included INITs a file which doesn t exist the DOS has to search all drives if a drivespec is not part of the filespec Once it finds the file is nowhere to be found it then creates it on the first available un write protected disk drive The second and subsequent times you run that compile the DOS DOS Su
46. multiplicand partial product partial product Roy s Technical Corner THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 48 Volume III ii Step 3 left shift shift product left multiplier left multiplicand partial product left shift 110100 shift product left multiplier left muitiplicand partial product 1000001 product This result is the same as before However I only had to use a double wide register for the product This is important when considering a specific software implementation especially so when we start looking at 16 bit by 16 bit as well as 32 bit by 32 bit multiplications For those familiar with Z80 operation codes P1 follow up this discussion with an example from LDOS and LS DOS which have an 8 bit by 8 bit multiplication routine available through a service call MUL8 however the provision is that it only supports an 8 bit product Register A Multiplicand Register E Multiplier Product returned in Register A MUL8 Save some regs Multiplicand to D YInit product to 0 Set loop index Shift product left Shift multiplier left Skip if a 1 bit Add in multiplicand Loop for 8 bits Finished restore regs This routine uses the exact algorithm as I just related Recognize that in binary doubling a value by adding it to itself as in ADD A A above is the same as shifting left one bit position The SLA instruction is a logical shift left which shifts all
47. not a standard for COM3 4 accessing Therefore any manufacturer can use any interrupt line they want This will cause adverse operation of the respective COM port After that I decided the 45 for the com board was worthless Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaola Shane That s why I recommend bus rodents you ll never ever have more than two serial ports that work generally with software More are easy with custom software support but the vast majority of available software will barf Fm H Brothers Shane The problem with COM3 4 is that IBM s designers didn t figure out how to share an interrupt until the MCA something which the Model I designers knew well Even if you have 4 COM ports only two can be active at once and they must use different IRQs because the IRQ s DOS Subjects THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 BS Volume IIL ii on the PC AT bus are edge triggered and it is impossible for driver software to know who is requesting service Generally COMI amp 3 share one IRQ and COM2 amp 4 share the other although you can often set that with jumpers The possibilities of I O port conflicts further complicates the situation especially since IBM crippled the 8088 s I O capabilities severely and made it difficult to find unused ports hmmm similar to the way Tandy severely crippled the Z 80 s interrupt capabilities I guess Fm Shane Dawalt I still think that having a modem and a bus mouse sharing COM2 is
48. of everything from bubble to quick Any suggestions Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaola Pete Two of the best sources for information regarding algorithms in general including sorting are the standard texts on the subject of programming These are 1 Knuth s Art of Computer Programming series 2 Algorithms by Sedgewick The former is a three volume set volumes one and two are available in a second edition and volume three is still in its first edition Volume three entitled Sorting and Searching is the specific one you d want though all three volumes are top notch Hardbound only currently priced at around 43 each This is the definitive reference when it comes to algorithm and analysis The latter is a single volume that covers the same range of subject matter but from a different point of view and in less detail Sedgewick will refer you to Knuth for a detailed mathematical analysis of the material in question but there is certainly enough detail to implement almost any of the algorithms presented Algorithms is currently in its second edition which is a sorta pink purple color I have the first edition which is blue If you are paying full boat circa 35 insist on the second edition Algorithms is often offered by the Library of Computer and Information Sciences Book Club and is one of the books I picked up for a buck each when I joined Fm H Brothers Sedgewick s Algorithms is a good start The c
49. real time program I may regret this later subroutine cmult m1 m2 p real m 2 m2 2 p 2 p 1 m1 1 m2 1 m1 2 m2 2 p 2 m1 1 m2 2 m1 2 m2 1 retr end subroutine cdiv num den ratio real num 2 den 2 ratio 2 mod2 mod2 den 1 2 den 2 2 ratio 1 num 1 den 1 num 2 den 2 mod2 ratio 2 num 2 den 1 num 1 den 2 mod2 return end On ANSI bugs Em Jim Beard Here is my nomination for an ANSI bug Em Joe Kyle DiPietropaola No go bugs gotta have six legs Or did they leave that out of the ANSI spec Fm Jim Beard The ANSI draft spec leaves the number of legs to the implementation Some bugs have no legs some have hundreds Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaola Ah I found the problem I had define BUG INSECT in my code Fm Jim Beard I would check out a listing of lt stdio h gt and make sure that INSECT wasn t a macro defining a STREAM fA PERS E IE SAI DS AA LE oe ON VARIAR A ASE ee ay A The Tower of Babel rr ES y Volume 111 i Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaola You were right it was a combination of that the previous define and an assert BUG SIXLEGS P S Your bug is missing the fiendishly menacing pincers traditional in the classic C bug Or did they drop those from the ANSI draft too Fm Jim Beard The pincers are left to the implementation 0 O Vi en SE C and standard files
50. shell Some shells btw are nothing more than programs that run on top of Command Com as normal applications About assemblers you did know that Debug has a simple assembler built into it didn t you Also I think there is one you could start with in IBMSW If you want a high quality assembler I d suggest two to think about MASM 5 1 from Microsoft includes a decent editor and OPTASM from SLR Systems Fm Bryan Headley Shane How about Ray Duncan s Advanced MS DOS book Throughout he documents the DOS calls and quietly puts together a command interpreter Also good is Holub s book On Command from Dr Dobbs The latter comes with the shell Holub wrote Don t like assembler Sounds reasonable Go get a C compiler then QuickC and Turbo C are right bargains of the day Fm Shane Dawalt Oh What about disk operations Doesn t Command Com take care of that I m referring to opening and closing of files or what about specifying the path Also doesn t Command Com take care of the environment variables i e read them in and set them in memory Anyway I ve been pointed to Ray s book by Michael the last reply I ll certainly be peeking under books and on top of book shelves for it Yup I have MASM 5 whatever on my list ZENITH is selling it so I ll probably get it through them Last I checked Zenith s programmer s pack was 168 75 Course that was before the current MASM 5 series It may have went
51. shop If a working machine breaks down I can move all my four drives over to a standby and keep going If you may buy another computer in the future judicious planning ahead may enable you to buy drives you can use both now and on whatever other computer you plan on in which case satisfy yourself of compatibility by checking with your intended supplier s as necessary So I hope you will put new drives zero and one outside leaving the old ones in and I will continue on this basis However some of my statements regarding heating may not apply in your case and you may feel that your usage is not heavy enough for it to be a problem that you are skilled enough to handle the job and insist on putting your drives zero and one inside In that case you may have an easier job with 3 1 2 drives Check with your supplier for availability of brackets to adapt the drives to the computer and of faceplates for the drives to mimic 5 1 4 full height drives to suit the windows in the computer front Your drive supplier may also be able to provide the correct mounting screws But as I stated my Own experience and this write up are based on 5 1 4 units There may or may not be similarities with your 3 1 2 drives Making the change To go about your job you need ample space all around the computer It s frustrating and annoying to work when there isn t enough room So arrange things to give you plenty of working room and space to place a seat
52. still bizarre What s even worse is the fact that they actually WORK Note I m not complaining but is does seem ridiculous It is obvious Zenith repair knows more than I do as they said it would work from the start Seems this would be function dependent however So only two ports may be active at once Strange When you re talking to say port 3 then port 1 cannot be accessed via interrupts Evidently that s why I could write to port 1 but couldn t read from it Well that was simple enough I wonder if it would be possible to move my comm link to COM3 and move everything else down I ve got some generic C code to handle COM1 4 I O All I need is to specify the appropriate channel Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaola Shane You can sometimes share IRQs it is entirely dependent on how smart the programs are Most aren t Fm Daniel L Srebnick Shane The problem is with the sharing of interrupts COM1 uses IRQ4 and COM2 IRQ3 Some boards with COM3 and 4 then try to reuse IRQs 4 and 3 respectively So you have COM1 and COM3 in contention for the bus the same for COM2 and COM4 This is the reason that intelligent controllers such as the DigiBoard are used in multi user Unix systems to support multiple terminals The communications board itself must manage interrupt contention Fm H Brothers But leaving alone the question of chaining to the previous owner of the ISR how does a driver know which device signalled the IRQ Some devi
53. that command See previous answer Since DOS HLP is not a plain text file the result of LISTing it in ASCII provides nothing useful If you add together all of the byte values making up a file and discard overflow beyond 255 on each addition i e modulo 256 addition the resulting value is a one byte checksum If you add each byte modulo 65536 i e using a 16 bit unsigned accumulator the resulting value is a 16 bit checksum The 16 bit checksum is usually what s dealt with since the Z80 does have 16 bit registers for addition Okay so what are checksums good for Typically they re used in communications transfer of files As a modest level of checking the integrity of a transmission the sender checksums the file before sending then sends the file followed by the checksum The receiver then again checksums the file and compares the calculated checksum to the sender s transmitted checksum If they don t match then there was a transmission error If they do match there could have been an undetectable error A 2 byte checksum is generally more reliable than a 1 byte checksum There are more elaborate schemes An entire field of science is devoted to the design and analysis of error correcting codes This is usually termed Information Transmission Theory That field is extremely important to the ability of receiving usable transmissions of data from satellites and spacecraft Please read about the PATCH command in your D
54. the Il logical OR operator exist Why couldn t bitwise OR also serve as the logical OR function In other words why was it necessary to create the logical OR function Fm Jim Beard Adam If you are stringing together logical expressions the and Il and the amp and amp amp are interchangeable However the C language does not define the order of evaluation of logical expressions of the form if a lt b c d If your program defines c d when a is undefined you can make sure that the equality of c and d is checked first by writing if c d a lt b The double operators force left to right priority in evaluation The double amp amp does the same but demonstration of its utility is not as straightforward Fm Les Mikesell Adam There are several differences in the bitwise operators amp and their logical counterparts amp amp li First the logical operators will always evaluate to O or 1 regardless of the components of the operands Second the order of evaluation is defined for the logical operators Also the evaluation of expressions containing logical operators will short circuit as soon as the answer is known evaluating left to right Thus they may be used as flow control statements x funcl fune2 will not execute func2 if funcl returns a non zero value The value 1 will be assigned to x if either funcl or func2 returns a non zero value Em Hardin Brothers Adam The and amp amp
55. the XLR8er on the DS Disk Drive Model 4 and the use of MultiPlan reduced the amount of time the customer is serviced in half I also do payrolls and book keeping for a number of customers My children and I also do a lot of our school work Learning is a never ending process I keep a mailing list and copies of the clients taxes 1000 and a Data Base The use of PRO WAM has and i is a valuable tool in the development of both The above information is sent in reference to the survey or Market Research concerning the HD for the Model 4P I don t know how much longer the Tax software people are going to continue to support the Model 4P but with your proposed package and with it being reusable 1 in a PC environment it has my interest Fm Jane A Layman This letter is in response to your market research query in both the cooperative mailing and Volume ILiv of The MISOSYS Quarterly 1 would be very interested in the external 20 Megabyte hard drive you are contemplating marketing particularly as it will come with MISOSYS software For the last 5 and 1 2 years I have been using a 5 meg Radio Shack drive with my vintage Model 4 While the drive and the Model 4 have performed flawlessly all this time one has to consider that the drive cannot go on forever Also with only a 5 meg drive and two operating systems installed my hard disk space is somewhat at a premium Another place where I find space at a premium in my system is in hig
56. the light on see Terminating Resistors below Grounding If you purchase all external drives in their own enclosures with power supplies the drive frames will usually be grounded via the enclosure and the ground pin in the power supply plug If drives were to be mounted any other way care should be taken to ground them by means of the lug which usually is fastened to the drive frame at the rear Wire size is The Hardware Corner THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 70 Volume IIL ii not critical use insulated wire just in case it were to make accidental contact with any live parts Grounding is required to prevent the sensitive drive electronics picking up any neighboring electrical interference which might upset reading and writing In the case of drives mounted inside the computer grounding is usually to the nearest computer ground terminal Installing drives two and three If you are only purchasing external drives 2 and 3 you have a fairly easy job and won t need to open up the computer case Order your two drives complete with case and power supply and specify with your order the type of computer and the numbers you will be using the drives as If you further want to avoid work get a price from the drive supplier for a cable for connecting your drives to the computer I found I could save a few dollars by making my own so I cut a length of that cable I got from Tandy and attached a 34 position card edge connect
57. they are doing when they DOS Subjects Volume III ii write these things You did didn t you In TMQ 1 4 page 30 you say in reference to the RS driver NOT RSHARD to use zero or the smallest value given in the prompt Also 1 remember in one issue of TMQ it was stated that the controller uses buffered stepping That implies that I can use any value and the controller will feed it to the drive at the correct rate so I should use the default instead of the value in the manual Is this a correct belief on my part Fm MISOSYS Inc We usually know what we are doing But don t forget that the RSHARD disk driver can work with many different drives not all of which would use the same step rate There is only one default which I believe is 3 milliseconds the figure used by the 5 Meg drive International keyboards resolved Michel HOUDE 8 rue du Docteur Roux 60200 COMPIEGNE FRANCE I was very pleased to see my name mentionned by Fred Pieters in the latest TMQ As he was my first and unique customer I get a 100 satifaction rate Actually after my May 87 letter was published in TMQ I got one phone call from a guy in Paris and two letters from Belgium one was Fred Pieters you forwarded to me the other was sent to Michel Houde Teacher Researcher Chemical Engineering Compiegne University France I received it It came from Dirk Vandenbossche All 3 of them were of course interested by my adapting LS DO
58. those who are interested has been placed on DISK NOTES 3 2 which corresponds to this issue of THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY If you have a 128K Model 4 you can use this RAM disk with EXMEM if you have an XLR8er you should switch over to utilize the interface patches presented herein rather than the software provided with your XLR8er I have Even if you have an Alpha Technology memory board use the AT patches previously published in TMQ and this RAM disk Iam making up a special Model 4 XLR8er software interface disk as suggested by Michel Just return your existing Model 4 TRSDOS 6 XLR8er disk and a return label for a copy of that disk When I ponder at times whether it is worth it to still poke around in this TRS 80 marketplace with sales declining and the future opportunities dim it is the generosity and helpfulness of folks like Michel who just make it all worthwhile I congratulate Michel on his work and the obvious amount of time he has borrowed from his family will surely be respected by all those who benefit from his accomplishment The Hardware Corner Volume IIL ii Michel HOUDE 8 rue du Docteur Roux 60200 COMPIEGNE FRANCE Dear Roy Congratulations on your new born baby You must be glad it s a boy aren t you Family life is what makes it all worthwhile I wonder if you would say that in English but I hope you understand what I mean You may have noticed it already but when it comes to children it see
59. to maintain this convention since you may be testing the return value from a function as well as a logical test Fm Les Mikesell Jim In C logical operators return 0 or 1 and logical tests interpret 0 as false anything else as true The t is a logical NOT and is different from the or bitwise not There are no keywords for true or false and they are not needed since the implicit value of an expression can be used logically instead of having to explicitly compare with a constant if expr is identical to if expr 0 and if lexpr is identical to i expr 0 Fm Shane Dawalt Les I was always under the impression that TRUE was always FALSE which implies TRUE is 1 Then again my reasoning could be flawed as is a logical NOT and is a bitwise negation Now I wonder Yes I ve been screwed up for the last 2 years Page 187 of K amp R 1st Edition says in paraphrase that 0 is 1 and of any non zero value is 0 Now if that s changed with the ANSI Draft then I quit But the keywords are handy for initializing with program readability in mind Fm Les Mikesell Shane Yes but the keywords are wrong if they consist of anything but defining the constant 0 for your false value That is the only thing guaranteed to work in a comparison unless the data types of the things you are comparing match And even the zero needs to be cast to the correct type if you pass as an argument to a function unless th
60. totally insufficient you need 4 5 Megs So Pm waiting until prices drop a bit before taking that plunge 2200 for memory is a bit steep An NEC Multisync II color monitor and a Video Seven VGA Deluxe provide the viewport The Blurb 2 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY FALL 1988 Volume IILii The other point about a big machine is the disk capacity and speed I am planning on doing a lot of graphics work and publishing on this machine I expect soon to get PageMaker for publishing and advertising workup WINDOWS 386 is another thing on the list to support multi tasking All of that takes memory and fast disks So I m looking at something in the order of 100 140 Megabytes of fast disk access That also doesn t come cheap Of course if I recollect the old Model I days no one ever went and bought a full system You grew it gradually Most of us oldtimers started with a 16K Level II or even a 4K Level I and ran Microchess The next advance was an expansion interface with possibly 16K additional memory Most of the time you waited until you could get memory from third party sources as Tandy was charging about 295 for 16K Perhaps 595 for 1 Meg isn t so bad after all The E I enabled you to add a second cassette Few did the E I afterall was the device to get you into a disk drive with all of its 87 5K of storage A disk drive cost you about 400 So building up a full 48K 4 drive system could set you back somewhere in the neighborh
61. try to run just original supply and the new supply at the same time You may not meet the minimum load spec for regulation on the IBM sup ply and grounding problems could get you into real trouble Model 4P Power Supply Fm Robert G Strickland Where can I pick up an extra PS for my 4P aside from a direct order from National Parts 1 know they were made by an outfit in Texas I used to know the name but now it escapes me I have also seen some advertised thru wholesale outlets I bought one once but the 5v line had too much ripple on it for my Teletrends Modem I sold it to somebody who wanted to trouble shoot it Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaola Robert the supplies were made by both Tandy and Astec Astec was the original vendor and Tandy eventually produced them themselves from Astec s design Both Jameco and Timeline used to have them Astec 65watt version but I don t know offhand if either still does Jameco is 415 592 8097 Timeline is 213 217 8912 A surplus unit from either will run you around 30 A new one from Tandy or elsewhere will be more like 100 XLR8er comments Fm Frank Slinkman Roy concerning the XLR8er associated software while they re obviously a great improvement over the Mod 4 without them there are still a couple of deficiencies 1 The BOOT command no longer functions properly It puts you in Model III casette mode instead of booting up the system in Model 4 mode Is this because the speeded
62. up down or done a curly Q And no I didn t know Debug had a simple assembler I haven t been reading that part of the MSDOS manual yet I assume OPTASM from SLR Systems is an optimizer for ASM source As if my code isn t optim already lt grin gt I have been running Turbo C and I ve been playing around with the spawn functions Now without getting into the nitty DOS Subjects THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 34 Volume IIL ii gritty I was under the impression that child processes which are spawned can only be of the COM file type Can they also be of the EXE file type Are there any memory restrictions on child processes except the obvious restriction that they not attempt to use memory which is not available Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaola In addition note that you can get a book and disk with sample source code for a shell already written in C by Allen Holub used to be with Dr Dobb s available from M amp T Books Check any recent issue of Dr Dobbs for more info Fm jeff brenton Shane Turbo s spawn functions simply call DOS so everything DOS supports can be spawned BAT files of course require a copy of COMMAND COM be spawned to run them but both COM and EXE are supported otherwise OPTASM is a MASM compatible assembler that claims to be 4 10 times faster than the fastest version of MASM available It does NOT optimize assembly code as that would be considered a bug Of course
63. up system can t read the slow bootstrap ROM This is a fairly minor problem since there IS that orange button there 2 BUT after a boot RAMDISK does not recognize the fact that the ramdisk is already formatted If you type N to the do you want to format prompt it refuses to install the ramdisk I consider this a SERIOUS deficiency because it allows no reasonable possibility for recovery of data if the program using creating it crashes or locks up forcing a reboot 3 Sometimes under LS DOS typing the letter a brings forth a whole passel of other characters as well There doesn t seem to be any pattern to the characters either as to their The Hardware Corner THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 76 Volume IJIL ii quantity or nature This hasn t caused any problems from JCL nor does it occur using Scripsit or TED so it appears to be a problem with the way the DOS accesses the keyboard Of course it s possible my a key is at fault Has anybody else mentioned any similar problems to you As a heavy user of Super Scripsit which still has the odd bug or two under statement of the year number 2 above is of great concern to me Now if I could only find a way to cut down on the 2 minutes 38 seconds it takes my JCL routine to copy all the system Super Scripsit and spelling checker programs and data to my ramdisk lt hint hint Fm MISOSYS Inc The problem with the BOOT command going into the cas
64. was Fm MISOSYS Inc It is a bug and an old one I thought that was published before in TMQ The problem is according to the very old note written into the listing that the dot vector table the table of vectors in MRAS which handles the pseudo ops which require surrounding periods is 15 entries The SHR pseudo op is entry number 9 After the expression analyzer obtains the result of the operation code decoding it checks to see if a separator character has been sensed at that point it doesn t know if it got a character or a coded result of a character stream But since the code for SHR is 9 the routine checking for a separator sees that as a TAB That s why you get an Illegal addressing mode error I can t have any more than 15 entries in the table I m not sure if I ever looked at finding a way around that but since I m working on a new release of MRAS I should be able to come up with something What this means is that the SHR pseudo op doesn t work ever You could use the alternate form of shift right lt MLINK Problem Fm David Huelsmann Roy I have run across a problem using MLINK when linking 7 overlays to a root that 1 cannot fathom The root is a 16 5K REL file 2 overlays are 12K one is 1 5K and the rest are 3 0K The v 0 switch is used to an AlphTech 1 Meg ram disk with 190K free The longest chain is AB3AH with an org of 2600H for the linker If I link 6 of the overlays and the root
65. was fine and as long as you remained in either of these utilities no problem however when returning from Superlog to the system I was never quite sure what would happen After the first crash I made sure there was nothing in the system other than a backup of my boot disc Debugging in the extended memory banks is very frustrating and I would be very pleased to hear from someone who has found an easy way of doing it anyway that is another subject Furthermore the problem was MISOSYS Products Tidbits R Volume IlIl ii not really a bug the software was doing exactly as it was designed to do it was just the inevitable when asking a number of programs to interface with each other You may argue that windowing programs were designed to work with other programs yes they are but everything has its limits Because Pro Wam is a popular program and it contributes to this particular problem and because the problem may reoccur when interfacing with other programs 1 considered it worthwhile giving a summary of what can happen Although Superlog is hooked into the keyboard for input it is also task driven to allow it to be invoked under any condition When Superlog is installed another task is added to the system My system also has a clock running which is task driven therefore I have in addition to the system tasks two further tasks running Under these conditions my stack can reach half capacity 0340H This is an important p
66. window per application Thus it is entirely possible that TERM could be overlayed by another application which you invoke It is because of that possibility that TERM had some curious code The Model 4 DOS uses a serial driver which makes use of the available interrupt which occurs when a character is received Any program which then uses the COM driver as does TERM must provide a routine which takes over the serial drivers WAKEUP interrupt vector That vector stores the address of a routine within your program which the serial driver CALLs and which should issue a GET of the character just received That interrupt routine is within the program area of TERM There is no other place for it If that routine were overlayed by another program because of a subsequent PRO WAM application invocation and a character were received from the COM driver the interrupt would occur and the machine would go off to never never land To eliminate that from occurring TERM was programmed to disengage the wakeup vector prior to every keyboard strobe and re engage it after the keyboard strobe That means that during the execution time where it was possible to invoke another application the wakeup interrupt task was removed from the TERM program area TERM also had code to try and grab any character which may have been received while the wakeup vector was disabled Unfortunately this process just wasn t fast enough to keep up _ with a character stream In
67. with one wait state standard Model 4 4P with Z80 running 4 055 The Hardware Corner Volume IIL ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 Volume IIL ii 38 ED 39 39 3E 88 ED 39 3A C9 MHz The results show that both Model 4 s have 1 wait state 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 and both Model 4P s have none Same tests with interrupts enabled brought exactly the same values as yours After installing the XLR8er on the Old Model 4 I ran the tests again with different settings remember I m a scientist d10 3e ED 39 10 3e 00 00 20p XLBOOTA FIX To use XLR8 special features 03 Sep 88 Memory waits 0 1 2 3 PATCH boot sys lsidos USING xlboota fix O N Rfrsh rate 80T 68 3 71 2 85 111 must also PATCH sys0 sys lsidos USING xlsys0a fix Rfrsh rate 40T 71 1 74 0 89 115 d00 06 6D 10 f00 06 F4 OF d04 c9 57 5D 6F ED 6C ED ie 5A 16 00 19 C9 f04 c9 C5 EB 4F 21 00 00 7D 06 08 29 17 CB 01 04 d6 ED 28 38 E3 E5 AF ED 39 38 E 00 C9 f06 d6 30 03 19 CE 00 10 F5 4F 7D 6C 61 Cl C9 d06 77 79 C3 FD OF 00 06 77 E6 7F FE 03 D2 The result at max speed is close to yours with El As can be seen 1_ws and 40T lower speed by about 8 But my key board works reliably and my screen 1s clean By the way theoretical timing 6 144 MHz and new CPU T states count d09 9a 58 10 f09 9a 42 OD d0b df 2E150 ED 6C 00 00 00 00 should be 56 6_s Ows 80T and 68 0_s 1ws 80T Food for fob df 21 s0 00 CD C9 06 65 6F thought d0d
68. work since the DOS has provided all of the memory management routines necessary to automatically reside bank 0 on interrupts device calls and disk 1 O requests But that uses additional stack space When I developed LS DOS 6 0 I provided for a full page of memory for the system stack This allowed for two stacks of 128 bytes each LSI was forced to shrink that to 128 bytes total in order to introduce additional features The implication is that programs must provide their own stack space if they have more than a few words of stack usage PRO WAM switches to its own stack area as soon as it takes control 1 provide a 288 byte stack for PRO WAM in order to support up to the four nested applications capable of being invoked One last point about stack use is that it could be possible for a program to be so misbehaved on system stack usage that the upper stack is corrupted by the lower stack utilization even in spite of the switch to 340H as the split point As previously noted ALF uses its own stack AL does not It would not be problematic to develop a patch to AL which places a stack at 2600H Although the area from 2400H through 25FFH is reserved for future expansion of the DOS that utilization is not manifest in the 6 3 release thus it could be possible for AL to be patched so that 1t would use that region for a stack There may be a number of versions of AL out Mine is V1 03 at Update Level 11 29 84 The first thing it does is save the
69. 0 In your mind s eye move the decimal point 3 or 4 places to the right The variable is then truncated at the new decimal point by the AINT as opposed to the INT or IDINT FORTRAN function Finally the decimal place is restored to its original position by dividing the variable by the original multiplier You can truncate fewer or more decimal positions by adopting fewer or more zeros in the multiplier divider Rounding up rather than truncation can also be achieved if one uses the trick suggested for the Model MI version of BASIC i e by adding 3 to the multiplied value prior to using FORTRAN s AINT function E g MEAN D MEAN 10000 becomes MEAN MEAN D 10000 5 The Tower of Babel He e Se de de He qe SEO Volume JIL ii The Finishing Touch When the DESCRIP program has completed its initial run the user is asked whether or not he she wishes to rerun the program Y N The user s alphabetical response Do NOT enclose the keyboard response in single quotation marks 1s stored in a single BYTE variable While FORTRAN inputs the response as a literal format A1 it does so by converting it to a number in the range of 127 to 128 a set of numerical values that encompasses the ASCII character set FORTRAN will not understand what you mean if you later attempt to reference the byte s contents with a statement such as IF RERUN EQ Y OR RERUN EQ y but it will behave as you want if you substitute the nu
70. 0K Thank you for your patience and a BIG thanks for LAIR OF THE DRAGON It is a really superb game even though I haven t figured out how to kill any of the nasties yet Fm MISOSYS Inc Your confusion over disk size is in confusion over the term K A 40 cylinder floppy has 40 tracks times 18 sectors per track times 256 bytes per sector Multiply that out and you get 184320 bytes But a K is 1024 bytes not 1000 bytes So divide 184320 by 1024 and that equals 180K The size values of the DIR command for instance are given in units of 1024 bytes K That s where the difference appears between 184 and 180 It is really wrong to use a term such as 184K when referring to a 40 track floppy s capacity We reference capacity be it disk space or memory space in units of K which is a term steeped in binary Unfortunately the world of engineering uses k as an abbreviation for kilo meaning thousand as in kilobaud not kilobyte The abbreviation for kilo meaning 1000 should also be lower case whereas the K for indicating 1024 should be in upper case Fix for Alwrite and PRO WAM From Brad Stiles Congratulations on the arrival of Benjamin C I predict that in less than two years your fatherly experiences will begin to change dramatically We have Stephanie 5 and Jeffrey 18 mths and although they are similar in many ways the gender difference is also the result of vast differences which we had not believed p
71. 1 000 4 000 The Tower of Babel 39 The Tower of Babel Volume III ii FORTRAN RATFOR Complex data types Fm Mark Mueller HELP Does anyone know how to implement the COMPLEX data type in Microsoft Model 4 FORTRAN My version is 3 44 00 The docs say may be included in a future release HA HA HA Seriously any help will be appreciated p s If we can do this Ill be on the phone tomorrow to order RATFOR Fm Jim Beard Mark You needn t offer to buy RATFOR to get an answer to a question pal If 1 can stop grinning long enough I ll try to help Ahem Using regular FORTRAN stuff I have implemented the COMPLEX data type using double statements for add subtract etc and using function and subroutine calls F80 is VERY efficient if you use three or less arguments which is possible with complex arithmetic You can use subroutines for multiplication and division if it will save a lot of code The calling sequence is so fast compared to the floating point arithmetic even if you had an 8087 on your Model 4 that using a subroutine is OK for speed and efficiency And if you get it right once it is always right With RATFOR you can define macros to perform your complex arithmetic The compiled code will be as efficient as you Can get Even with FORTRAN compilers that support the type COMPLEX I usually implement complex arithmetic this way I find it more natural than the use of the CMPLX REAL an
72. 1 071 DOS5 M 20 071 HartFORTH is a full FORTH that conforms to the 79 STANDARD The Model I II version is an indirect threaded version the DOS 6 version is a direct threaded implementation providing greater execution speed of 10 40 depending on the details of the actual program The kernal contains some additional useful words and utilities which turn HartFORTH into a full fledged development system HartFORTH is designed to run under an operating system which is totally transparent to the programmer or user The virtual Memory that it accesses for storage and retrieval purposes is a normal DOS file that is requested by the FORTH system when it is first eritered Doing this has several advantages in that it provides for FORTH files to be used in other language application programs and vice versa Enhancements have been built into the kernal in the form of functions to call the operating system file handling routines so that other files may be created or accessed HartFORTH supports double lerigth integers string handling cursor manipulation graphics random numbers and floating point FORTH Compiler Fm Kevin R Parris What type of language is FORTH What applications is it considered best suited for PRO HartFORTH from MISOSYS is down to a very reasonable too good to be true maybe price but I do not want to get something I may have no use for Advice please Fm Bill Brandon Kevin FORTH is a threaded interp
73. 26 70 E7 6D C9 F26 70 E7 6D C9 eop MCOPTSB6 FIX 09 28 88 patch MCOPT6 CMD correct subtract operation D25 CE 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 F25 CE 2A FE 41 11 00 CD D26 42 2A 00 42 7C 20 04 F26 42 2A 00 42 CD 6D 7C D26 50 CD F1 6B 11 00 EB F26 50 22 04 42 2A 41 E5 D26 60 E1 E5 C5 F5 CD 03 F26 60 BC 6C 7C B5 26 21 D26 70 A2 CD 6A F1 F26 70 E5 6A F1 ES D26 80 21 42 E3 F3 31 F26 80 21 42 ES F3 31 eop Me A ae MISOSYS Products Tidbits Volume IIL ii MRAS Assembler Z80 RELocatable Assembler MRAS DOS 6 x M 21 083 LDOS 5 x M20 083 An advanced Z80 assembly package for the programmer who wants a powerful and flexible development system It includes a macro assembler which generates either relocatable object code modules or CMD files directly a linker a librarian a full screen text editor a utility for converting to from line numbered files and a cross reference tool for directly generated CMD files MRAS generates M80 compatible REL files Supports REPT IRP and IRPC macros nested includes and a full range of nested conditionals It has flexible output redirection of listing and symbol table MLINK supports virtual memory bit stream buffering REL and IRL library searching zero disk space for DEFS in DSEGs and COMMONS generation of program overlays special link items 0 3 5 7 941 13 15 Includes MLIB our REL module librarian and ou
74. 2D75 4F E6 07 47 13 1A 07 07 07 BO 77 2B 13 79 E6 18 X 2D85 07 47 1A BO 77 C3 E9 26 EOP PDSDIR PIX 06 05 88 Patch for Model 4 PRO PaDS Patches to PRO PaDS DIR to make it compatible with both old and new dating systems x 2800 El 7E E6 07 47 CD 40 2B 00 00 00 X 2B40 E5 2B 7E E6 30 OF BO C6 50 26 00 6F 06 02 3E 5F EF El C9 EOP MISOSYS Products Tidbits THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 66 PDS663A FIX 02 14 87 Patch LS DOS 6 3 s ATTRIB Fixes PDS BUILD to revamp the internal ATTRIB command string This patch to be applied only to to PRO PaDS for the extracted BUILD member Apply for LS DOS 6 3 only via PATCH BUILD PDS using PDS663A DO0O1 E9 70 3D 52 45 29 OD F01 E9 75 3D 2C 70 3D 52 Eop PDSAPP2 FIX Patches to PRO PaDS APPEND to make it compatible with both old and new dating systems using file original creation date this version uses code Published in Notes from MISOSYS Issue 4 PPADSD FIX X 26CE 18 16 X 27DC CD 75 2D Volume MW ii X 2D75 C2 EE 29 ED 4B 7F 2C 3E 57 EF C2 EE 29 79 07 07 X 2D85 07 4F 3E 46 B1 32 90 2D FD CB 18 46 23 D5 11 02 X 2D95 2D 7E 20 09 E6 OF 12 23 13 7E 12 D1 C9 E6 OF 4F X 2DA5 23 7E E6 F8 47 D5 11 11 00 19 Di 7E E6 18 07 Bl X 2DB5 12 13 7E E6 07 BO 12 Di C9 LSFEDII FIX 06 05 88 Patches to LSFEDII CMD Patch to LSFEDII CMD to make the U command work with 6 3 date type Set s date to sys
75. 703 437 SYSOP of the LDOS TRSDOS 6 Forum For the latest in information about your TRS 80 GO PCS49 This patch allows Radio Shack s Model 4 VIDTEX Version 01 00 00 to accept the variations in COMPUSERVE s B protocol introduced to improve performance circa December 1987 The program will now support reduced quoting of control characters but not full QuickB protocol Install using the command PATCH VIDTEX CMD USING VIDTXB FIX D04 9A 00 00 18 F04 9A FE 20 30 Remove restrictions on quoting range for data DO0O4 F7 00 00 18 F04 F7 FE 20 30 Remove restrictions on quoting range for checksum D2B 7B 31 F2B 7B 30 D2B D6 31 F2B D6 30 Change version number to 01 00 01 End of patch DESKMATE and CL Fm Dave Spiceland Joe I ve got another question about DESKMATE Pm trying to setup a configuration for DESKMATE When checking DEVICE I get CL lt gt X 0FF4 How do I duplicate that from the keyboard I know this is a silly question but I haven t yet mastered this part of the DOS Any help you could offer would be appreciated Em Joe Kyle DiPietropaola No problem Dave you need to doa SET CL COM DVR followed by a SETCOM Q if the defaults displayed with a plain ol SETCOM weren t suitable DOS Subjects Volume ITI ii 180K or 184320 Bytes Fm Samuel A Robbins Why are the disk drives on the Model 4 s listed as being 184K drives when they only format to 18
76. 80x86 assemblers ARE free to rearrange certain instructions at will Fm H Brothers Shane The word shell has several different meanings in the MS DOS world which seems to lead to loads of confusion It can mean a replacement for Command Com a program that runs as a user interface on top of Command Com and also as a verb the process of invoking a new copy of Command Com from inside an application In one sense Command Com is itself nothing but a weak shell Most of the insults hurled at MS DOS by users as opposed to programmers should really be directed at Command Com It prints the A gt prompt interprets user commands maintains a master copy of the environment strings and runs as child processes all of your other applications That s the important part Command Com simply spawns everything else you run To reduce its memory requirements Command Com does some strange things like loading part of itself at the very top of memory Some of it stays memory resident at all times like any other parent program some of it stays in high memory If an application overwrites Command Com s high memory section Command Com must reload itself when it regains control from a child That s what the Comspec environment string is for Command Com interprets everything you type or every line in a BAT file First it looks to see if the command is in its own internal command list things like Copy Dir Set etc If not it star
77. Comp more for its extensions to BASIC than to create fast CMD files The compiler does a lot of disk access as it works That takes time and puts wear and tear on your disk drive If you have one I suggest you place SUPPORT DAT on a RAM disk I did and now I can compile most programs in under a minute Conclusion Pro EnhComp is an excellent buy Its few faults are far outweighed by its impressive features The in line assembly language feature alone is worth Pro EnhComp s purchase price If you are serious about BASIC programming on your Model 4 you owe it to yourself to buy Pro EnhComp The Reviewer THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 20 Volume II ji CED FIX by Mark Allen Reed I enjoy using Pro EnhComp on my TRS 80 Model 4D It is an incredibly powerful BASIC compiler system and its in line assembly language capability is unrivalled even on MS DOS compilers However the CED line editor version 1 4 supplied with Pro EnhComp has two quirks that annoy me First it expands every tab to eight spaces which is far too many to be useful Second it capitalizes text following REM statements That is This is a remark statement becomes THIS IS A REMARK STATEMENT I wouldn t call these bugs but they bothered me enough that I started looking through the program with DEBUG to see how I could correct them The results of my labor are presented below Create the file using the BUILD command I named it CED
78. I wonder who ever heard of it I say in Europe because in those European Community days that would be an ECC concern More and more standards are nowadays ruled on an European scale 3 To answer another question yes we have a French SuperScripsit since Model III days and it does its keyboard scanning via CTL 255 I did not even attempt to translate Lynn Sherman s CTL255 filter for the very reason that 1 consider PROWAM Version 2 to be essentially incompatible with European characters which are treated as protected With PRONTO s CARD APP one could enter all characters export or import them You can t do that with PROWAM 2 Now I admit that there are so few people interested that nobody could blame you Roy for the design choice you made Rather blame Tandy for the hardware which is the real culprit Now I must say that French Superscripsit and French Multiplan do care for European characters in inverse video but these are huge programs not a resident desktop manager Don t misunderstand me I like PROWAM How do you think I did to generate those long patches Well I used TED APP and FED APP exporting the hex data pairs from FED to TED DOS Subjects THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 23 Volume III ii I recall someone asking how to display DIR in 24 hour format Here are the patches to LS DOS 6 3 SYS6 SYS d09 11 00 f09 11 0C d09 17 00 09 17 0C d09 32 20 f 09 32 61 d09 36 20 f 09 36 70 Now a
79. IDATA dealer their information isn t very up to date but its better than nothing Wherever you buy the module expect to pay somewhere around a hundred dollars And whatever you do don t let someone give you an IBM PCjr module by mistake That happened to me when I first bought my printer You need an Okimate 10 Plug n Print for an IBM PC with a parallel printer port OKIDATA makes good printers but dealing with the company is an unpleasant experience I hope this letter has helped solve some of the mystery surrounding the Okimate 10 If you have any further questions I would be happy to try to answer them P S I am sending a copy of this letter to The MISOSYS Quarterly When you solve the last of your Okimate problems you may want to send them an account of the whole incident It would be educational and might help other people with similar problems Fm Carol L Welcomb to Mark Reed Dear Mark I thank you very much for your letter concerning the Okimate 10 printer I can tell you exactly what has happened and what I ve decided to do Firstly I finally got the Okidata people to respond to my detailed letter about the problem They were quite rude I feel as they pointed out the only computer that the Okimate 10 will work with is a Commodore The Okimate 10 was designed specifically for the Commodore 64 I didn t know this at the time nor did any of the literature on the Okimate 10 confirm this I assumed tha
80. January 1987 issue of 80 MICROCOMPUTING is a complete C compiler which adheres to the standards established by Kernighan and Ritchie The library of functions is extensive and System V compatible The compiler generates Z80 relocatable macro assembler code M80 or our MRAS The libraries are files of relocatable object modules MC is a full featured compiler for the discriminating programmer MC supports command line 0 redirection for compiled programs wild card file specifications parsing for UNIX extensions in file specifications overlay support requires MRAS a full pre processor lots of options and is designed for the programmer wishing the ultimate in C compilers The package is supplied with the compiler pre processor an optimizer assembler macro files C libraries a Job Control Language file the header files and a 400 page user manual MC requires the use of either M 80 or MRAS available separately 2 disk drives and upper lower case i Pro MC and structs PRO MC Difftime Fm Ralf Folkerts Roy I m having problems with my Pro MC Due to lack of time I ve started playing with my Pro MC But almost every program won t LINK Pm using M80 L80 This happened with the DCT program and the DHAMP program from one of the later TMQ s The assembler does it s work without reporting any errors but L80 generates a 1 Undefined Global s With the DCT program this is CALL wit
81. LY give me a call PD Software Librarian Vic McClung has volunteered to be the librarian for the collection of TRS 80 public domain diskettes Henceforth all requests and contributions be directed directly to him at Vic McClung 914 Crescent Sikeston MO 63801 USA DISK NOTES 3 2 Each issue of THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY contains program listings patch listings and other references to files we have placed onto a disk DISK NOTES 3 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 The Blurb 30 ALI FIX For Prosoft s Allwrite 1 13 Volume II ii DISK NOTES is priced at 10 Plus S amp H The S amp H charges are 2 for US Canada and Mexico 3 elsewhere If you purchase DISK NOTES 3 2 with the coupon which accompanies this TMQ issue you can save 2 50 the cost then being only 7 50 S amp H Fixes in this issue I did away with The Patch Corner because the number of patches had dwindled to a handful This issue again has only a handful but here s a reference to them we J Go 7 A Pa AE 21 SYS6H FIX For LDOS 5 3 DIR Ar SYSOS3F FIX LDOS 5 3 8 French III 4 2 VIDTXB FIX For Tandy s VIDTEXT P s1 LBSORT2 FIX For LB s LBSORT module F 5 MCOPTSBx FIX For MC s MCOPT CMD Pol PDSxxx FIX For PRO PaDS and LS DOS 6 3 42 LSFEDII FIX For LSFEDII and LS DOS 6 3 2 go XLR8xx FIX For XL
82. N 1 1000 MAX I MAX I 1000 MAX 1 AINT MAX I MAX I MAX 1 1000 Write out results Person Person Person Person Person Person PXAGhAzOomnaBoua WP WEN FPWR NM AN ys Mme NM WWRN Wre BS W WHR OP BNF amp NF 0 da MN GDH N GD FNM W amp NP RP ANU BO Wh W W ES N N WW PRM Wh 0 MAA Sample MAP file note each data row has four additional columns of UNUSED 8X 6F2 0 ITEM 1 ITEM 2 ITEM 3 ITEM 4 ITEM 5 ITEM 6 UNUSED UNUSED UNUSED UNUSED UNUSED UNUSED a Output file UNUSED UNUSED UNUSED UNUSED UNUSED UNUSED DO LE UNUSED UNUSED UNUSED UNUSED UNUSED UNUSED ld UNUSED UNUSED UNUSED UNUSED UNUSED UNUSED UNUSED UNUSED UNUSED UNUSED UNUSED UNUSED WRITE 6 310 LABEL I NS I MEAN I VAR I SD I MIN I MAX I ENDFILE 6 WRITE 3 220 Job done WRITE 3 230 DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS READ 3 240 RERUN IF RERUN EQ 89 OR RERUN EQ 121 GO TO 5 Variable N Mean Variance S D Minimum Maximum 89 amp 121 the decimal equivalents of ASCII opera dower paso ya ITEM 5000 1 3636 1 1677 1 000 4 000 STOP ITEM 3333 3333 1 1547 1 000 4 000 Formats for Title and keyboard prompts and input ITEM 5833 5378 1 2401 1 000 4 000 30 FORMAT 26X DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS 28X by Jane LIEN 2 6666 9696 9847 1 000 4 000 A Layman ITEM 5454 0727 1 0357 1 000 4 000 40 FORMAT 0 Data File name up to 23 characters ITEM 8333 0606 1 0298
83. OS manual I see five pages of information there A patch is not just to convert a program to run on a different computer than the one it was designed for Most patches make alterations to a program to either fix bugs or provide enhancements Letters to the Editor 18 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 Volume IT ii i TEL ap N l The LDOS 5 3 upgrade kit is now available to take your Model II or 4 in 3 mode to the year 2000 LDOS 5 3 provides complete media compatibility with LS DOS 6 3 the newest Model 4 DOS released by Logical Systems Inc With LDOS 5 3 you can add 12 years to the life of your software Just look at these improvements over version 5 1 4 Only 34 95 e Date support through December 31 1999 time stamping for files e LDOS frees up 14 additional file slots for data disks e On line HELP facility for DOS and BASIC 117 screens of help LIBRARY Enhancements DOS Enhancements e New FORMS lets you change printer files parameters e New SETCOM lets you change RS 232 parameters e Improvements to LIST add paged displays full screen hex mode and flexible tab expansion e MEMORY displays directory of terminate and stay resident modules e SYSTEM lets you direct the SYSGEN to any drive adds a flexible drive swap subcommand SMOOTH for faster disk throughput e DiRectory display enhanced with time stamps file EOF and more e We ve also improved AUTO COPY CREATE DEBUG DEVICE DO
84. OSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 64 Volume III ii Why only n 1 TO 512 you might ask Well the PRINT 1 produces the following output 20 OD since OD is a carriage return So now we have a file of 1024 bytes which is the length of a single Superlog record I used ERASE CMD filespec to zero all the bytes in the file but this is superfluous wizardry Next using the great Elesfed I took the zero file and changed its nature By changing certain bytes Psort would be fooled into thinking that this file was the start of a Prowam data file The bytes to change are as follows 02 this is the number of pages in the LOG file in hex 10 amp 11 these must be changed to 00 04 this is 1024 decimal the LRL 12 amp 13 1st Rec as Data we need 01 hex 14 amp 15 Relative location for SORT we need 40 00 hex 64 dec 16 Length of SORT 3C hex 60 dec These changes produce a strange result the spell Psort thinks that the zero file is the start of a Prowam data file The spell will look at this file and SORT on the 3rd line of each Superlog record one whole line The resultant file will be read by superlog and appear in normal format Now that the file has been created how do we use it Well Elesdos the spell maker has a useful function called APPEND a kind of sub spell We use this to add our Superlog file to the newly created header thus APPEND fi
85. OSYS Quarterly You have helped me see uses for my computer that I didn t know were possible I do not have the knowledge the patience or the interest to write my own programs but I m a willing customer for applications that allow me to do what I want to do I read each manual and Readme file carefully before I ever use the application It is especially helpful if the author writes in clear English does not presuppose the reader knows the jargon and includes an index as well as a table of contents in a manual I highlight operating information with yellow and warnings with orange as I read so I can find those important points later Letters to the Editor THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 14 Volume III ii After I added my hard drive I had to retire TiMgr and PrjMer because the RSCC folk couldn t help me overcome the fact neither program recognized the HD as Drive 1 They sold me Deskmate 4 to replace TMgr In addition to DM 4 s calendar I thought it would give me a filer a communications package a dialer and a simple spreadsheet It was the worst purchase of my life I became disenchanted with DM 4 s limitations in a matter of weeks I didn t expect a Cadillac but I did hope for a Cheverolet It turned out to be two steps below a Hyundai No disrespect to Hyundai intended The end came unexpectedly I had to change the DM 4 calendar frequently I would edit it in its sort mode because it was more efficien
86. PR d lines per page that exceeds the number of records being printed and a page width wider than the total length of all the fields plus at least one character between each two columns With FILE the exact length of the fields are usually not known so use the maximum of 256 If an error message is received that the output is wider than the page width 256 allow the report to finish anyway The Partial report will be valuable in determining the next step If the data base and report are large REPORT may hang on the last record Reboot and use the program for recovering routed printer files MQ Vol Ilii pg 30 Jeff Brenton to recover OLDDATA PR Check and Edit Report REPORT writes the file to disk with a LRL 1 In order for SAID to read the file COPY OLDDATA PR s TXT d LRL 256 Then inspect OLDDATA TXT with SAID or other word processor Determine how long each printed column is and how many blanks were used to separate the columns Delete any leading blanks which were used to center the report the SAID Macro and Macro Repeat commands can be used here If all of the requested fields were not printed Report too Wide error use this information to go back into REPORT and try again with fewer fields but including the dummy field The fields left out can be addressed after the first report is safely in Little Brother On large reports OLDDATA TXT may be too large for SAID to edit To split the last half of the file
87. Pete Betz Roy I just came across the mention in the Quarterly by Elmar von Muralt of his problems with LB skipping pages during prints That s for real I ve been having the same problem My cure believe it or not is to always use the lt T gt of feature before starting the print whether I really want it or not If I ditch a page of paper with the lt T gt before printing the page skipping never happens if I don t the problem frequently arises We re talking no other variations here same printer same PRO file same FORMS setup same curse words same everything Fm MISOSYS Inc He did find his problem It was a conflict with the FORMS FLT parameters and the PRTPRMS in LB Once he corrected the parameters the problem disappeared LB file structure Fm John Tollini Roy I have an application I need to set up for a client that end up generating a data base of names amp addresses Will the file layout of LB cause any difficulties in creating a data file from basic to be maintained by LB The basic programs would only be adding to the data base all other maintenance and use would be done with LB I seem to remember some discussion either here or in TMQ about the subject but I can t find it now The LRL would be less than 256 Fm MISOSYS Inc I think you d have problems in using BASIC to add data The data LB file has a field behind the last record which records number of records BASIC doesn t give you any co
88. R 60 SD 60 MIN 60 MAX 60 DOUBLE PRECISION LABEL 60 BYTE MAPFIL 23 INFILE 23 OUTFIL 23 FMT 80 RERUN Title and prompts for keyboard input WRITE 3 30 5 WRITE 3 40 READ 3 90 INFILE WRITE 3 50 READ 3 100 LRL WRITE 3 60 READ 3 100 NX WRITE 3 70 READ 3 90 MAPFIL WRITE 3 80 READ 3 90 OUTFIL Open Mapfile and read in info CALL OPEN 6 MAPFIL 81 N B Unless the Mapfile READ 6 110 FMT conforms to the specifi READ 6 120 LABEL cations above this block ENDFILE 6 of code CANNOT run Initialize program accumulators MIN array set arbitrarily high remaining DO T 1 NX NS I 0 XSUM I 0 0 X2SUM I 0 0 MIN I 5000 0 MAX 1 0 0 Se Se de de 4 de de de de 4 SE Jk EOE eo te 4 oe e dk ie e e variables set to 0 Read data file and perform initial calculations WRITE 3 200 CALL OPEN 6 INFILE LRL DO I 1 1000 DO I 1 1000 loop READ statement READ 6 FMT END 10 X J J 1 NX DO K 1 NX IF X K GT 0 IF MIN K GT X K MIN K X K IF MAX K LT X K MAX K X K NS K NS K 1 XSUM K XSUM K X K X2SUM K X2SUM K X K X K Check for missing values The Tower of Babel Volume IL ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 Volume II1 ii 50 FORMAT 1X What is the LRL of this file 10 ENDFILE 6 60 FORMAT 1X How many variables for this run WRITE 3 210 70 FORMAT
89. R8er and LS DOS 6 3 Out of print TMO s available For out of print issues we are providing back issues of THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY via copier reprint The price is 12 50 plus 2 75 S amp H in the U S and CANADA For foreign zone D the S amp H rate is 5 50 zone E is 6 50 The price for regular back issues still in print is 10 S amp H We are currently out of print on all issues except ILiii Here s a synopsis of past issues Volume I See the index in issue Hli An index to Volume II prepared by Elmar von Muralt couldn t fit into this issue it will definitely be in the next issue Ili David Hall on the 64180 Gary Phillips on XLR8 amp 4P Doug Tittle on sorting PR WAM data WORD with DW IL I ii Extended DATE of Model I LDOS 5 1 4 Input SUBroutine for QuickBASIC BASIC Interface to EXMEM HIRES Graphics for MC Focus on speed IL iii Headline driver for I II LDOS XLR8er installation CTL255 filter for PRO WAM FIXBANKS for your XLR8er 4P boot ROM disassembled C bit fields Iliv Tapes Disks and CMD files Searching with DSM4 EXMEM lt gt BASIC interfacing Testing printer ready Revision to HIBANKS WAMDUMP convert a PRO WAM APP file to CMD file SYSDRV A system drive other than 0 Mi Reading NEWDOS 80 disks An LB archival utility Popup Application Window XMODEM in C Getting into computer math part I TMQ Volume I index The Blurb THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY FALL 1988 ds Volume Iii M
90. S 6 3 to a French keybord To all 3 I said Please ask Tandy Tandy finaly released LS DOS 6 3F in october more on that later but Fred Pieters wanted LDOS 5 3 to work properly on his Model_4 I asked him to s nd me a QFB copy of his master and patched him as needed adding a KIAZA DVR a PR DVR for proper European character conversion and even a special TWOSIDES JCL to let him build a double sided optimized BOOT disk I did not hear of him since I sent him the diskette so I thought no news is good news I m glad to know he s satisfied I asked him a 300 French Francs fee That s 40 50 depending on current rate and what the bank actually charges These were immediately spent on LS DiskDISK Which means that the few cents you spent on forwarding Fred s letter returned 3 sales LDOS 5 3 and Mod4 HIK to Fred and DiskDISK to me and 2 happy customers of yours But I wouldn t do it any more as I spent hours writing a README text explaining what he could do and what he could not with patched LDOS You never know how people use their computer and what program they use some of which are so tricky I didn t want my work to be blamed for someone else s errors Now I understand how difficult it is to write accurate and comprehensive documentation DOS Subjects THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 292 Volume II ii As Fred Pieters praises my job I decided to sent it to you All the needed explanations
91. S MAC source DUMMY1 amp 2 DAT MAP and OUT very short dummy data files for trying out the program The DUMMY 2 set is identical to The Tower of Babel THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 36 Volume 111 ii DUMMY 1 except that the last 3 variables were added to test the DESCRIP program s error trapping I hope the information in the article will be of interest to TMQ readers and that some of them at least will have RATFOR FORTRAN programming tips of their own to share Jane A Layman 20165 Davidson Road Waukesha WI 53186 When it comes to speed and efficiency in number crunching FORTRAN remains the star performer among computer languages The addition of RATFOR preprocessing raises FORTRAN to new heights particularly in the area of program structuring One s RATFOR FORTRAN programming becomes even more enjoyable when one master s the art of writing interactive and reusable FORTRAN programs The program that accompanies this article DESCRIP RAT written in the Model 4 version of RATFOR contains a number of features that allow the user to pass information to the pre compiled program at run time This information includes input and output file names labels for the data AND the format statement by which the data file is to be read In addition the program contains a routine to structure numerical output in an approximation of a BASIC PRINT USING statement The concepts in this program will work equally well
92. S QUARTERLY Fall 1988 Volume IIL ii EXMEM not being SYSGENable You forgot that SVC vectors 124 127 are SYSGENed since 6 2 124 is WINDOW Actually I really didn t forget I considered EXMEM to be a SYSEM function thus it should have a system SVC number not a USER number I then cleared it with LSI The problem you run into when using a USER SVC number is that someone else may have decided to use that same number Which leads me to another program I wrote PEXMEM Page EXtended MEMory Management which is a reduced EXMEM reduced to page handling functions 3 and 4 same entry conditions as EXMEM It is SYSGENABLE as it uses SVC 125 and 108 and it does re use its module if invoked and already there More important it checks the buffer address and uses double buffering only when needed This is important when using it in conjunction with a RAMDISK especially when RAMDISK is system drive with most disk accesses being in system buffer loading overlays directory sectors etc I say it is important because double buffering IS time consuming To have a comprehensive package I include ERAMLD CMD Extended RAM Load and Dump to transfer data between banks 1 30 and disk It is parameter driven Typing ERAMLD without parms will display a help screen Your own BANKER CMD should of course be part of such a package I also include SETX CMD which is a replacement for SET180 but with a difference it load at x 2600 and runs in
93. T 225 no snickers and a WD 1003 WAH controller Short of an Out and Out clone it was a pretty good deal besides we use Leading Edges at the agency and I have GOT to flatten that learning curve anyway possible The best fun was buying and installing the HD subsystem all by myself If it wasn t for forums I do not know how I would have learned enough to decide on the equipment let alone find out that I could increase the performance of the Chevy Six like Seagate 50 just by dropping from an interleave of 3 to 2 _ The HD now does quicker transfers at 65ms than our 3 to 1 interleaved ST 251 s at 40ms So it sure was a great 4 month shopping spree ordeal I must have 40000 cubic feet of computer shoppers at me feet here in my office Ironically my copy of THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY and Computer News 80 both arrived the same day as the 286 Kinda made me feel funny Sorta like Jimmy Swaggert caught with his lens cap off TMQ Artwork Fm Bryan Headley We are very curious about your graphics art subscription service the one you subscribe to and use in the Quarterly We have customers wanting icons etc for PageMaker Could you tell me whom how much phone number for these guys We d be happy to refer customers to the guy Also you might want to dabble with a killer package called Arts amp Letters It works in Windows outputs TIFF You got 120 various drawings with the package you can place rotate stick shadows on etc graphics Sin
94. THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY In this issue Getting into computer math Part 2 Multiplication by Roy Soltoff Writing Interactive RATFOR FORTRAN programs by Jane A Layman PRO EnhComp A review by Mark Allen Reed Desktop Publishing and the Model 4 by Lee C Rice Ph D Adding floppy drives by Charles A Ainsworth and A new XL8er interface by Michel Houde A better TERM APP by Roy Soltoff Nothing to do Read TMQ e e Volume IIL ii 10 Fall 1988 TRS 80 Software and Hardware from MISOSYS Inc i PRICE LIST effective October 1 1988 Prices subject to change without notice Product Nomenclature Mod III Model 4 Price S amp H 6 foot M M printer cable same R 06 CMM 19 95 D BEORT F DOORTA sai L 32 200 L 32 210 14 95 CON80Z PRO CON80Z M 30 033 M 31 033 29 95 diskDISK LS diskDISK L 35 211 L 35 212 39 95 DANS F TOME dr cee cas L 35 204 L 35 205 59 95 DSMBLR PRO DUCE M 30 053 M 31 053 34 95 EDAS PRO CREATE M 20 082 M 21 082 74 95 D EnhComp PRO EnhComp M 20 072 M 21 072 99 95 D ge BE a eee ee ee L 32 053 n a 14 95 GO Maintenance n a M 33 100 59 95 F GO System Enhancement n a M 33 200 59 95 F OSORNO arar raiz n a M 33 300 59 95 F Hardware Interface Kit n a M 12 110 29 95 HartFORTH PRO HartFORTH M 20 071 M 21 071 59 95 B Lair of the Dragon same M 55 021 29 95 A II A n a L 50 515 29 95 LDOS 5 1 4 User Ma
95. The real small terminal MISOSYS Products Tidbits THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 61 Volume III ii program DB LF LF lt CLEAR gt lt SHIFT gt lt gt to exit CR NOWAMS DB Can t locate resident PRO WAM functions inhibited CR ENABLD S DB LF COM line disengaged DB PRO WAM enabled for one keystroke only CR WAMS DB WAM ETX LAST EQU IF LAST GT 3000H ERR Memory overflow ENDIF IFLT LAST 3000H DC HIGH SHL 8 256 0 ENDIF END ENTRY The resident module of PRO WAM is a filter program it filters the keyboard device Having a standard DOS 6 module header its resident code starts out as follows JR START DW 5 DB 3 WAM MODDCB DW 5 DW 0 BNKSAV DB 0 START JR C FILTER Filter if GET PUTOUT PUSH IX Chain to next LD IX MODDCB driver filter CHNIO POP IX RET FILTER CALL Go past header Last byte used Module name PUTOUT Get KI char Here s how TERM deactivates PRO WAM Notice that the module only takes over if an GET device function is being requested i e an input request If you don t know that and are interested better consider a copy of The Programmer s Guide to TRSDOS 6 This input request is tested by the JR C FILTER statement If not input the code falls through to the device chaining routine If we examine the relative byte offset at BEGIN we find that an offset to PUTOUT differ
96. a store Data is extracted from this bank when required Superlog however resides and runs in its allocated bank Superlog was designed for use with the standard 128k MISOSYS Products Tidbits THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 62 Volume III ii machine and works fine in those two extra banks but trying to run Superlog from any of the additional banks provided by the XLR8 causes problems I found the inability of Superlog to move to a bank greater that 2 to be a bit limiting now that I had the extra memory also I normally try and keep the lower two banks reserved for DDuty It was my intention to find out if both DDuty and Superlog could be made to run together therefore something had to move At present they both want to use the same banks Superlog appeared to be the easiest to try and move and I decided that was the way to go A brief look at the inner workings of Superlog revealed that Superlog did actually work in the XLR8 banks only the screen I O ended up confused The additional memory of the XLR8 does not support VDU shadowing the switching in of the VDU ram while the XLR8 memory bank is selected however this is possible with the standard 128k and Superlog was designed to make use of this facility Although the XLR8 driver ensures memory bank 0 is always switched in when VDU i o occurs while a XLR8 bank is being accessed this does not resolve the problem of a block move to or from the VDU when the sending or r
97. an NMI as was done on the Model 1 I believe that the Model 4 hardware merely enforces the minimum spec on the width of the reset pulse but does not limit the length Since we re talking about a refresh period of two milliseconds how long you intend to hit the button probably matters very little Fm Shane Dawalt Joe I wonder if it could be memory chip dependent too I have held my RESET button on my pre gate array M4 for 5 seconds without killing the MemDISK image It does go into reset as the screen clears but nothing else occurs until the RESET is released XLR8er Xperiments Fm Daniel L Srebnick I would like to eliminate the need to use FIXBANKS or Rex Basham s HIBANKS in order to free up low memory if this is possible In TMQ V ILi p81 Dick Newman states I recently installed an XLR8er ALPHAI1 FIX allows me to remove FIXBANK On page 83 of the same issue Bill Schaper states that he also uses the AT patches with an XLR8er On the other hand in TMQ V Ilii John Tollini asked you if the AT patches are usable with the XLR8er You replied No In light of the above contradictions I thought that it would be worth trying out the AT patches the revised LS DOS versions with the two byte correction applied with my XLR8er After all saving a couple of hundred bytes of precious low memory can be useful I applied the patches and sysgened a disk with RSHARD6 and the forms filter both in high memory The floppy st
98. an the computer height swing it over to the left rotating it counterclockwise so it comes to rest on its left side on the table close to the left of the computer base Your movement will be restricted by the cables that connect the base to the video system which usually have rubber band s attached to guide them back into place when you reassemble Don t disturb the rubber band s One thing that may hinder you is the lock knobs on the disk drives which may catch on the edges of the drive windows and you may have to wiggle the upper part to get it past them some types of drive may need the knobs in locked position and others in open position From here onward right and left sides mean as viewed from the rear of the computer from which you will be working most of the time At the rear of the open computer you will find occupying most of the back the sheet aluminum RFI radio frequency The Hardware Corner Volume IIL ii interference shield which has to be withdrawn Several screws must be removed from the top and ends usually 6 Then gently swing the top of the shield towards you and lift it away Sometimes there is adhesive tape on the bottom edge which must be separated for removal On some models there may be one or more plugs that have to be disconnected Don t forget to carefully note their locations and orientations and to replace them when reassembling For the benefit of those who are unfamiliar with the inn
99. ances of clean power I suggest you consider a standby system or an UPS The difference between a Standby Power System SPS and an Uninterruptable Power System UPS is that an UPS is always feeding your system with regulated battery driven power whereas the SPS rides the line and switches over to the battery backup within milliseconds of a brownout or blackout The PTI Turbo 2 line of SPS we re carrying switch to backup under 1 millisecond and also have surge protection Most if not all computer power supplies should be able to hold their DC voltages for much longer than a millisecond when the power is cut So a SPS is sufficient for most folks and economical to boot Our pricing on the SPS packages recommended by us are PTI Datashield PC200A 299 S amp H PTI Datashield Turbo 2 300A 469 S amp H PTI Datashield Turbo 2 450A 499 S amp H PTI Datashield Turbo 2 625A 549 S amp H These weigh about 37 pounds each so shipping will be by UPS ground only and only in the 48 United States Shipping will vary between 5 and 18 The PC200A unit is recom mended for floppy based systems the Turbo 2 450A will handle a bigger 286 or 386 class machine I have one 450A unit feeding Brenda s AST Premium 286 40Meg drive and Radio Shack Line Printer V Another handles my AST 386 The Blurb Volume II ii Family Update by Roy Thanks for all the well wishes Brenda and I have received for our newest Soltoff Benjamin H
100. and disk duplication program e Variable and line number cross reference utility for BASIC programs e Many user requested changes additions en hancements have been made e Several changes to Increase user friendliness e Many enhancements to BASIC INCLUDING Line copy and block move with automatic line reference renumbering Search and display variable line numbers and keywords Selective block renumbering High speed load and save Direct access to DOS SVCs List next or previous line s with a single keystroke Single letter abbreviations for Auto Delete Edit and List A documentation update describes all new features and utilities and contains technical information changes and additions Since this is an update to TRSDOS 6 2 all customers are expected to have purchased or received and have in their possession a legitimate copy of the TRSDOS 6 x DOS and documentation To provide support only to legitimate owners all LS DOS 6 3 master disks contain an mdividually encoded customer service ID and serial number This entitles customers to support directly from MISOSYS MISOSYS Inc P O Box 239 Sterling VA 22170 0239 800 MISOSYS or 703 450 4181 TRS 80 and TRSDOS are Registered Trademarks of Tandy Corporation The Tower of Babel Volume 111 ii Technical Corner Getting into computer math by Roy Soltoff Part 2 Binary multiplication Floating point math No I
101. and throw the drives hopelessly and incurably out of adjustment Then you may find that the mounting screws you need have metric threads and are hard to find The length of the screws must not be excessive aS otherwise they can contact and ground live parts inside the drives which will go up in smoke If you are a master mechanic you may just get the fronts of the drives lined up with the original windows in the case but in any event you will have to use cardboard or something else to cover the surplus window space to prevent dust entering dust disks and drives don t go well together And you must The Hardware Corner ls LO Dl as td RE A ll a ane MA Bde ay ye a e mamone e pue cee is ce bee See co eee sete ecm cm ms mem guns o co e ween a Volume MI ii remember to leave enough clearance at the front of the computer to enable the cover to be replaced You may have severe problems leading the flat cables to the rear of the drives due to the extra length of the TEAC drives You may save something by not buying the external case and power supply but end with a patched up job and headaches which more than offset your savings My attitude is unless you are an expert at these things and very adventurous don t do it Another reason for using all external drives and it has saved me money My work requires hardware reliability and I must always have a standby computer to keep going in case one breaks down and spends some time in the
102. anical parts Do not attempt to adjust or align anything unless you re an expert and have suitable equipment and a service manual If you have to change any jumpers on the board grasp them carefully with suitable pointed pliers or tweezers and don t drop them They are small and one dropped especially on a carpet is almost certainly a goner If you were to leave the drives outside the case for any length of time be sure to cover them carefully with a lint free dust cover Dust cigarette smoke and ash and dirt in general are arch enemies of drives and disks Which incidentally might also be a good reason to regularly protect all your hardware with dust covers when not in use for any length of time and another reason to persuade smokers to quit Drive jumpers When 1 installed these drives some years ago 1 received instructions regarding jumper linkages on the drive boards 1 have also noticed on drives purchased by friends that some of the instructions vary from single to double sided drives and from 40 cylinder to 80 cylinder Some drives come with head loading solenoids and others don t In any event each purchase I have seen has come with an instruction booklet or leaflet that clarified things but which may require opening up The Hardware Corner 73 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 Volume IT ii the drives and changing jumpers No problem provided it s done carefully When I first got drives with head l
103. application It enables me to quickly recreate my DIALER file from my CHURCH DATABASE system files I thought that if you thought it profitable you could print it in your MISOSYS Journal 10 By Rev James R Peet 20 7017 S Fairfax Street 30 Littleton CO 80122 40 303 721 9707 50 September 9 1988 60 Creates DIALER DAT file for PRO WAM s DIALER application 70 Need to modify lines 100 110 to suit your file needs 80 CLS 90 Y 3 100 OPEN d 1 famrec00 key 84 110 FIELD 1 3 AS FILL1 8 AS L NAMES 6 AS FILL2 28 AS COMMENTS 30 AS FILL3 8 AS PHONES 1 AS FILL4 120 OPEN d 2 dialer dat 6 130 FIELD 2 64 AS DATA1 64 AS DATA2 64 AS DATA3 64 AS DATA4S 140 Z LOF 1 150 FOR X 1 TO Z STEP 4 160 GET 1 X 170 LSET DATA1 L NAMES PHONES COMMENTS 180 GET 1 X 1 190 LSET DATA1 L NAMES 200 GET 1 X 2 210 LSET DATA1 L NAMES 220 GET X 3 230 LSET DATA1 L NAMES 240 PUT 2 Y Y Y 1 250 NEXT X 260 CLOSE 1 CLOSE 2 270 For explanation of lines 280 330 see page 29 in PRO WAM manual 280 OPEN qd 1 DialeR dat 290 FIELD 1 2 AS FILL1 1 AS COUNTERS 13 AS FILL2 1 AS LRL 1 AS FILL3 1 AS FSTDAT 3 AS FILL4 1 AS KEYLENS 233 AS FILL5 PHONES COMMENTS COMMENTS 4 PHONES 4 PHONES COMMENTS MISOSYS Products Tidbits THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 ey oe Volume IIL ii 300 LSET COUNTERS CHRS Z COUNTER number of rec
104. ards You have now bared the motherboard treat it carefully and with respect all those parts are quite delicate and should be left alone and kept away from unless specifically necessary to work on the board Motherboard repairs can be expensive Now locate the 34 conductor flat control cable that leads to the rear of the two disk drives towards the left side usually quite visible One end will have two connectors plugged in at the rear of the drives Do not confuse this cable with the keyboard cable which goes downward and under the drives to the front of the computer and which does not concern us Depending on the computer model the drive cable will be plugged in at the non drive end in one of two ways a At the upper edge of a vertical board located behind the motherboard typical of III s and some 4 s or b at a header type connector consisting of 34 pins in two rows with the pins at right angles to the motherboard in the lower left hand corner If you have a you will probably need a pair of long nose pliers or hefty tweezers to unplug the cable Make a temporary mark somewhere with soft pencil or pieces of tape to show exactly where the connector is plugged as you will be replacing it with another and it s not too easy to see the location a flashlight is almost a must Unplug the connector it may not come readily so try easing it loose gradually first from one end and then the other several times Pull on the connec
105. are handy when you want to count a variable or function return true if it contains any non zero value if strlen gets s amp amp a An expression like this will return TRUE if both halves generate non zero values but if you replace amp amp with amp the value depends on the specific length of s and value in a Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaola Adam I would guess that there s also something to be said for the code generation The logical OR requires no need for intermediate storage whereas with the bitwise OR there s always the possibility that the resulting value may be needed in the surrounding expression Of course the need for storage could be optimized away given a smart enough compiler if the results aren t used Fm Adam Rubin Thanks for your reply Jim I think I see what s going on So if expl exp2 exp3 will stop at the first true and immediately execute the statement after the if but The Tower of Babel Volume IIL ii if expl exp2 exp3 will execute exp1 exp2 exp3 etc and then determine whether the whole if expression is true or false So if a b 2 c O puts Test n will always increment c and send Test n to standard output whereas if a b 2 ct O puts Test n will only increment c if a b and only display Test n if c had been 2 Hey I think I just figured out how to combine if a b
106. arket Research Finally here s some feedback on our external hard drive mar ket research request I have very little to report over and above what was stated in the last issue I am going forward with the project but must wait until the host adaptor is finalized before making any public announcement Anyone providing a request for information on the proposed package will get a mailed announcement in addition to any posting in TMQ To recap the proposed hard drive package here are the tentative specifications 20 megabyte half height drive Seagate ST225 PC type hard disk controller Western Digital WDXT GEN with on board MS DOS driver amp formatter MISOSYS designed TRS 80 host adaptor Leadman drive case for two half height drives e w 60 watt power supply switchable 115V 230V and fan device drivers for both LDOS model III mode and LS DOS model 4 mode along with archive restore utility and our diskDISK software Our target price 1s still 495 00 We are also planning a hardware clock on the host adaptor as a low cost option The beauty of this configuration is that everything except the host adaptor is re usable in an MS DOS PC environment Thus if you can your TRS 80 you have a 20 Megabyte drive with controller totally reusable in a PC MISOSYS 1s ready to ship the off the shelf components now to those folks looking to acquire a hard drive controller or external case Perhaps you just want to add a 20 Megabyte drive to yo
107. as only displaying 14 lines because it was counting the header line twice That string was originally terminated with an ETX because it was supposed to be 64 characters long like the others That means it must be ETX terminated to avoid a double line feed The subsequent CALL to put the CR was also supposed to go only to a routine which Output the CR to the printer if the PRINT parameter was active As it was the string was only 63 characters and the CR was always output The string was counted as a line and the CR was counted as a line I prefer to fix things with the shortest possible patch Thus the following one byte change will allow DIR to output 15 lines that gives one more line of filespecs SYS6H FIX Patch to LDOS 5 3 DIR command Apply via PATCH SYS6 SYS SYSTEM DOC 1D 21 F0C 1D CD That s all it takes to do the job DOS Subjects bje THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 Volume III ii Non stop scrolling Fm William Chao Roy I am just wondering if you can provide a simple patch for the display of the directory in LDOS 5 3 to scroll instead of paging one screen at a time This paging happens when you list a file on the screen also using LIST filename and I don t like it as much as the LS DOS s scroll feature Fm MISOSYS Inc A simple patch to permit the LDOS 5 3 DIR to scroll How about using the nostop parameter DIR partspec N should do the trick You could also patch the parameter
108. at adding one memory wait state and setting refresh rate to 40 T would lower maximum speed by about 8 see report after discussion The preceding remarks lead us to the initialization part of SYSO which happens to provide a 32 byte patch area at x 2194 and a convenient place to call a patch from x 1e79 x 2147 and x 1e70 in 6 2 That s where we will set CBAR zero CBR warm reboot and set wait states and refresh rate Byte I O and physical disk I O both bring in Bank_0 when called As they use BANK that s all right Now the tasker as the interrupt handler is called also needs Bank_0 but this time without the help of BANK which is too slow must check bank number poll function request check BAR com pute bank switching values etc Surprisingly it is very easy to handle all we have to do is set CBR to 0 making Banks 0 1 2 accessible actual bank O is brought in by the standard routine We must of course save CBR current value That s where our allocation scheme shines as there is only one byte to save Have a look at THE SOURCE Vol 1 p 102 At x 1c0b we find LD HL LBANK LD A HL LD HL 0 then PUSH AF We will instead do LD H A then INO L CBR PUSH HL Later on is the counterpart at x 1c3c The Hardware Corner Volume II ii POP AF LD LBANKS A we will do POP HL OUTO CBR L LD A H LD LBANK A The actual code is a little more intricate as there are more bytes to deal wi
109. bits of the register by one position The bit which falls off the end is caught in a bucket called the carry flag The JR NC MEA2 instruction causes a skip of the ADD instruction following it if the carry flag contained a 0 bit This tracks with our algorithm detailed above The reason why this routine is limited to an 8 bit product is due to the single accumulator A being used to hold the product If you want Roy s Technical Corner Volume 111 ii to code a complete 8x8 multiplication routine it could be done as follows Register E Multiplicand Register A Multiplier Product returned in Register HL MUL8 PUSH BC LD HL 0 LD D H LD B 8 ADD HL HL RLCA JR NC MEA2 ADD HL DE DJNZ MEAL POP BC Save some regs Init product to 0 Zero reg for adding Set loop index Shift product left Shift multiplier left Skip if a 1 bit Add in multiplicand Loop for 8 bits Finished restore regs I have actually used a rotate instruction RLCA to examine the leftmost bit of the multiplicand In this case all I really want to do is examine the bit I am not concerned as to the value remaining in the register provided I keep getting each successive leftmost bit which I am Here s one final variation on this routine Notice that the 16 bit accumulator starts out needing only the right 8 bits the left 8 bits are zero yes I know the right 8 bits start out as zero too but th
110. bjects THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 24 Volume TIT ii finds the file on drive 0 for the INIT and thus needs no global search Make sense Fm Robert G Strickland Roy Your reply suggests that 1 may have not been clear With Ramdisk designated as drive 0 and with all necessary LC files copied to the Ramdisk drive 0 the system still looks to the two floppies to run the compile and assemble process This seems obvious to me 7 in that at the start of the compile process before any writes are made the activity lights on the disk drives come on For example the compile JCL is on Ramdrive 0 yet the system seems to be looking for in on 1 2 before loading it from 0 This is evident in that if there are no disks in 1 2 the lights still come on in sequence Then the compile runs evidently finding the required files on the Ramdisk 0 Is this right Fm MISOSYS Inc You misunderstand me When you are doing a compile the compiler has to create via INIT an output file The DOS will always search all disk drives for an existing file of the name you designate until it finds one If none are found then the DOS will search all drives starting with 0 until it finds a drive which is available for writing In your case the object file was not available so the DOS looks on drive 0 drive 1 then drive 2 I hope you don t think that when the DOS wants to write a file it creates it on drive 0 without looking first on all
111. bles Gone are the complex procedures which used to be necessary to link assembly language with BASIC You ll never have to POKE from a DATA statement again Pro EnhComp also supports user defined functions and com mands and both constructs can span as many lines as necessary Strings can now contain as many as 32 767 charac ters Pro EnhComp includes a new disk file mode that permits direct manipulation of FIELD variables no more LSET and RSET SET RESET and POINT have been restored to BASIC along with the powerful new PAINT PLOT and DRAW commands Pro EnhComp contains a multitude of printer control commands such as PAGELEN LMARGIN RMARGIN and PZONE That last statement is especially useful in business programs that print out columnar reports Programs can now GOTO and GOSUB labelled statements line numbers are no longer necessary Since GOSUB SAVEFILE is much more informative than GOSUB 5100 programs written with Pro EnhComp can be self documenting In addition Pro EnhComp contains a built in sort command that is very flexible Model 4 users can stop lamenting the loss of CMD O Speed Some MISOSYS Quarterly readers have complained that pro grams compiled with Pro EnhComp are slow I have read pub lished comparisons which state that some programs run more slowly under EnhComp than under interpreted BASIC That Surprises me since I ve never noticed that my compiled pro grams were sluggish Then again I bought Enh
112. ce output is TIFF Ventura and PageMaker read without a hassle Very nice Are you still using Word to do the Q Fm MISOSYS Inc The company you want to know about is Dynamic Graphics Inc 6000 N Forest Park Dr Peoria IL 61614 3592 800 255 8800 I subscribe to a service called Clipper They also have other services Clipper runs about 350 year for 12 monthly mailings The service is excellent and quite worthwhile More Market Research feedback Fm L R Boatman Hello Roy Concerning your request for Market Research on a 20 Meg Hard Drive and price as you stated in The Quarterly 495 00 you have my interest and I will look forward to the availability of the system Letters to the Editor Volume IIL ii Letters to the Editor A few months ago I had a problem with the XLR8er and Pro wam You hit the nail on the head with your reply Seems that I failed to install the faster RAM 150ns in banks 1 and 2 of the 128K I now load PRO WAM into Bank 10 PROWAM BANK 10 and have not encountered any further problems The Ram is not available in 150ns in this area Would you please tell me of a third party vendor who handles these chips and has directions for their installation on the Model 4P as the price if known The following is a short narrative on my use of the Model 4 1 have two 1 with XLR8er and 1 with 128K converted Model III I use the machines during three months of the year to do taxes JAN APR The addition of
113. centrated on 5 1 4 A comparison of prices showed me that for a reasonable extra I could use the largest capacity then generally available 720K double sided 80 cylinder 5 1 4 units and that was what I got for all four drives I m very satisfied with the results and the extra for double sided 80 cylinder was very well worth it One always seems to be needing additional disk capacity Would be nice if someone came up with a model 111 4 driver for the 3 1 4 1 4 MB drives Later when I installed XLR8er boards from MISOSYS on my 4D computers I got a bonus in available drive capacity I had four 720K drives of which my system and program disk used one and my data disks three By putting the system and program files in the Ramdisk the XLR8er provides I now have four drives available for data disks Anyone wishing to follow my ideas and install new drives and interested in the newer 3 1 2 size should not fail to read Roy Soltoff s clarification of types and drivers in TMQ IL iv p83 where some uncertainties and confusion were dispelled Caution 1 Technology and equipment designs change constantly and what I found may differ from what you will encounter So my purpose is hopefully to point you in the right direction but the ultimate responsibility for results rests entirely with you so I would advise you to study your own case on its own particular merits and be sure you know exactly what you want to achieve and thoroughly und
114. ces may have Status registers that can be checked but that is entirely device dependent I think it would take smart software the right devices and a specific order of loading the device drivers with the smartest ones loaded last MSDOS shells Fm Shane Dawalt Hardin Quick question Do you know if any books exists on how to write a shell for MSDOS I have an idea and it could be done without using a shell but I believe a shell implementation would be the easiest Do you know if using C for shell writing is acceptable or not I finally got a book on the 80286 for assembly language but I m not DOS Subjects Volume III ii comfortable with assembly on the 80286 yet and besides 1 don t have an assembler yet Suppose 1 could hand assemble and poke the code in DEBUG ARRRGGGGG Fm Michael Stein Shane The best introduction 1 know of to MSDOS internals and the requirements of a shell is to be found in Advanced MSDOS by Ray Duncan published by Microsoft Press Certainly could be written in C Fm H Brothers Shane Any program you can create in EXE or COM format can be a shell Simply use the Shell command in Config Sys and the program will be installed instead of Command Com Ray Duncan s Advanced MS DOS a must have book has a simple shell example Certainly you could write it in C QB assembler Pascal almost anything but have a floppy available to boot from so you can get to Config Sys and remove the
115. ces snap into place If you don t have a vise you may be able to use adjustable mechanic s pliers keeping the jaws as parallel as possible squeezing in various places until you get the same result Then repeat the procedure at the other end of the cable with the other connector Be gentle those connectors are a bit delicate Don t be tempted to join the connector sections by hammering unless you are an expert tool user you ll probably end up with a smashed connector When fitting connectors leave about 1 16 of the cable projecting beyond the connector Getting the connector correctly plugged into the drive There s a right way around to plug into the drives and there s also a wrong way The manual I got with my drives states that a reversed connector can t damage any circuits As you test your new drives keep your finger on the power switch and instantly switch off if the drives grumble or make any strange noises At least that s the way I did it and it worked fine But don t push your luck and switch off instantly at the least symptom of trouble or queer noises reverse the connector and try again Don t make this initial test with a valuable disk in the drive as a reversed connector may erase something Once you have found the correct way around mark the connector e g dab with a felt pen or whiteout fluid so you will be sure of reinserting it correctly after any disconnection If your drives run continuously with
116. closeout price including surface freight worldwide Freight codes A 2 50 B 3 00 C 3 50 D 4 00 E 4 50 F 5 00 G 7 50 H 10 00 All unmarked are 2 00 each Canada Mexico add 1 per order Foreign use US rates times 3 for air shipment Virginia residents add 4 5 sales tax We accept MasterCard and VISA Checks must be drawn on a US bank COD s are cash money order or certified check A FEF AT PA MISOSYS Inc P O Box 239 Sterling VA 22170 0239 703 450 4181 Orders only 800 MISOSYS 800 647 6797 44 eet be a es er e eo OO ns 8 AAAA _ o 424 4 A _ e a 20 DY ere UNA ene A THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Volume IIL ii o Fall 1988 Table of Contents Ibe Br AMAS E ee ee ae 2 New Product Announcements 4 tamuy Update gt dai A a A ea 6 Letters to the Editor ic e A A 7 OS 6 3 available sc a ad a 12 The Reviewer id ee A E a ee a 19 Pro EnhComp A review by Mark Allen Reed 19 DOS Subj yaa das dd es Aa 21 LDOS and Model 3 Information o pn ve aaa 21 International keyboards resolved 0 ee ee ee ewe 22 LS DOS and Model 4 Information 24 Fix for Allwrite s stack usage o 29 Desktop Publishing amp the Mod 4 by Lee C Rice Ph D 31 MS DOS nformation lt o 33 The Tower of Babel sara aa es a a 36 Writing In
117. closing I will say that I very much enjoy the coverage of the XLR8er Board in The MISOSYS Quarterly and will look forward to further coverage on this and other topics Fm MISOSYS Inc I believe that Michel Houde s new software interface will definitely impact your needed low memory reduction in usage The code added to enable the XL8er s added memory banks takes up 121 bytes Using the revised ERAMDISK adds 116 bytes for the page extended memory manager plus 96 bytes for the RAM driver Rex s HIBANKS module at 205 bytes was an improved rewrite of the original FIXBANK module at 246 bytes I don t have room to load RAMDISK with my hard disk driver in either of those cases I d say that Michel s efforts will be useful Letters to the Editor Volume IIL ii Be kind to beginners Fm Rema Lou Brown Dear Roy I must praise you for the usefulness and the increasing quality of your publication The Summer 1988 issue of The MISOSYS Quarterly arrived today I had just finished re reading my four issues of Volume 2 of TMQ The more I learn the more I discover I missed the first time I read these My order is enclosed for the back issues of Vol 1 of TMQ I m not a hacker probably for the same reason Picasso s wife didn t paint Our family life revolves around computers In 1961 we decided food really was a necessity so my husband quit teaching high school math to become a programmer analyst He is now a manager
118. continue in house preparation but under a local system of printing and formatting instead of the VAX system This decision meant purchasing a laser printer of our own and placing it on line to one of our systems We opted for the Hewlett Packard laserjet on the basis of reliability and minimal down time it still excels in these respects and then were faced with the question of what formatter to adopt as the official standard In current use on our own systems were LeScript multiuser license for both TRSDOS and MSDOS versions Word Perfect and a variety of single user licensed formatters for both Model 4s and MSDOS machines LeScript is not a particularly powerful formatter although it remains popular with new users and tests with Word Perfect and several other formatters suggested that their promises fell far short of their performance especially in the laser environment Before indicating why we ended up with Allwrite under TRSDOS I should make a couple of distinctions The first is between desk top publishing and routine academic publishing Desk top software seems to be all the rage right now but its primary claim to fame comes down to the ability to produce short documents with integrated graphics which can be laid out in a screen preview mode This is the sort of thing businesses often need but it is not for everyone Ability to handle graphics and special document layouts was not something we needed and software wh
119. cters when disk I O has to be accomplished The DOS supports its own read write blocked record YO of LRL between 1 256 and does its own blocking deblocking For some reason probably rooted in the failure of the original Model I TRSDOS to support blocked Letters to the Editor Volume IIl ii record I O most folks don t use it Don t change the LRL of a file unless you know why you are doing it If its other than 256 the program which created the file and the one which needs to operate on it most likely needs to utilize that LRL Of course since the program which OPENS a file declares the LRL at open time and the one in the directory is not used for other than reporting the number of records it probably would cause no error to occur if you zapped the directory I haven t the faintest idea what MOVE CTL does or is It is not a file provided with the DOS or any MISOSYS product Sounds like something associated with SuperScripsit That program uses files with an extension of CTL Good programs should have a description of the various file names making up their package Check your SS manual and you will probably find that information The file DOS HLP is not a file which is to be LISTed It is the data file used by the HELP utility For instance the command HELP DOS displays the DOS commands for which help is available Information on the HELP system covers 2 5 pages of my TRSDOS 6 manual You could probably make good use of
120. cture Sometimes a part which is marginal in quality might manage to sneak past inspection and get installed Experience shows that such parts will very probably fail within a few hours of being put to work so the burning in consists of running them under power to weed out any weaklings I value such a service greatly as it can save headaches caused by component failures after the equipment is commissioned I have also found Aerocomp very willing and competent in answering any questions on the phone TEAC drives from Aerocomp were also endorsed in the LSI Column in TMQ ILii p32 left column third paragraph I have used them several years in some extremely intensive work and have never had a single problem not even one input output error Yes I mean that literally Furthermore I am averse to head cleaning disks and extremely allergic to their scratchiness so never use them I am afraid of the heads getting scored which could lead to all sorts of operating problems the heads come with a highly polished finish that obviously needs respect So how did my heads stay clean Probably because 1 use brand name disks manufactured as double sided no brand X or cheapies just the regular Tandy disks for the number of sides and tracks that I use I would guess that they have very good coating which I have never known to peel score or flake which doesn t scratch the heads or leave deposits and which probably has a built in lubricant Avoid us
121. d AIMAG intrinsic functions to go back and forth Fm jeff brenton Mark You might do it as it is usually done in C an array of two reals with functions to operate on the arrays In fact I seem to recall reading a FORTRAN tutorial years ago that said that was the SAFEST way to use COMPLEX numbers in a portable FORTRAN program simply because not every compiler handled them properly and some just didn t as you know Fm Mark Mueller Jim Well it wasn t really a desperation ploy yet but I have a FORTRAN program that the FCC uses to calculate space amp ground loss for AM signals that uses COMPLEX extensively It s not a real big program and should fit nicely in my model 4 Trouble is ICAN T USE IT If you could pass along the info I would be eternally grateful and go dust off my FORTRAN books and get to it And yes lII buy RATFOR for which I have had no pressing need until now grin I m even willing to pay for the info The Tower of Babel THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 40 Volume IIL ii well not TOO much Let me know if we can work something out ok mark tired of doing it the hard way Fm Jim Beard Mark I ll have to work up some stuff and test it before answering Look for COMPLEX FOR and COMPLEX RAT uploads soon Your biggest weapons are that you can look for the COMPLEX statement at the beginning of each subprogram and do globals on the variable names For now lll chance it with a
122. d then there is no difficulty in swapping partitions and you can still open more Pro Wam windows in the next partitions but no further Superlog windows Before returning to the original partition any Pro Wam windows must be closed Once in the old partition close the Pro Wam window and continue where you left off This procedure is a bit makeshift but it can get you into the next partition without closing a Superlog window I am not so sure there are many member who use Superlog and probably even fewer who use Superlog and a XLR8 however I hope the discussion on the stack problem may prove to be informative Should anyone require a patch for Superlog to run in a XLR8 machine please get in touch MISOSYS Products Tidbits Volume III ii The Sorcerers Apprentice Submitted by a NATGUG member Twas in the Sorcerers spell room one dark eve the Sorcerer and I were looking at some spells I was endeavouring to learn much but my brain was slow and my mind agog at the Sorcerers vast library of spells One thing I did recall later alone in my hovel Get ye the spell Prowam said the Sorcerer it is powerful magic indeed The next day I spent much time searching for the magic number of the Wizard Soltoff who lives in a place called MISOSYS where night is day and day is night That evening with trembling hands I reached for the communicator and the magic number I need not have feared so for my lucky talisman
123. did I miss something Fm MISOSYS Inc We were pressed for time in getting that issue together Didn t you read that Apparently you also misread the discussion a la Profile III I printed the request from a customer My response pointed to the impracticality of the job You read in haste Fm Bryan Headley MaxDos 6 3 is a 100 TRSDOS 6 compatible port for the Max 80 Due to incompatibilities with the Model 4 vs Max 80 you might be looking at 95 compatibility Specifically these involve things like the character sets inverse video is handled by a filter playing with banked memory through hardware and reading the keyboard matrix A substantial portion of software works Exceptions are VidText Scripsit Pro and Double Duty for the reasons I outlined above Here s the deal Since we draw on the original 6 3 for utilities BASIC and system overlays before they are patched we have to require for legal reasons that you own a TRSDOS 6 3 this way MISOSYS amp LSI gets paid Send that 6 3 two blank 5 1 4s and a check for 10 to me and T 11 send you a MaxDos you get the TRSDOS 6 3 back natch Pm at Bryan W Headley 1609 Homedale 2008 Fort Worth TX 76112 Letters to the Editor THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 x Ox Volume IILii My New Hardware Fm Theodore Masterton So I could not wait forever My 4p now has a neighbor a Leading Edge D2 with Econo Monitor Zuckerboard monographics Seagate S
124. disk to another Converts TRS80 BASIC to MSDOS or CP M as it copies no need to save in ASCII first Formats supported IBM PC and MS DOS including DOS 1 1 2 0 3 2 Tandy 2000 single and double sided 3 5 and 5 inch CP M from Aardvark to Zorba CoCo format on X T version HyperCress 3 0 PC reads popular MSDOS 1 1 3 2 formats Order SX3PCM1 SX3PCM3 or SX3POMA uu ccscscscsssccccccscenteccsssuscesacnecesse 49 95 HyperCross XT 3 0 reads 90 different CP M and PC formats Order SXSXTMI SX3XTM3 or SX3XTMG osses 89 95 HyperCross XT 3 0 Plus Reads over 220 formats inc CoCo Order SX3X TM 1 SX3XTM3 or SX3XTMA4 enosn 129 95 Specify TRS 80 Model I needs doubler 111 4 4P or MAX 80 Dual model versions e g Mod 3 4 on one disk add 10 extra Other TRS 80 Programs IHYPERZAP 3 2G Our ever popular TRS80 utility for analyzing copying repairing and creating floppy disks of all kinds ooo 49 95 MUL TIDOS 2 1 New for 1988 for 1 or 3 79 64 80 for Mod 4 3 89 Mysterious Adventures Set of 10 for M1 3 or 4 3 complete 49 95 TASMON debug trace disassemble TASM1 TASM3 or TASM4 49 95 TMDD Memory Disk Drive for NewDOS 80 Model 4 users 39 95 XAS68K 68000 Cross Assembler specify Mod 1 3 or 4 49 95 ZEUS Z80 editor Assembler for Model 3 Or 4 casccccccccccccceccccccceeee 74 00 ZIPLOAD fast load ROM image DOS amp RAMDISK on your 4P 29 95 We have more Write or call for complete catalog Hypersoft PO Box 51155 Rale
125. drives TRSDOS and its derivatives are not MS DOS We don t use the concept of a Current directory or current drive where all files are written unless told otherwise Do I make the answer clear now Fm Shane Dawalt Robert When you run a JCL it must compile the JCL first LDOS uses a file called SYSTEM ICL The system will search all drives for SYSTEM JCL on the first execution of any JCL Since you are running a RamDrive most likely there is no SYSTEM JCL on the drive when you first start up your machine Hence DOS looks for SYSTEM JCL first and not finding it creates it on drive 0 in your case the RamDrive If your JCL doesn t need compiled every time execute it like this DO filename The inhibits the JCL compiler from compiling filename JCL Also note that using this syntax inhibits the JCL compiler from searching for and creating SYSTEM JCL How do you know if you don t need to compile it If your JCL has any lines beginning with then it MUST be compiled Similarly if parameters are entered on the DO command line it MUST be compiled Invoking programs from BASIC Fm Dave Spiceland Is it possible to ran a CMD program in BASIC I know some LIB commands can be run by SYSTEM TOF for example But is it possible to run a DOS Subjects Volume IIL ii program which prints something on the computer and then return to BASIC Fm Shane Dawalt Dave I strongly doubt it If I remember my M4 BASIC co
126. e ll be five months now in two more days so you know when I am writing this Benj as Stefanie calls him has recently started moving around a bit while on the floor He s not quite crawling yet but he is turning over and rolling So the pick up your toys from the floor lectures to Stacey and Stefanie have begun Benjamin s on the move It s difficult to acknowledge just how lucky we ve been with him sleeping through the night We have not had problems with colic like some of our friends have had Benjamin is just a happy baby He goes to sleep happy he wakes up happy and he s mostly happy during the day Benjamin does like being held to the point that either Brenda or I have had to hold him during dinner time But now that he s getting some mobility and his world is expanding that doesn t seem like a requirement anymore He s even noticing the TV The only negative aspect of his appearance on the scene has been a considerable amount of spitting up He s been gaining weight and hasn t been sick so our pediatrician finds nothing alarming He does go through a bunch of cloths every day Here we use cloth diapers as cloths and the Huggies are for the bottom The alarm now goes off at 6 00 am but we are not always up then it s just too early Stacey started kindergarden in September and has really gotten into the swing of things She goes five days a week for a morning session Based on some of the thi
127. e CMD files you ll never want to go back to the interpreter Of course Pro EnhComp isn t perfect The CMD files it creates are often slow by compiled standards Also the CED editor supplied with the Pro EnhComp package contains a few quirks that irritated me when I used it Overall however Pro EnhComp s many good points far outweigh its few bad ones I would recommend Pro EnhComp for any Model 4 user who i is serious about programming in BASIC I reviewed Pro EnhComp version 2 6 on my 128K TRS 80 Model 4D MISOSYS also sells a Model I II version of EnhComp Since it uses the same instruction manual as the version 1 used 1 think almost everything 1 write about Pro EnhComp will apply to the Model TAH version as well The Programs The Pro EnhComp system consists of four programs and a support file CED CMD is the tokenizing text editor used to mA Pro EnhComp programs It is a versatile line editor with a massive text buffer and a full array of editing and file maintenance commands With CED you can evaluate integer expressions The Reviewer 219 2 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 Volume IIL ii such as 1234 2345 add or remove BASIC line numbers from program lines copy or move lines within the program suppress the display of BASIC line numbers list program lines to the screen or printer insert and delete program lines renumber all or part of the program display a directory of any disk drive display
128. e Dawalt Les Thanks for the reply Some bird told me that evidently wanting to confuse me I checked with the supplied grep program which took me a while to choke down the syntax and couldn t find any other STDIN defines anywhere I placed some in the STDIO header so if I need them later on I can use them As for freopen stream I O is buffered My application which dumps initialization info to the printer must not be buffered If I used block I O with the handles it is not buffered correct If the user wants to direct output to the printer a printer setup string is sent but the string MUST be output WITHOUT buffering This buffering business is what s getting in the way Fm Les Mikesell Shane Under unix using the stdio buffered file routines will often give a 10x speedup by reducing system calls With DOS it is not nearly so dramatic so you might want to work with the unbuffered routines However you can simply call fflush fp whenever necessary to flush the buffer to the device or use setvbuf to unbuffer the stdio routines If you are using the same fp to initialize a printer as the one used to send data I don t see why buffering should hurt If you send a form feed you would need to flush the buffer to make it happen though Fm Shane Dawalt Les Here s the deal so I you don t keep hearing bits and pieces from me My program accepts filenames from the command line and switches These files are open
129. e MS DOS EXEC function which Command Com uses and optionally sends a new environment to the child process DOS Subjects 35 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 Volume IM ii TRS 80 Software from Hypersoft NEW PC Three TRS 80 Model HI Emulator PC Threeis a new program from Hypersoft that lets you run LDOS 5 1 5 3 TRSDOS 1 3 NEWDOS 80 V2 DOS Plus 3 5 amp MukiDOS on a PC XT AT or similar machine PC Three emulates a TRS 80 Model III with its Z80 Microprocessor and 64K of memory It supports the printer and serial ports and most of the functions of the floppy disk controller To use it you must be the legal owner of a TRS 80 Model 111 DOS and either a copy of the MODELA III file on TRSDOS 6 2 or _ a working TRS 80 Model III or 4 Runs on PC XT AT amp compatibles and laptops with at least 384K of memory ONLY emulates TRS 80 Model III Comes with a special version of PCXZ totransfer your disks to MSDOS Depending on the type of drives on your PC you may need access to a working TRS80 Price Includes I free Upgrade Order APC3 sccscssccrscesccccesceers 109 95 Call our support number after 6 P M for special price for PC4 PCXZ owners Run Model 4 Software on a PC with PC Four Now you can run your favorite TRS 80 Model 4 programs ona PC PC Four is a program that makes your PC or Compatible behave like a 128K TRS 80 Model 4 complete with operating system Z80 microprocessor that can run many true Model 4
130. e assembler goes away before absolute addresses are determined therefore you need the relative address map produced by the assembler This should give you the addresses of code and variables relative to the beginning of the code or the entry point s The linker will determine the absolute loading addresses use the M filespec option to write a loader map to a disk file This will give you the absolute addresses of the entry point s of your code and you can then use the assembly listing of relative addresses to find the absolute addresses of all the variables and the code Fm Shane Dawalt Well I tried that It was not what I intended to see All it gives is the absolute addresses of the CALLs functions what have you I was intending on seeing more in the line of all labels used within the program with MISOSYS Products Tidbits Volume IT ii absolute addresses Not EQUates just labels used within the program Any ideas on this Ya know it s kinda hard to go from absolute assembly operation which tells all to relocatable assembly operation which give hints Fm Les Mikesell Shane The linker map gives you the address of all the symbols it knows about which are those that have been declared public Thus if you want an address to show up in the map just put a label there and declare it as public or is it global in mras If you want to have an absolute listing to help you step around with a debugger just chang
131. e door after you go outside things my dad had to constantly remind me of And how often do I have to remind them to brush your teeth Just wait until 1 get to the years where they start telling me Dad you don t know anything Fm Mark Allen Reed Dear Mr and Mrs Soltoff Congratulations on the birth of your son 1 once read that miracles wouldn t be miracles if they happened every day but children are being born somewhere on the planet every minute and that doesn t make birth any less miraculous I m sure that all three of your children will continue to bring you happiness and joy in the coming years I just received The MISOSYS Quarterly volume IILi as al you did an excellent job On page 18 Carol Welcomb described some problems she has been having with OKIDATA about her Okimate 10 printer Since her problems seemed similar to the ones I have experienced in the past see Letters to the Editor 15 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 Volume IIl ii The MISOSYS Quarterly volume Il iii page 79 I wrote to her with some suggestions and explanations I am enclosing a copy of the letter you may want to publish it if you feel it would help some of your other readers out of similar predicaments Everyone in volume Illi is talking about your Required Reading flyer and I m a little puzzled as to why I didn t receive it I m a MISOSYS Quarterly subscriber and a regular customer The only reason 1 can come up w
132. e drive s to an expert shop for realignment probably Aerocomp who supplied them The Hardware Corner THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 74 Volume III ii As I said before my system is homespun and I claim no particular accuracy for it as an alignment check 1 simply regard it as advance warning of misalignment There may be other faults in a drive apart from alignment that may cause input output errors However drive alignment is very important Another important feature is drive rotational speed In the interchange of data between computer and floppies there are conditions which demand that the drive rotate at the standardized speed of 300 RPM within narrow tolerances Drives maintain their speeds in various ways Some allow adjustment within certain limits others have systems that monitor and adjust their own speed internally in the latter speed cannot be adjusted One problem that an accurate drive speed causes is that at times the drives seem to fall asleep and turn with the light on when nothing is happening due to synchronization between system interrupts and drive rotation Before getting my TEAC drives while I was using the original computer drives I never noticed such a thing perhaps because they were off speed But when the TEAC s were installed falling asleep became immediately evident There are two things one can do Either live with it or fiddle with the drives to avoid it Personally my attitud
133. e first ADD can load them with 1 s Each time through the loop the accumulator can use at most one additional bit We can take advantage of this fact and have the leftmost 8 bits hold the multiplier Then the left shift of the product register not only shifts the product one bit position it shifts the multiplier as well Register E Multiplicand Register A Multiplier Product returned in Register HL MUL8 PUSH C Save some regs LD iA Set H multiplier LD x0 Init product to 0 LD L Zero reg for adding LD 8 Set loop index HL Shift multiplicand product left Skip if a 1 bit Add in multiplicand Loop for 8 bits Finished restore regs f ADD L JR NC MEA2 HL DE DJNZ MEA1 POP BC RET As the multiplicand is shifted out of the high order 8 bits of the product accumulator the partial product is shifted in That saves the processing time for one rotate instruction Let s step through this routine showing the results of the register operations Roy s Technical Corner THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 49 Volume 111 ii 00000101 00000000 HL 00000000 00001101 DE After 5 iterations 10100000 00000000 HL 00000000 00001101 DE After 6 iterations 01000000 00000000 HL 00000000 00001101 DE 01000000 00001101 HL After 7 iterations 10000000 00011010 HL 00000000 00001101 DE After 8 iterations 00000000 00110100 HL 00000000 00001101 DE 00000000 01000001 HL The r
134. e function wants the default int type Testing the implicit value of an expression with a logical operator is the same as comparing with the constant zero so it will work even if the expression returns some other data type Fm Jim Beard Hardin Only C has the distinct and separate functions of the bitwise and logical operators to my knowledge Perhaps Modula 2 does but I would be surprised if ADA did The Tower of Babel THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 44 Volume I i Fm Jim Beard Roy Fail save logical operators and expressions are available in all languages I know about except BASIC Large mainframes use ones complement notation so that a bit for bit not false is 0 In micros and minicomputers not false is 1 Languages which do not distinguish between bit by bit operators and logical operators have a keyword for FALSE except for BASIC Fm H Brothers Jim It s not too difficult to implement FALSE and TRUE in Basic however In interpreted Basic my programs often begin 10 DEFINT A Z 20 FALSE 1 0 30 TRUE NOT FALSE In QuickBasic it s a little neater to used defined constants DEFINT A Z CONST FALSE 0 CONST TRUE NOT FALSE I suppose one could argue that using TRUE and FALSE in Basic slows down program execution slightly but I think that is far outweighed by the clearer meaning of the program And besides if execution speed is that important Basic is probably not the
135. e is to let sleeping dogs lie so I left things as they were Those wishing to change drive speed should be very sure of what they re doing provide themselves with means for measuring the speed accurately and be certain that the drive is not the self regulating type which cannot be adjusted for speed They should not overdo adjustments lest they jump out of the frying pan sleeping drives into the fire I O errors TRSDOS 6 2 and LS DOS 6 3 as well as LDOS 5 3 all have an operating system command to overcome the problem of floppy drives aligned to exactly 300 RPM That s the SYSTEM SMOOTH library command What that command does is force the DOS to disable CPU interrupts sooner than would otherwise occur in the floppy disk driver The side effect is that the communications driver being interrupt driven on received characters will tend to lose characters occasionally even at 300 baud during a COMM session with the dump to disk parameter on If you use COMM and want to concurrently write to disk during receipt of characters from the communications line you will have to invoke SYSTEM SMOOTH OFF during the communication s session editor Drive speed can be checked with software available on the market I have Howe s System Diagnostic and there may be others In several years I have used my TEAC drives there has never been any visible deviation from the original of exactly 300 RPM The Hardware Corner Volume IIL ii
136. e it to ASEG and add an ORG to where you want it You can change it back later if you want This works best if you can INCLUDE all your modules into one assembly but it should be possible to ASEG any single module and still have the linker resolve other modules to it Keep in mind that the purpose of a relocating linker is to connect modules that may have been created by different people and may contain identical labels internally Only the labels declared public need to be seen by the linker and known by the person working on the other pieces Fm Jim Beard Shane When you use a relocatable intermediate stage you drop back to DOS after the REL file is written without forming the absolute addresses There is nothing in the REL file that keeps the information on locations of the program labels The LST file will have them as relative addresses The loader keeps a table of all global addresses which it uses to link modules and search libraries This table is available as the loader map Using this to find program globals such as entry points can give you the base address first byte of the program The sum of the relative address and an offset address gives you the absolute address of the label Lots of calculators nowadays give you the ability to do hex arithmetic The Casio CM 100 does it and lots more need no batteries runs on light and costs about 10 Or you can invoke BASIC and do it at the keyboard Fm Shane Dawalt Les The
137. e name type and length LB handles up to 65534 records each can contain up to 1024 characters LB supports up to 64 fields per record fields may be up to 254 characters long There are seven types of data fields available alpha numeric right justified literal dollar float and calculated add sub mul and div any of which may be a Protected Field so that its data will not be displayed unless the proper Password is entered You next establish a Screen and you are ready to begin entering datal You may view or edit any record at any time Find information quickly You can even create an index to your data so any record can be accessed within seconds Simply define a print format screen and LB will print records according to your specifications 10 different formats can be created You can print with headers footers date time page numbering totals and sub totals if desired mailing labels format and even form letters You select what records get printed and can use an index for printing in sorted order as well great for organizing your report For automating your processing LB can be run in an automatic mode frequently used procedures such as selecting sorting and printing can be saved for future use LB requires a minimum of two floppy disk drives and 128K of RAM or hard disk 64K and one floppy disk drive MISOSYS Products Tidbits THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 50 Volume IIL ii LB Page Skips Fm
138. e original received with this Computer However Jack only touches on some material because it is rather complicated Volumes ILiv and IILiv of The MISOSYS Quarterly have been received and I have been pleased with what I have seen so far What does MISOSYS stand for However I have noticed that most of the notes seem to be by and for people who have considerable experience with programming which is out of my league Nevertheless I remember when I first started learning how to bowl I found that if I played with more experienced Bowlers and even Scratch Bowlers when they would deign to play with me I learned to play a better brand of Bowling So maybe I will learn something with your help I notice that most if not all of the LRL entries as seen in the Directory when you have an LSDOS63L System Disk in Drive 0 and are at LS DOS Ready and type DIR S LAID are 256 a Why not 255 or 257 I have seen some reading 64 or 1 and wondered whether I should change them b What happens if you do change them to 256 for example c Is it possible that some mistake in operation would change them d Does this reserve a space of 256 bytes for this file I have noticed that with an LSDOS63L SYSTEM disk in Drive 0 if you are at LS DOS Ready and you type LIST MOVE CTL or any entry which ends in CTL you will see the contents of that file What should appear in Move Ctl what is it supposed to do Mine seems to have picked up the tag c
139. e report To make matters worse the data is stored as binary so that BASIC programs can not access it I have converted most of my applications to LB and am very pleased with the results and with the increased power of Little Brother The following procedure outlines the methods which I used Print FILE data using REPORT It is important to use REPORT since this is the only way to get data out of FILE with a fixed length for each field Before starting REPORT it is also a good idea to add a 1 character field at the end of the each record in FILE using FILE s MISOSYS Products Tidbits 51 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 Volume III ii DESIGN FILE CHANGE DESIGN commands This field should be populated with a or other convenient character The field is then printed at the end of each report to force REPORT to make all the lines the same length Otherwise REPORT truncates the report line length after the last Character printed from each record Once in REPORT use the HEADINGS command to adjust any headings which might be longer that the data contained in the corresponding fields Establish a report with the PRE DEFINE REPORT command that dumps all of the data fields in sequential order REPORT sorts on columns assigned as 1 and 2 If no sort is wanted use only columns 3 16 in the report definition Using REPORT s PRINT a REPORT command specify the report name just defined the output to a file eg OLDDATA
140. e the trimmer out for a negative temperature coefficient type Now the difficult part getting at that trimmer with the unit running You will need to have the case off and the pan that holds the main logic board on screwed and ready to drop Boot up a disk and very gingerly pull the power from the drives and remove the drive cable from the logic board watch your fingers near the fan blades Now with the FDC cable loose you can swing down the logic board pan assuming you already have the unit resting on its side opposite the drives and you are ready to make the adjustment Model III Power S upply Fm Jeff Hunsinger Can anyone give me info on the Model Iii Power supply I know that it supplies 12 12 and 5 volts but at what amperage Could 1 use an IBM style supply without damaging my 111 Em Joe Kyle DiPietropaola Jeff The Model 3 uses two Astec style 38 watt power supplies I believe that the specs go 05v 2 5A 12v 2 0A 12v 0 24 The Hardware Corner Volume IIL ii for each supply 1 may have the amperages for 5 and 12 reversed but that really doesn t matter much for what we re considering here Almost any IBM power supply will more than cover these needs though the original 63 watt IBM PC supply might be a bit light Of course you ll have to figure out how to shoehorn the thing in there or extend the cabling so you can mount it outboard Make sure that you run the whole shebang on the new supply don t
141. eceiving area is in the XLR8 bank For instance if Superlog is running in say bank 4 and wanted to sent a string to the VDU Superlog would simply point to the string in its own memory bank 4 and request the display supervisory call SVC DSPLY The operating system will then deal with the request but first the XLR8 driver will switch in bank O and in doing so switch out the string to be displayed The SVC has been given a pointer which now points to an area in bank 0 which will probably contain rubbish and that what gets displayed however once the SVC is finished control will very correctly be passed back to Superlog in bank 4 It was not to difficult to solve that little problem It was just a matter of transferring any message strings to be passed to the VDU into a work area in low memory first Surprisingly that was all that was required to get Superlog to run in banks greater than 2 There is a limit though without major surgery Superlog will only work upto bank 7 I considered that to be sufficient and left it at that The purpose of this whole exercise was to get Superlog to work with Pro Wam and DDuty and that is where the problem started Solving the problem once it was found was easy but finding it first was a long and tedious task I nearly gave up a couple of times but curiosity got the better of me Using Superlog and Pro Wam together the first time proved to be a disaster Going into Superlog and then into Pro Wam
142. eck it and correct it is a competent technician equipped with brains full test data an oscilloscope and a precision test disk created in a lab For my purposes I created the following homespun setup solely as a first alert to possible misalignment not for curing it When I installed my set of four new drives and while they were still brand new and presumably perfectly aligned I formatted a disk and wrote to it an assortment of files I copied several files to it in the lower numbered tracks the Outer ones Then I used CREATE to install a dummy file and fill blank tracks so that I could next copy a number of other files to somewhere around the center of the disk Again CREATE and a number of files on an inner portion high numbered tracks of the disk Then I REMOVEd those CREATEd dummy files leaving me with a disk with an assortment of files at the periphery center and interior of the disk where alignment is usually checked Then I made a number of tests with that disk for file readability in all my drives which as would be expected from new and properly aligned drives were completely successful That became my alignment checking disk which I filed away for future use When I wish to test my drives for alignment about once or twice a year I use it to test for readability in all drives assisted by RDTEST CMD part of the MISOSYS LS Utility Disk It hasn t happened yet but if ever I were to get readability problems I d send th
143. ed and redirected to stdin A switch can inhibit this redirection and allow input from stdin e g for piping The Tower of Babel Volume IIL ii The program redirects stdout to the output device The default is PRN A switch will allow this redirection to go to a file or to another device Another switch inhibit redirection and allow stdout to flow normally e g for piping The problem is what if I dump text to the PRN device and stdin detects EOF Stdout may still have some output buffered but it doesn t appear on the printer This appears as though the file being printed is incorrect when in reality the rest of the data is still setting in the RAM for no good reason When the output is redirected to another device or file everything is closed properly and of course the buffer is dumped to the printer But it is not a good feeling to see only part of the output on the printer and seeing the interactive prompt pop up on the screen which indicates command line processing has concluded I knew about fflush but thought it weird to be working with handles then call a stream type function I expected a function for use with handles I didn t know you could change the buffering modes I found them in the reference book Thanks for the hint Fm Les Mikesell Shane If you have the file device names why bother redirecting stdin stdout Just open your own files and handle them whichever way you like Just remember that sing
144. ere must be limits to the stack so its really up to the application program Each program Pro Wam and Superlog work fine on their own yet they were designed to be used while other programs are running So where does the responsibility lie I will leave the question there As I was already digging around in Superlog and there appeared to be plenty of space I found it was the easiest to take care of the stack problem within Superlog Superlog and Pro Wam can now work happily together without any disasters It is also possible to have DDuty Superlog and Pro Wam working together however this requires a more cautious approach It is possible to use both DDuty and Superlog on their own but only if the Superlog driver is installed in low memory and only if a Superlog window is opened and close in the same Dduty partition without changing a partition Any attempt to change a Dduty partition with a Superlog window open will cause a problem To be able to change partitions with open windows would require some serious modification to Dduty I am not sure it is worth the effort DDuty and Superlog will nevertheless work very well together if Pro Wam is used as a stepping stone but again only if Superlog driver is in low memory What it really comes down to is that if you do need to change partitions and leave a Superlog window open you must pass control to Pro Wam first In other words open a Pro Wam window inside of a Superlog window an
145. error CLEAR also clears the variable definitions from memory Does the program do any weird pokes into RAM Fm Michael Rubio Ah Finally I get to help someone out The first question Steve on the for next looping and you get a next without for is caused by the If statement Take line 30 and make it a part of line 20 using else If I lt 21 then next else next And the duplicate definition usually means that a variable was DIM d twice Since basic sets aside the memory for that variable it can t adjust it at anytime unless there has been a clear statement But the clear statement is not always in order say you need only to erase one variable then use DIM A 100 ERASE A DIM A 200 for example Fm Steve Brewster Shane This is the first time I have run into this error message if the program is run only once all is well but when execution fail from an error typing RUN gives this error I do not see any duplicate code in the program and DOS Subjects THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 26 Volume III ii it does not use any pokes I will try typing clear and let you know Fm Shane Dawalt Actually Michael making line 30 part of line 20 won t work cause you ll have THEN NEXT ELSE NEXT 40 PRINT done This will still give an error only this time it will be a NEXT without FOR error in line 20 In BASIC 1 1 1 or 1 1 0 you cannot have multiple NEXTs linked to a single FOR You can only have one NEXT
146. erstand how to do it Carefully read any instructions provided with the drives and ask your supplier to clarify anything you don t understand That s much cheaper than blowing something for not having read or understood the instructions 2 Most suppliers ship floppy drives with a cardboard insert where the disk normally goes This keeps the mechanism and heads from thrashing during handling In double sided drives it also keeps the heads from knocking together with possible damage if the drive were to be jolted Keep this cardboard in place as much as possible until the drives are in working position but do not forget to remove it before you apply power to the drives Supplier and brand I happen to favor a specific brand of drives That doesn t mean there are no other good brands it s just that I have had very good experience with it and it s what I m familiar with I will be covering the use of half height TEAC 5 1 4 2x80 floppy drives from Aerocomp which I have used exclusively and which I have recommended to friends who have used them to their entire satisfaction I have been told Aerocomp burns them in for a number of hours and also gives them a thorough check for adjustment and performance For The Hardware Corner Volume III ii newcomers to the game who don t know what burning in means Electronic components such as resistors capacitors diodes rectifiers chips and so on are tested during manufa
147. es of WORD and a host of other MSDOS software as well as personal copies of Allwrite for both LDOS and TRSDOS6 I still do 90 of my laser printing using Allwrite from the Model 4 It s fast it s efficient and it s easy and that is about the best thing that can be said for any text formatter regardless of DOS or hardware My wish list for the future includes an 80386 system with an 80meg hard drive 20mgz CPU and XENIX Then and only then I ll consider WYSIWYG formatters seriously The 8088 just doesn t have the guts and MSDOS is a step backward from LDOS TRSDOS hardly a step forward For more information on Allwrite or on FONTASY for MSDOS contact PRO SOFT at P O Box 560 North Hollywood CA 91603 For more information on EROFF write to Elan Computer Group Inc 410 Cambridge Avenue Suite A Palo Alto CA 94306 I can be reached at Marquette University Dept of Philosophy Milwaukee Wisconsin 53233 or via BITNET to 6802ricel at MUCSD MSDOS MS DOS Modems amp interrupts Fm Shane Dawalt I had a rather nasty problem when I installed my mouse LOGITECH bus mouse My modem was on COM2 and COMI is reserved for my external communication link Hence I needed COM3 or COM4 The mouse s board supports all the com channels so I placed it in COM3 The mouse worked fine as did the modem Unfortunately I couldn t read a single character from COM1 After talking with the Zenith repair they told me that there is
148. ests the high order bit of the character being moved If you don t want that test to eliminate all extended characters change the code to NOP followed by CP A This leaves the Z flag set for the proper handling as if the character to be moved was not an extended character The patch would be D12 CE 00 BF F12 CE CB 7F The downside of this is that the forms facility within the CARDX application will no longer be able to protect any fields although you will be able to utilize the reverse video DOS Subjects Volume 11 ii Model 4 LS DOS Programs with LIB names Em Ralf Folkerts Roy I have a little problem with my LS DOS 6 3 I m just upgrading my Mark IV Pro PaDS to a 1 3 Version that supports dating to 1999 I ve extracted the members from the PDS CMD file and add 13 to the filespec when I assemble the 1 3 Versions DIR13 CMD That worked fine with BUILD and DIR but when I ve tried that with APPEND the DOS always executes it s append LIBrary command I can even add CMD 1 to the APPEND13 it doesn t work It s not too bad I ve renamed it to APP13 CMD but I d like to know if there is a patch to prevent this I ve tried that with TRSDOS 6 2 and LS DOS 6 3D too same result I hope you have a tip Fm MISOSYS Inc No patch needed Just a little reading of the manual but I doubt that Tandy put it in theirs If you want to execute a program that has the same name as a DOS
149. esult in HL agrees with the previous result It will also work correctly under the worst case situation with both the multiplicand and the multiplier equal to 11111111B 11111111 00000000 HL 00000000 11111111 DE After 1 iterations 11111110 00000000 HL 00000000 11111111 DE 11111110 11111111 HL After 2 iterations 11111101 11111110 HL 00000000 11111111 DE 11111110 11111101 HL After 3 iterations 11111101 11111010 HL 00000000 11111111 DE 11111110 11111001 HL After 4 iterations 11111101 11110010 HL 00000000 11111111 DE 11111110 11110001 HL After 5 iterations 11111101 11100010 HL 00000000 11111111 DE 11111110 11100001 HL After 6 iterations 11111101 10100010 HL 00000000 11111111 DE 11111110 10100001 HL After 7 iterations 11111101 10000010 HL 00000000 11111111 DE 11111110 10000001 HL After 8 iterations 11111101 00000010 HL 00000000 11111111 DE 11111110 00000001 HL Roy s Technical Corner Volume IILii MISOSYS Products Tidbits LB Data Manager Little Brother M4 L 50 510 LB is a flat filo data management system where ease of use is its primary goal you don t need to program anything or remember complicated command sequences to manage data Even for the most complex data management needs LB produces results quickly EVERY function in LB is menu driven and comes with complete on line HELP information To set up a data base you just define the record layout For each field enter a descriptiv
150. et you get to d DOS prompt You know the letter C followed by a greater than sign You ve never seen that Look do you have a system administrator at your site Oh he s on vacation until a week from Monday Well look unless you can get to the DOS prompt I m afraid I can t help you because I need to know which version you are using No it doesn t say in the documentation only on the disk What happens when you press F10 Oh the screen blanks and then the program starts over Well see if you can find someone to help you get a DOS prompt and then give me a call back will you Fm Shane Dawalt Wouldn t it be so much easier Joe to simply increment the version number when something is changed It just seems dumb to put a number into a package which is suppose to represent it s version then not use that version number unless it is absolutely necessary Are they trying to hide the fact their software DOES change a lot I recall a big todo over on the Borland Programming B forum BPROGB when Turbo C 1 5 was released Nobody could understand why Borland jumped from version 1 0 to 1 5 Borland sited the reasons for this most importantly every time bugs were repaired during in house testing they would simply update the version number not the file date This seems as it should be Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo Shane The upgrade cost to WordPerfect 5 0 was the same whether you had 4 0 three years old 4 1 or 4 2 and an
151. eyboard prompts ask for file names Use your operating system s syntax for specifying them the LRL of the data file for LS DOS users and the number of variables in the data set The program makes use of a formatted Map File which contains the FORMAT statement of the data file and labels for each of the variables in the set Additional information about this file is contained in a comment block at the beginning of the source code The FORMAT statement and file names are read into byte arrays labels are read into a double precision array To OPEN a given file the array containing the file name is specified in the CALL OPEN statement in place of the file name itself E g CALL OPEN 6 OUTFIL O The name of the array is NOT enclosed in single quotes You want the FORTRAN The Tower of Babel 37 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 Volume III ii compiler to interpret it as a variable or variable location NOT as a literal Similarly the FORMAT statement is stored in the first record of the Map File minus the syntax provided for the compiler s information the word FORMAT and a statement label The FORMAT statement itself consists of field specifications which begin and end with parentheses When you want FORTRAN to use the FORMAT statement stored in the DESCRIP program in the FMT byte array the name of the array in which the format is stored is used in the READ or WRITE statement in place of the statement
152. fferent production environments The first was not produced with the benefit of modern structured design techniques and the latest in software engineering concepts applied throughout the entire development process while the second one was For the first product an average of some number of bugs per thousand lines of code were found during the final testing stages For the second an order of magnitude fewer bugs ere found Which is the higher quality product Which is likely to have more bugs left How many bugs do 1 need to remove from the lower quality product to raise it to the same quality level as the other The metrics of software quality assurance are a whole nother issue Fm Hardin Brothers Well Shane I generally agree but can see some problems Would you want to pay even a nominal fee for monthly upgrades if your present version did everything you ever asked of it Or bi weekly upgrades Or should they keep all minor bug fixes in house for 6 months because most of their users will never find them necessary I would like to see all companies publish a list of known bugs and provide upgrades for a nominal fee when the user felt he she needed it But I only know of one company that even claims to provide a semi public bug list that is up to date I m talking about MS DOS products here Roy is certainly an exception Others seem to take the tact that they should stonewall all bug reports until they have a new version to re
153. for Unisys nee Sperry He our two sons and one of our daughters in law work in the JSC NASA environment They converse in Basic Cobal Fortran Pascal and now Ada As a former high school English teacher I wish they were as fluent in English My first computer was the TRS 80 III My first applications were Radio Shack s Scripsit Time Manager and Project Manager Tandy exchanged my Mod III for a Mod 4 1069 and I entered a new world Yes you read that right I have 128K RAM two SSDD 5 1 4 floppies a 10 meg hard disk from Hard Drive Specialists and an Epson RX 80 printer I divided my HD into 4 partitions 3 LS DOS 6 3 and 1 LDOS 5 3 I added two exterior DSDD floppy drives last week I did try to learn how to use and how to maintain my computer at my local RS Computer Center RS offered some business training courses Profile 4 Visicalc etc but these seemed designed to sell additional applications not to teach me how to use those I already owned I could have taken computer courses at our local university or local junior colleges but I did not want to become a technician or a language specialist I had to opt for self education with some coaching from the family After I discovered its existence I subscribed to TRS 80 When Tandy let it go belly up it passed me to Micro 80 I dropped that when it became a tub thumper for RS s MS DOS machines and a vehicle to expound Tandy corporate policy Thank you for creating The MIS
154. for one FOR This was valid in Model TI BASIC ROM and TRSDOS1 3 It is not valid for BASIC 1 1 1 I recall when I first found this out Twas a painfully long program ported from TRSDOS1 3 to M4 I quickly threw the program away as it had FOR NEXT loops written everywhere Fm Michael Rubio Shane That s interesting it works on my system 6 2 Model 4 That is the solution that I found when I ran into the same problem Fm Shane Dawalt Michael I ve tried em both and I get NEXT without FOR on BASIC 1 1 and 1 1 1 TPH reread your reply but I m 95 sure I entered it correctly Here s what I entered as a test program for this illusive critter 10 FOR T 1 TO 100 20 IF T lt 50 THEN NEXT 30 NEXT This generates a NEXT without FOR in 30 as I expected Now change line 20 to be 20 IF T lt 50 THEN NEXT ELSE NEXT Delete line 30 and RUN This generates a NEXT without FOR in 20 as I expected This was run under BASICG 1 1 0 I have purged all prior 6 3 releases except BASICG I think when the IF construct fails BASIC pops the first NEXT it comes to from the stack then when it reaches the second NEXT there is no other NEXT entry on the stack to be popped The interpreter screams at the programmer for this Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaola Actually Steve the difference is in the BASICs the DOS doesn t know or care from FOR NEXT loops Anyway you have quite a few replies DOS Subjects a ee tl PP ol ee PP S E xP ea e
155. free movement if your premises have a ground connection as many do perhaps the handiest grounding point will be the metal screw that holds your power outlet faceplate on If you don t have a grounded system or if you are not sure continue that grounding hookup wire to the nearest water faucet not a gas fitting In this paragraph and the next right and left side mean when facing the front of the computer Turn the computer on its left side to obtain access to the bottom Unplug any peripheral cables from the computer such as printer cable RS 232 interface cable etc Remove three machine screws from the front edge and two from the sides near the front Remove five sheet metal type screws from the back of the sides and the rear edge of the computer one is usually under the warranty tag Some screws are recessed If there s a screw in the computer back remove it also Note the positions the screws come from for subsequent reinsertion Now if you have never done this before go extra carefully and gently Lay the computer on the table again in normal Operating position holding it from underneath and also holding down the top which is now loose Then grasp the upper part by both right and left sides and lift it straight up slowly and carefully as you will be also lifting the image tube which is glass contains a high vacuum and can implode and scatter glass if broken When you have lifted the upper part a distance a little less th
156. g Digital Standard Runoff TEX and TPU and a variety of devices laser printers tape drives plotters etc are accessible through the VAX system either in batch or on line mode I provide these data only to make it clear that whenever we are considering a particular project which uses computer resources we are able to consider a rather wide variety of options and are not restricted to micros or particular software environments Two publishing projects affiliated with the department which had been handled for years using commercial typesetters and printers are the Mediaeval Text Series which publishes approximately one volume of 150 400 pages annually and the DOS Subjects 31 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 Volume II ii Aquinas Lecture Series one smaller volume annually Three years ago we added a quarterly journal Philosophy amp Theology to this project list and also decided in the interest of economy and of possible expansion of the two series to change the text preparation to an in house procedure Laser printers at that time were available on the central VAX system In order to test the feasibility and efficiency of in house document preparation without expending money for additional hardware we worked for one year on the central system using TEX which is a powerful formatter but fairly difficult to use At the end of the year successful trials and a _ variety of other factors indicated that we should
157. g fixes continuously available to anybody who wants them or has a problem No we can t do that everybody else will make fun of us for having a version number that keeps changing they ll use it to accuse us Of having buggy software even though we don t have as many as they do they just don t release the fixes except at fixed intervals Well geez what if they user really needs a fix with those other guys they d be screwed but can t we offer some better way How about if we announce and offer upgrades to the version number as major features are added but offer anybody the ability to upgrade to the latest production version with the latest bug fixes whenever they want to That sounds peachy How do we control and keep track of releases though Hey I got it let s use the date Same mechanism slightly different attitude Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo Adam Just to show I m not totally useless when it comes to useful suggestions 1 I1 throw in a serious note During testing be it alpha beta or whatever some folks will refer to testing as improving the quality of the software Not so Fixing bugs doesn t improve quality of software it merely decreases the number of observed defects currently present in the product Quality cannot be tested into a product it must be designed into a product be it hardware or software Fm Adam Rubin That s a good point Joe It would seem to me though that t
158. ges I have investigated the stack usage by Electric Webster With the help of DEBUG I have deduced that M EW Electric Webster as it loads from Alwrite does not have its own program stack either However it is not necessary to modify M EW since it uses the same stack that AL CMD had used and thus it functions correctly from the H2600 stack space by virtue tf the AL CMD patch Thanks again Desktop Publishing amp The Model 4 Some Personal Reflections Lee C Rice PhD I serve as one of the co directors of the Marquette Philosophy Department s Microcomputer User Area one of about a dozen facilities on the MU campus which serve specific departmental needs The Philosophy User Area has a shared resource arrangement with a similar facility in the Theology Department and the two facilities have joint holdings which include about 20 Model 4 systems 6 MSDOS machines of varying kinds two multi pen plotters a digitizer about 20 printers and a large base of software for both programming development and new users About half of the Model 4 systems are also hard wired via multiplexor at 9600 baud to the university s central system a VAX cluster consisting of a VAX 8650 and four smaller VAX minis with shared disk and other resources Many of our Model 4s find frequent use as VAX terminals and also for uploading and downloading of data files The central VAX system also offers several on line word processors includin
159. h and low memory In addition to a hard disk I also purchased an XLR8er Board from H I Tech just days before MISOSYS announced it would distribute the board I have been very satisfied with the board but would appreciate improved versions of its accompanying software I have been using HIBANKS with FIXALL FLT which for some of my operations has been a distinct improvement over FIXBANK I am not particularly sanguine however about being able to discard FIXALL FLT even with the revised version of HIBANKS My Model 4 is among the first to come off Radio Shack s as sembly line It is a non gate array version that originally came with only one floppy drive Over a period of time I had Radio Shack install the extra 64K an RS232 board and the 2nd flop py drive Six months ago I had the XLR8er Board added and THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 13 Volume IIL ii the 128K of 200ns chips replaced with faster ones Aside from occasional cleaning and realignment of the floppy disk drives my computer has never seen the inside of a repair shop I can hardly complain that the hardware Radio Shack sold me was unreliable My keyboard however is not up to XLR8er speed After reading in the Model III documentation that came with the XLR8er Board that I could treat the LDOS version of FIXALL FLT as optional provided my Model 4 keyboard did not behave erratically under LDOS at the XLR8er s top speed I was disappointed to discover t
160. h drive assignments WC for wild card command invocation and ZSHELL to provide command line I O redirection piping and multiple commands on a line All documentation has been revised and is printed in a convenient 5 5 by 8 5 format Order M 33 200 for ae 95 5 S amp H US MISOSYS will accept as trade any of the following older versions of individual items PRO GENY ZSHELL PaDS Each item traded in is worth 10 towards the purchase of GO SYS Just send your old diskette back Trade in 1 offer expires March 31 1989 Golden Oldies Utility The GO CMD product is a collection of products designed to provide additional utility for your computer operation The products in this group have been rewritten for Model 4 LS DOS 6 3 You get FASTBACK and FASTREAD for hard disk large file archive restore PRO CESS to manipulate exe cutable command files COMP to compare two files or disks FED2 to investigate and zap disk or file sectors on a full screen basis IFC updated with new features for interactively copying moving renaming deleting and invoking files ZCAT for cataloging 6 3 diskettes All documentation has been revised and is printed in a convenient 5 5 by 8 5 format Order M 33 300 for 59 95 5 S amp H US MISOSYS will accept as trade any of the following older versions of individual items LS FED II PRO IFC PRO ZCAT PRO CESS Each item traded in is worth 10 towards the purchase of GO CMD Just send your old disket
161. h the DHAMP it is DIFFTIM I ve added a include m80 h Where may the error be When I try to LINK manual I only see a LIBA RQUEST and a LIBC RQUEST but no MATH RQUEST Btw I had problems with the MCMACS MAC file because the LIST command starts in col 1 but must start at 8 with my M80 P S I plan to trade in my Mod 4 ALDS for Pro MRAS If the error is with the m80 180 combination let me know I ll send you the ALDS Disk by Air Mail tomorrow the Manual will follow by surface mail Thank you for your help Fm MISOSYS Inc I think you have a local problem The difftime function was listed on page 555 of TMQ Ilii you would have to either link that in with each program or add it to a library Sounds like you also do not have the MC 1 6 update as difftime was included in that release already in the library Check out that same issue page 18 I can t imagine why you would have an undefined global on call Better make sure that you put in an option INLIB into that code as the callQ function is in the installation library Roy MISOSYS Products Tidbits Volume III ii Fm Ralf Folkerts Roy I found the Problem The MAC Version does contain conditional Requests for the MATH REL IN REL and USERLIB It seems that the IF won t work correct with the M80 because the Programs will link correct when I remove the IF ENDIF for the necessary LIB and then assemble and link manual
162. h the drive select light on This resistor is located on the drive electronics board towards the rear On my drives it s a 14 pin DIP plug in pack marked IAM E3317 plugged in so the marking is in readable position when looking from the rear of the drive I have seen through the years conflicting opinions as to exactly where the terminator should go and if there should be one on each drive or not On my own 4 drive setup it doesn t seem to matter where it goes as long as there s one present but I can t guarantee that will work with every setup Perhaps a good starting point would be the last external drive in the system In the specific case of drives zero and one any terminating arrangements on models III 4 and 4D are made on the computer drive controller so one doesn t need to be concerned with terminating them Drive alignment and rotational speed Drives may drift out of alignment after a time Typically that shows as I O problems when switching disks between drives But there can also be a treacherous situation which may pass unnoticed If a disk is formatted written to and read in a drive which is appreciably misaligned and always used in that same drive one may not notice that anything is amiss until one attempts to use the disk in another drive There are several ways to check drive alignment There are commercial disks for testing it which some users swear by and others swear at Probably the only really accurate way to ch
163. hat my vintage Model 4 keyboard behaved very erratically indeed That means that under LDOS I must choose between running at top speed with FIXALL or using KI4 DVR Is there any chance that the FIXALL FLT function could be incorporated into KI4 DVR e g in place of the Delay and Rate options I cannot guess at the feasibility of the programming involved but sales of the Hardware Interface Kit reported in TMQ suggest this might be a strategic product enhancement As long as I m this far advanced on a wish list a final comment on the XLR8er software Ramdisks that installed in the x 3 format would be very nice Thus far my extremely uninformed attempts at hacking along these lines have not met with any success The reality is they aren t likely to in the foreseeable future Last but not least I would like to offer a rebuttal to Charles A Ainsworth s Story 3 on p 16 of Vol Iiv of TMQ re the friend who purchased VisiCalc from Radio Shack and found it only ran under the system TRSDOS 6 01 on the distribution disk I too purchased version 02 09 02 of VisiCalc on a 6 01 system disk at close out sale prices I have used and continue to use the program frequently under TRSDOS 6 2 x and now LS DOS 6 3 VisiCalc also takes kindly to the XLR8er Board and the optional patches to LS DOS related to the Hitachi chip s math instructions If there s a conflict between VisiCalc and any version of TRSDOS LS DOS I have yet to find it In
164. hat the FIG bunch in Mountain View Hardin Fm Hardin Brothers Bill As I remember that was a year with several Forth groups at the Faire and I honestly don t remember who had the bumper stickers However it does sound like something that the Mountain View group would come up with or perhaps someone there could steer you to the right folks if you really want one Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaola Kevin ll add my two cents FORTH has been described as a write once or write only language That is you write a clever program in FORTH and say it works If somebody else comes along to maintain the program or yourself a year later it just might be easier to re write the thing from scratch as compared to trying to figure out exactly how the original program worked Em Bill Brandon Joe Documentation seems to be especially important with FORTH I ve heard the comment you made MISOSYS Products Tidbits Volume III jj from everyone who s ever programmed in it including Charles Moore What we haven t told Kevin but he ll figure out soon enough is that many of the words in FORTH are typographic symbols or strange combinations which are pronounced very differently from what you d think fetch and store still give me a lot of trouble Reading code in a hurry I frequently get them backwards What s the term for programmer s dyslexia grrr The proficient FORTHers I ve met say this is no problem since the la
165. he road DED86 gives you the direct controls you need to explore your disk It s a full screen sector oriented disk file editor and a page oriented memory editor When you want to unerase erased files DED86 s flexible KEEP facility does the job without you fussing over FATs Look by cylinder head sector sector or cluster D Scan free clusters to search for erased data gt Jump about subdirectories B gt Keep sectors amp clusters for writing to a file Edit bytes in hexadecimal or ASCII zap in Os D Search disk file or memory in ASCII or hex gt Touch directory with your date and or time Obtain complete disk statistics in one screen D Alter attributes archive system hidden read B Save Restore sectors to from auxiliary buffers DOS subshell available while using DED86 gt Handles 5 25 amp 3 5 drives amp RAM disks RATFOR 86 2 0 If you re still fussing with FORTRAN RATFOR 86 by James Beard Ph D provides structure and greater port ability to FORTRAN pro grams reduce your program ming time and effort drama tically over that required when writing directly in FORTRAN Has extensive macro support arith macro for binary arithmetic 6 new conditional macros in 2 0 short form READ and PRINT keyword cswitch like in C D Requires a FORTRAN compiler e EE RATFOR 86 M C and VISA accepted S amp H 5 6 Canada 15 Other Take a break from you
166. here s some relationship between the bugs in a released software product and its quality Hmm perhaps it s one of those worst links in the chain things If the design were rated at say 7 points out of 10 on the quality scale the final product could end up with anything from 0 10 if unusable due to excessive bugs up to 7 10 meaning no significant bugs Of course if the documentation s quality is only 3 10 then the package as a whole could be no better than that Does that make any sense Or should I go and read the dozens of books available on software quality first Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo Well Adam let me say that this is certainly not a point that is accepted by all concerned and is strongly influenced by your interpretation definition of the word quality Letters to the Editor THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 8 Volume III ii The argument goes something like this Let s define quality as the inverse of the likelihood that a user will encounter one or more uncaught software defects in the field Since you can t prove that a program is defect free Turing machines reduces to the halting problem NP complete all we can do is find and eliminate defects through testing and we can never prove that we just killed the last bug You can never prove there aren t any more but you can easily prove there is another by finding it Now given two software packages of a similar nature but di
167. ical to make it start at x 8000 and attribute x 0000 x 7fff to either Bank Area or Common Area 0 CAO HiTech chose Bank Area but it makes more sense to split between CAO and CA1 as CAO is bound to physical address zero which is what it must be Unfortunately they also chose to make CA1 take up all memory while switching in banks 0 1 2 let s call these alternate memory versus extended memory for the additional 256k That s unfortunate because it needs 2 ports to be modified CBAR and CBR which means more code Therefore I decided to split logical memory between CAO and CA1 by loading x 88 into CBAR at Boot initialization Translation make both Bank Area and CA1 start at x 8000 then CAQ x 0000 x 7fff and CA1 x 8000 x ffff These value will never change Bank Area will not be used The Hardware Corner THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 instance very easily x 40000 x 47fff x 48000 78 Volume IT ii How do we access all that memory 384k Let s inventory it First we have 2 standard 32k memory banks split at x 8000 which are normally active These are the Lower and Upper banks The Upper bank is labelled Bank_0 by the DOS Then we have 2 alternate 32k banks labelled Bank_1 and Bank_2 Either or both can be swapped with either or both standard banks Actually the Lower Bank is never changed by the DOS how could it function and only the Upper Ba
168. ich provides these abilities does so at a price it is usually less efficient more expensive and much more demanding in memory and CPU resources Standard academic publications have a simple format few graphics and fewer surprises The second distinction worth bearing in mind is between What You See Is What You Get processors WYSIWYG and simpler text formatters The WYSIWYG processors must produce layouts on the CRT screen itself which typically also makes them slower and places heavier demands on memory Another feature of WYSIWYG processors is that their files are never Ascii in format and can usually NOT be moved from one host system micro or mainframe to another without extensive editing and conversion This presented a serious defect for us Even though we wanted to produce our camera ready copy on a micro system whether Model 4 or IBM clone we did want portability for the source files so that DOS Subjects Volume IT ii they could be easily moved among micros and mainframes without special conversions Text formatters as opposed to WYSIWYG processors typically post process a file in Ascii form which contains embedded printing commands and output to selected devices either on line or in batch mode They are a bit harder to work with smce you don t see your final document until it is actually printed but they are typically fast and portable for file maintenance If you are doing a great deal of graphics
169. icular care is needed in the case of arrangement a as things may not be too visible or accessible so be sure the connector is driven home correctly aligned and all the way in The cable has to be arranged to go down to the rear edge of the computer baseboard quite vertically than exit towards the rear between base and top and has to be shaped a bit so it will fit comfortably in the convolutions between them If this is done carefully there will be no problem when the top is replaced Note that the way things are shaped the top may tug at the cable a bit when it is replaced so try to leave a little slack inside to prevent this With arrangement b you may have to trim the bottom edge of the RF shield slightly with shears where the cable exits from the header connector be sure to remove all burrs or sharp edges with a fine file to avoid cutting into the cable Also with arr b plug the connector onto the header so that the cable exits downward out of the connector Whichever arrangement you use before closing up the computer tape the cable in place so it won t get displaced when you replace the cover Replace everything you removed when you opened up being sure not to forget any plugs and you should be ready to test The Hardware Corner Volume III ii See previous cautions about getting the connector the right way around at the drive and item 2 under Caution above Again when reassembling be very careful of the image
170. igh NC 27609 Orders 919 847 4779 8am 6pm Support 919 846 1637 6prii 11pm EST MasterCard VISA EOD Checks POS 3 lor Shipping 5 2nd day ee ee e Volume II ii The Tower of Babel Writing Interactive RATFOR FORTRAN Programs by Jane A Layman Much as I like poring over virtually every word in The MISOSYS Quarterly 1 find that my favorite programming languages are grossly under represented in its pages This article comes with a sample program DESCRIP to demonstrate the techniques discussed in the text The techniques work equally well with the Model 4 and MS DOS versions of MISOSYS RATFOR I use the Model 4 version myself An MS DOS version of the RATFOR source file name DescripM RAT is included It has been compiled and successfully run under MS DOS by a friend with an MS DOS machine and the MS DOS version of RATFOR The following files make up this example DESCRIP RAT The Model 4 RATFOR source for the sample program DESCRIP CMD The Model 4 executable program DESCRIPM RAT The MS DOS RATFOR source for the sample program DESCRIP HLP Instructions for using the sample program CLS MAC amp REL A bonus for Model 4 users CLS MAC contains the M80 syntax source code for LS DOS CLS library command REL is the relocatable object code that can be linked with the DESCRIP other REL code to clear the screen any time the module is called Instructions for adding it to DESCRIP are included in CL
171. ill remains as the system disk after sysgen An auto JCL file installs RAMDISK from banks 5 thru 10 The JCL ends and the fun begins The Hardware Corner THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 aT f Volume III ii A peek with MEMDIR shows that the high memory modules are gone Instead there is just a module labeled lt unknown gt That is the best case scenario There was another variance of events which I don t exactly recall at the moment when any attempt to access the hard drives resulted in a file not found because the driver was wiped out of Bank 0 Fm MISOSYS Inc Anybody who thinks that the Alpha Technology memory board patches will work with the XLRg8er is dreaming Please don t perpetuate any rumors On the other hand there are now patches for the XLRg8er courtesy of Michel Houde See the next subject A new XLR8er Software Interface by Michel Houde Fm Roy Soltoff The following submission by Michel Houde has my gratitude and appreciation The material is specific to those Model 4 owners with an XLR8er memory speedup board installed in their computer Michel has also provided a universal RAM disk software operating under the extended memory handler published previously in TMQ as well as a utility providing fast load save capabilities of the RAM disk Due to the length of the submission this issue of TMQ will provide only the XLR8er interface patches so folks can get Started on using them Source code for
172. in books on mathematics or something similar was their reply So I Roy s Technical Corner THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 46 Volume III ii turned to Continental Book Search Al Katz who appeared to be the chief honcho behind the company was quite helpful He took down all of the information concerning the book and said it would take a few weeks to locate a copy he would get back in touch with me A few weeks later I received a notice in the mail from him that a copy of good quality had been located The price was 60 Of course anything no longer available can sometimes command a higher price I immediately phoned Al to accept the book I don t know if he was trying to twist my arm but he did inform me that he had other parties interested in the book and if I didn t want it they did I bought the book Actually Continental Book Search was pleasant to deal with they did get results Anyone in need of that service can contact them him at Box 1163 New York NY 10009 212 254 8719 The copy of Floating Point Computation turned out to be a surplus duplicate copy of the Library of Congress and at one time had been at the US Air Force Technical Library at Edwards Air Force Base California I ve got a classy book When I get into floating point math in this article I ll be able to comment more about the book In the last issue of TMQ I laid the groundwork for this heavy topic I covered the basics of the bina
173. ing both sides of a disk sold as single sided the other side may not have the necessary qualities There are other brands and capacities of drive available on the market from other suppliers If anyone were to decide to use them they should bear in mind that I am talking of a specific brand and supplier and of 80 cylinder 5 1 4 half height double sided units and that they may have to adjust things accordingly if they go a different way from mine Computer heating I have always felt since I got my first model III and later with the 4 and 4D that the internal drives provided with the computer 1 Tend to overload the computer power supply especially on longish write or read sessions I have seen model 4 s where the readout jittered whenever a drive started up 2 The power supply load due to the drives particularly the rotation and stepper motors generates additional heat and 3 The drives themselves especially the motors give off heat inside the computer I recollect when the III was introduced several magazine reviews stressed the possibilities of overheating due to those drives inside the case Electronic components don t like heat and can fail easily if it becomes excessive So when I got my own drives I simply disconnected the original drives zero and one and left them there in case a computer ever had to go back to a service The Hardware Corner THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 68 Volume II ii center a
174. inishing processing of the previous character Messy at best Fm Les Mikesell Shane The problem is that the byte i o routines normalize the memory banks and make sure the video ram is swapped out because the drivers in high memory may be called To do that safely it has to disable interrupts so the previous state can be saved When it gets done it enables DOS Subjects Volume III ii interrupts even if they were off coming in This was a problem for COMM remember 6 0 because all the foreground devices keyboard printer screen disk share a common buffer and buffer management routine with the background comm dvr I ended up duplicating most of the byte 1 o routine inside of COMM just to avoid the El Of course the interrupt processing routine also adjusts memory so I didn t have to worry about that part DATECONV those RAMDISKs Em Frank Slinkman Roy 1 just noticed the RAMDISK utility not only doesn t support time stamping it doesn t Support dates after 12 31 87 On any file which is created on copied to or backed up to the ramdisk all 1988 dates get changed to 1980 I can live without time stamping although it is helpful in many cases but correct dating is very important to me in keeping track of the text files I write for a living Can you please supply a patch to bring RAMDISK DCT date stamping in conformity with LS DOS And if there s a patch to enable time stamping that would be much appreciated as
175. ior with the software and occasionally a computer hang generally late in the day The computer hangs generally but not always involve the use of PRO WAM where on the return from PRO WAM the previous AL screen is displaced after which the machine becomes comatose I have since replicated this behavior at the office at the house and on a 4P no ramboard or AT patches although I have not been able to develop a sure fire hang procedure I have also hypothesized that the problem relates to the passing of control from AL to and from the other programs eg AL to ALF AL to PRO WAM AL to EW etc I have carefully tested this hypothesis by working for extensive periods with AL without ever calling ALF EW or Prowam from within AL The result wasaclearDEVICE B display and absolultely no trouble This is not however a very satisfying procedure I should also mention that I have had absolutely no trouble between PRO WAM and VisiCalc MultiPlan PFS File PFS Report SAID BASIC etc I have contacted PRO Soft Ron and received absolutely no satisfaction It was the it is the other guy s fault song and dance with a little of the even if we knew what the problem was we wouldn t fix it melody I bought Alwrite because of generally favorable discussion of the PRO WAM Alwrite compatibility in the MQ I like the software but it seems to be the core of a problem that is very inconvenient I have also noticed with some inte
176. is as a one time report but a continuing publication MISOSYS Holiday Savings Everybody likes a bargain at holiday time So here s one I think you will like The TMQ coupon accompanying this issue to subscribers gives you 30 off all software and book items and 15 off all hardware items DRAM excluded sold by MISOSYS which are not already on sale So bundle up your needs and get them in on that one order Check with your friends who don t subscribe to TMQ and order for them MISOSYS Hot List This list represents what products in our catalogs have been the most popular in terms of sales units The list excludes TMQ subscriptions and Disk Notes LS DOS 6 3 was added to the list in June 1988 The current month is October 1988 prior 3 months is Jul Sep 1988 and prior 12 months is Oct87 sepss MISOSYS HOT List Current Month Prior 3 months Prior 12 months LS DOS 6 3 LS DOS 6 3 LDOS 5 3 LDOS 5 3 LDOS 5 3 LS DOS 6 3 Lair The Source PRO WAM PRO WAM MRAS The Source The Source DSMBLR diskDISK XLRg8er PRO WAM Little Brother TMO Schedule Our target for mailing the THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY is the last week of the respective month as follows Winter issue in February Spring issue in May Summer issue in August and Fall issue in November This schedule may place your TMQ late in the season based on the cover date however it follows from the mailing of issue I i on August 19th 1986 The Blurb E THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY FALL 1988
177. ite You will be save in the Z80 market which is static now but the MS DOS languages are just beginning to really shine and versions upgrades come on a yearly basis now PRO WAM Window amp Application Manager PRO WAM 2 0 M 51 025 This desktop manager gives keystroke access to 4 memory resident pop up applications and disk access of others A Function Key lets you invoke DOS library commands PRO WAM turns your TRS 80 into a powerful machine because it comes with many useful and powerful time savers and desk organizers Here s some of what you get 4 An ADDRESS file data base prints cards and mailing labels Throw away that black book and your Rolodex file 4 HEAD pipes formatted address data into your letters 4 BRINGUP tickler file schedules up to 12 items per day by time New print module Remember those appointments 4CALendar gives you a month at a glance covers 4000 years Flags days with BRINGUP items 4 A3x5 CARD filer for a free form scratch pad of 40 columns by 12 rows Or use the new CARDX with forms capabilities Its great for small data base 4 PHRASE is a KSM from disk for lots of automation 4 A telephone list and autoDIALER for Hayes modems 4CALCulator gives you 4 functions at your fingertips RPNCALC gives 7 functions in bin oct dec and hex PSORT puts your PRO WAM data files in sort order EXPORT and IMPORT functions allow you to move data across windows between applications and programs There s
178. ith is that I m not a registered owner of LS DOS 6 3 I own two TRS 80 Model 4D s and each came with copies of TRS DOS 6 2 and LS DOS 6 3 TRS DOS had a registration card but LS DOS did not I am writing my serial and customer service numbers at the close of this letter Would you please add me to your LS DOS 6 3 data base Fm MISOSYS Inc As you surmised the Required Reading flyer was mailed specifically to the LSI data base of registered LS DOS 6 3 users We didn t want to combine that list with our normal data base But 1 11 be sure to get your ID numbers into that data base now I would expect to have another mailing as soon as I have a firm announcement on our hard drive package You ll get that one Update on printer woes Fm Mark Allen Reed to Carol L Welcomb I was sorry to read in The MISOSYS Quarterly volume IIli that you too are having problems with an OKIDATA printer I m not an expert on OKIDATA s product line but in my experiences with that company I picked up quite a bit of information and I think I can help you out of your predicament OKIDATA sells Okimate printers as two components The first which most people think of as the printer is the actual mechanical unit that transfers ink onto paper The second the Plug n Print module is the brain of the printer which allows it to communicate with the computer The Okimate is useless without the correct Plug n Print module
179. k bad Fortunately my brightness and contrast controls work OK In fact 1 can temporarily improve things by turning to full brightness for a few seconds and then turning the brightness all the way down I finished my DWP 230 printer driver for Scripsit Pro that way Once I fix it I can then USE my new hot shot printer driver Em Fred Oberding Jim you have described a classic case of a Model 3 RCA video board going south The RCA board was used in early Model 4 s also At the opposite end of the board from the connector just on the other side of the flyback transformer you will find two resistors R 516 a 1 meg 1 watt amp R 518 a 470k 1 2 watt in a voltage divider ckt Either one or both have changed values or have opened up altogether Replacing them should put you back in business Em Gary Phillips Jim Check your power supply before the video Jim If the 12v out from the supply is creeping upward you would get those symptoms Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaola Ya as I recall part of the fix was to replace with the next larger wattage Fm Jim Beard Fred I replaced R516 with four 1 Meg 1 2 watt in series parallel and R518 with a 470K 1 2 watt R518 The Hardware Corner 75 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 Volume III ii was originally a cheap carbon 470K paralleled with a 3 3 Meg It read open on an ohmmeter until a little handling got it read a shakey 1 Meg It is like new now I owe you one Fm Steve Lorenz
180. label While the program presented here uses a separate disk file in which to store the FORMAT statement this is not a FORTRAN requirement FORTRAN would input both the format and label information via the keyboard in the same manner as it accepts the file names and numeric information The program could also have been written to read the FORMAT statement from the first record of the data file provided the user placed it there in advance of running the modified program In fact this would be the preferred approach for programs that have no need of extras such as variable labels Reducing Decimal Places to Manageable Proportions When the number crunching is complete the number of significant digits that were desirable at the computation stage can seem a liability at the output stage The ability to format numerical output in something akin to BASIC s PRINT USING statement would simplify matters considerably FORTRAN can be persuaded to suppress any number of unwanted digits during output provided the unwanted digits have first been set to 0 The sample program includes a routine to limit output to the first 3 or 4 digits after the decimal place for 5 separate REAL arrays I e the results are printed in F12 4 or F11 3 format without any runtime FW format width warnings Setting the unwanted decimal positions to 0 is accomplished in the following manner Each completed computation is first multiplied by 1 000 or 10 00
181. language of choice anyway Fm Jim Beard It s amazing to see that Your solution is pretty much what I used the one or two times I felt that a BASIC program had to be transportable The integer data type is necessary in ones complement machines large mainframes because TRUE is 0 which stores as O the same as FALSE in floating point The program will work in Microsoft BASIC 3 x on either the Model 4 or MS DOS because of the rather through work that went into these implementations This may not be true of other BASIC s though because it is not necessarily true that floating point variables are converted to integer for bit by bit operations SORTING Fm Pete Betz 1 have a question about sorting 1 recently wrote a Forth program that has to do some string sorting so I cooked up a simple insertion sort that seemed to work reasonably well Then just for the heck of it I snitched a heapsort routine from MMSForth modified it to handle strings and was thrilled and delighted to find that it sorted the same material in almost exactly one fifth the time Anyway the problem is that even after making extensive modifications I still can t really picture how the bloody thing The Tower of Babel Volume TIT ii works Can any of you blokes recommend a book that concentrates on computer sorting I m not looking for code or any specific language but rather descriptions theory strategy algorithms and comparisons
182. last word about LS DOS 6 3F which I understand Fred Peters sent you When 1 asked Tandy France about it in October 87 they told me they were seriously thinking about it but no release date could be stated When 1 phoned again in December they sent it FREE But no documentation no explanation Just a Date gt 88 on the label All new as compared to 6 2 are password protected with NO access which is probably safer when no docs are provided All files are dated 1 Sep 87 and the serial displayed on the Boot screen is replaced by 18 Oct 1987 After doing cross comparisons between 6 2 6 3 6 2F 6 3F I can say that LS DOS 6 3F as sent by Tandy is equivalent to 6 3 level K L not L with no CS displaying when typing ID and no dummy code in the last sector of SYSn SYS files Well that should be enough for today I should write more often I like TMQ s new look very much Please keep the Family Update I would not write such a letter to an anonymous PO Box Best wishes to you and your family Fm MISOSYS Inc I appreciate tremendously the amount of work you have done Michel I will put your KEYB international keyboard driver for LDOS in this issue s DISK NOTES Thanks again for the efforts Now here s one for you If you want to get rid of the protected character facility in PRO WAM s import export functions a simple 2 byte patch will do that At X 44EA of PROWAM you will find a BIT 7 A instruction That t
183. le character readOs are expendable The stdio routines buffer the i o into convenient sizes for the machine I prefer to use the stream functions unless I need more control than just buffering which is easy enough for example reading in fixed size blocks or twiddling with terminal parameters For your printer problem you can just call fflush if you are working with streams but if you anticipate that the program might be used on a network you might want to reopen the printer or dup the fd and close one of the copies This will flush the job into the network spooler on most networks Em Shane Dawalt Les Ya know how they say that you learn by doing By golly they re right I found the syntax for setvbufQ similar to setbufQ and implemented it in my program Didn t take too many modifications maybe 10 minutes Anyway I just ran it a couple of minutes ago and WOW single character read is quite slow Not that I didn t believe you lt grin gt Hmmm I guess I was too set on using handles I didn t think of simply placing the required stream pointer into the input output stream pointers for the I O functions Gee That would have been so much easier That saying about not seeing the forest for the trees applies here C Why l and Il Em Adam Rubin Theoretical type question from somebody very new to C namely me The Tower of Babel THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 49 Volume II1 ii Why does
184. le is disconnected and the motors are the major part of a drive s load Those power connectors are usually below the board pressed in tight If you do attempt to remove them go easy on the amount of force you apply the receptacles are attached to the printed circuit board which might break if you overdo it Prying may help o If you decide to remove drive mounting screws to get at these connectors take care to prevent the drives crashing around and into each other as the screws are removed use padding material such as cardboard plywood etc between and below the drives I have found it reasonably easy to loosen and move the drives on III s and 4 s but 4D drives seem much harder to work on You now have to cable up for outside drives zero and one You will need a length of 34 conductor cable to connect them to the computer innards See previous remarks about establishing the length removing surplus conductors and fitting the connectors If you have arrangement a you will need at the computer end a Tandy 34 position card edge connector cat 276 1564A if you have arrgt b you will need a Tandy 34 position computer connector cat 276 1525 In both cases a and b at the other end for plugging onto the drive you will need a 276 1564A Install the connectors on the cable as previously described and at the computer end carefully plug in in the same location as the original drive zero and one cable was removed from Part
185. lease or at least a maintenance release that fixes several problems at once Fm Shane Dawalt Well Hardin I would expect that the user would have the RIGHT to hold off on purchasing monthly upgrades until the exact information on the upgrade was known What does it fix Why IS it fixed in the first place That sort of thing The user shouldn t be FORCED to buy a upgrade simply because the company decided it was time to fix it If the company is actually going to keep the fixes in house for a long period they should AT LEAST acknowledge the fact that the bug was recognized and a fix was generated Not respond Maybe or maybe not to the question was the bug fixed Fm Hardin Brothers But Shane how can a software house afford to support multiple especially many past versions of a Letters to the Editor Volume IIL ii product You have version 48 7 right Well boot up and tell me what the version number says yes I ll wait while you go in the other room and turn on the computer lt tap tap tap tap tap te dum dum gt Hi okay what version did it say Oh you have to uninstall the autorun macro so you can see the boot up screen To do that simply delete ARUN MAC from your drive or better yet rename it temporarily Huh Okay exit from the program No don t turn off your computer just hit F10 to exit Then type REN ARUN MAC ARUN BAT Then start the program again 3 Oh which shell are you using Does it l
186. lespec LOG password d to filespec ext password d In this manner the Superlog file remains in its original form whilst the other file is now almost in a format ready to be SORTED Using FED CMD I looked at the new file and saw that it was good I then changed the byte 02 from 00 to nn to reflect the number of pages in the Superlog file Now the file was ready to be tested would my magic be good enough I issued a new spell PSORT filespec ext password d pack is NOT applicable Lo and behold It worked I examined the new sorted file holding my breath in anticipation Fortunately I did not have to strain myself it had worked perfectly The first record of the file is in a language not understood by mere mortals it can be partly erased using lt SHIFT gt lt CLEAR gt but the remainder must remain as this is used in later SORTS MISOSYS Products Tidbits Volume III ii I used my quill to enter a warning on this first screen to the effect that the file must be changed to reflect the number of pages before attempting to use PSORT again Also the page numbers do not reflect their true value if the file is small it would be possible to change each one Perhaps some other apprentice could write a BASIC spell to do this if so I would very much like to see it Generate DIALER DAT Fm Rev James R Peet Dear Roy I wrote this little BASIC program that creates the DIALER DAT file used by PRO WAM s DIALER
187. lines from a disk file search for and replace text and define parameters for print outs Of course you can also edit individual program lines My only complaints are that the editor expands all tabs to eight spaces which is far too many and that it capitalizes the text of remark statements Aside from those quirks CED is very powerful and makes program modification simple BC CMD is Pro EnhComp s BASIC compiler it takes a file created by CED or another editor and translates it into a stand alone machine language program BC can accept a wide range of parameters such as suppress BREAK key checking suppress error checking suppress line number information wait for the user to press a key after a compilation error display the program on the screen send the program listing and all messages to the printer and suppress generation of a CMD file In addition BC can include other program files in your compiled program That makes it much easier to write programs in modular format S CMD is a supervisor program that links CED and BC together Using S you type and edit your BASIC program using CED Then you type RUN and BC compiles it If any errors come up S returns you to CED to correct them otherwise your compiled program executes and you are returned to CED when it completes Under S program development is simple SUPPORT DAT is a specially constructed file containing support subroutines used by the BC compiler BC displays
188. lity so that readng becomes more important than the tube Stefanie is now in the 4 year old preschool class Most folks still think the two girls are fraternal twins not 16 months apart But it s been great having them close together in age Stefanie and Stacey have the same friends and most of the time they are friends with each other Stefanie is still the problem eater But then she s only four We had a birthday party for her in October and there were about 16 kids altogether some crowd We made it a pizza party making everything from scratch Pizza Stefanie eats I made up a big batch of dough and had each kid make their own little pizza We then put all 16 little pizzas in the oven in order to bake When done each child got to eat the pizza they made It was fun and everybody had a good time We usually get about eight parents to stay and we had pizza too We may turn out to have a crowd up here for Thanksgiving Brenda s folks are coming We were planning on taking an extended weekend and visit the cabin this weekend but just couldn t break away We had hoped to meet with Brenda s sister and her family while down there Since we couldn t they may come up here for Thanksgiving as they want to see Benjamin before Christmas We also extended the invitation to Brenda s Brother and his family They may get here as well but since they live all the way down in Gainesville Florida it s iffy One last thing to
189. ll evaluate to 0 NOT 1 will evaluate to 2 which will be taken as TRUE in the final checking The best policy is 1 not to assume a value for TRUE as you stated and 2 use the language keyword for TRUE if available and 1 if not Fm MISOSYS Inc MC as an example uses a value of 1 to indicate TRUE and O to indicate FALSE This is per the stdio h header file However it will treat any non zero value as true when evaluating a logical expression Also NOT non zero value will always be evaluated as FALSE in MC It doesn t blindly go ahead and just complement the value but evaluates its logical value and then sets the result to TRUE or The Tower of Babel Volume IIl ii FALSE respectively But yes different implementations may treat it differently Fm H Brothers Jim Not in most micro implementations of C Jim TRUE is usually 1 FALSE is 0 The reason for the values if I remember correctly is so that a true expression can be added to another expression in order to increment it Notice that true xor true is still false and that taking the logical not of any non zero value will produce false or 0 Like the distinction between the logical amp amp ll and bitwise amp l C draws a distinction between a logical not and a bitwise not I wish Basic and Pascal were as smart Fm Les Mikesell Adam The logical operators return either 0 or 1 but logical tests interpret O as false anything else as true It is best
190. m not ready to jump into that quite yet The fundamentals are quite important to grasp one just cannot jump into complicated mathematics without understanding the basic concepts That s true in any field you can t begin to excel at blackjack unless you understand the 52 cards in a deck and the mathematics of probability associated with card combinations So we re not going to grasp computerized floating point mathematics until we get our feet wet with the basic four functions Before I start into this issue s coverage of computer math let me diverge to a corresponding topic In a recent issue of Computer Language noted author P J Plaugher referenced a book on floating point mathematics by Pat H Sterbenz Floating Point Computation Englewood Cliffs N J Prentice Hall 1974 Plaugher quoted R W Hamming s words conceming that book Nobody should ever have to know that much about floating point arithmetic Based on that recommendation I as I m sure other CL readers proceeded to locate a copy of the book I called Prentice Hall in New Jersey where anyone can order one of their books According to my scratchings the number is 201 767 5937 they take plastic Unfortunately the book was out of print and no longer available through them But they were kind enough to steer me to a couple of book dealers specializing in locating out of print books I called The Strand first as they were the first on the list We don t deal
191. makes it very easy to position to an exact byte location when the LRL is 1 Unfortunately the POSN SVC can only correctly deal with a file which is 65535 bytes long when the LRL is 1 Besides that the internal data handling of segment sizes absolute VMF locations and byte offsets are done with 16 bit registers what else It turns out that ARC4 has a ton of data especially in that arc4hlp rel module When you linked arc4 with the root and the first six overlay modules omitting arc4sq the VMF was 58558 bytes long That worked out just fine for MLINK But when all of the seven overlay modules were linked the VMF was 70K What happened was that positioning into the VMF for that last module which exceeded the 65535th byte in the file wound up at the beginning of the file MLINK has no code to trap that 16 bit overflow So for the time being it stands as a bug if the VMF exceeds 64K during the link session the resulting CMD file will be corrupt I guess when I was implementing the Virtual Memory File the thought of a big overlay process would exceed the limitations of the VMF handling just didn t occur to me On the other hand I just dug out my notebook which 1 used during development of MRAS and MLINK I did implement the virtual memory file facility before I implemented the overlay facility The overlay facility was an afterthought developed specifically to use for MC we eventually decided against using overlays for the MC job pr
192. merical equivalents of the ASCII characters in the IF statement In short once one learns how to speak RATFOR FORTRAN S language it can become very amenable to one s requirements DESCRIP computes the Mean Variance S D Min and Max for up to 60 variables 0 or negative values are treated as missing data Prior to running DESCRIP a Map File must be prepared This file should have a logical record length of 81 80 characters per record including blanks and a carriage return in column 81 Record number one of the MAP file should contain the format of the data file starting in column one For example 5X 6F2 0 3X 20F3 2 Use F fields to input both integer and real data into the X array G or E fields will also work if you prefer either of their input characteristics Records 2 through 7 of the MAP file should contain room for 60 variable LABELs 10 per record in A8 format All 6 records should be present Optional records 8 through n can be put to any purpose the user finds appropriate While running DESCRIP you will be prompted by the program to type in the following information The name of your data file The LRL of this file LS DOS users only The number of variables for this run The name of your MAP file A file name under which to write the program s disk output KKK KKK KKK KI KKK KKK KKK ARA KEKEKEKK KEKE KKKES DESCRIP RAT This program computes descriptive statistics Mean Variance Standard Deviati
193. money in mainframe hardware and software more manpower is used for writing and testing compilers not to mention support for bug fixes on early versions Microsoft grosses about 150 million a year CDC spent a lot more than that on every FORTRAN compiler they ever released Bugs Sure but we need to understand that when we buy and use a microcomputer compiler we are part of the process of developing future versions That is a reasonable price to pay to have that kind of power at your fingertips at home I would have a real problem writing my IEEE papers if I couldn t try Out my ideas at home a lot of valuable stuff has come from my Model HI F80 Model 4 RATFOR and MS DOS RATFOR Linker program listings Fm Shane Dawalt Ok the answer to this question must be quite obvious cause I can t seem to figure it out Pm running PRO MRAS with a rather involved program The program has been split into 4 modules and I m linking each with MLINK Now I know how to get an assembly listing when I use the GC switch in PRO MRAS And I know that if I use the same procedure without GC for relocatable modules I will get an assembly listing but PIH get reference addresses only not absolute addresses And that s reasonable since I m requesting relocatable code generation for MLINK How do I generate an absolute assembly listing using MRAS and or MLINK I m sure it can be done Fm Jim Beard Shane When you produce relocatable code th
194. ms that 2 1 is more than 3 as far as family time is concerned Perhaps you recall I told you we have one girl and two boys currently aged 7 4 1 2 and 2 1 2 Remember I am a teacher researcher in Chemical Engineering at Compiegne University You printed my letter in TMQ Spring 87 and you also had me on the phone sometime in December 87 when I ordered an XLR8er I felt compelled to write when I read the new Summer issue of TMQ received August 24th Perhaps I can save you some work as I resolved way back in January the problems everyone is having with the software as supplied by HiTech I have developed a set of patches similar to those you wrote for the Alpha Tech board Only BOOT SYS and SYSO SYS are patched specifically for HD64180 use That was a design requirement The mods to SYS2 SYS12 and BU you published in TMQ are also required but as they are related to timing they are not CPU specific Let me outline what has to be done what I did and how I did it Let s first deal with the memory allocation scheme because it will have an effect on the way we do other things After a reset memory is logically split between Bank Area x 0000 x efff and Common Area 1 CA1 x f000 x ffff the CBAR value being x f0 These are also physical addresses as BBR and CBR are reset to zero The normal bank switching set by Model 4 hardware imposes a logical split at x 8000 As we can t get rid of CA1 it seems log
195. ne ma q SE ta afl A eee eee ee Mm Volume IILii already that probably have you covered but I ll read further on and see what develops Allocation Methods Fm Adam Rubin After reading Ramblings in TMQ Ilii p 2 and the BYTE article mentioned there Extra Edition Vol 12 No 12 p 185 I decided to compare the various allocation methods I took an empty logical drive on my HD 1206K free 1K granules and devised a program to repeatedly create and delete files of random sizes With the same test under LS DOS 6 3 patched for allocation method when necessary the final results were Random allocation as in 6 0 0 average 1 634 extents per file First fit allocation as in 6 3 average 1 824 extents per file Next fit allocation described in articles average 1 059 extents per file So this seems to uphold the conclusions found in the BYTE article namely next fit allocation results in much less file fragmentation than first fit allocation 1 don t know why random came out slightly ahead of first fit ae Questions or comments anyone DiskDISK amp drive configuration Fm Dave Spiceland I have a Model 4 with an external drive amp using LS DOS 6 3 Pd like to change my drive configurations to make drive 2 act as drive 1 and drive 1 will become drive 2 Is there an easy way to switch the drives laa boot up Fm MISOSYS Inc An easy way to reverse the effect of drives 1 and 2 would be to use
196. ngly simple That s because the binary multiplication table is quite small Here it is tot E It s important to recognize that when the multiplier bit binary digit is a zero the partial product is zero and when the multiplier bit is a one then the partial product is identical to the multiplicand You really have no multiplication at all just a simple case of testing a bit for zero or one then either adding the multiplicand to the partial product or skipping the add It s as simple as that Now with this information in hand let s go back to the case of multiplying two numbers in binary I ll use the original case of multiplying 13 by 5 In binary that s multiplicand multiplier partial product accumulator accumulator Shift L R multiplicand left multiplier right partial product accumulator accumulator Shift L R multiplicand left multiplier right partial product accumulator 1000001 product Doing our shifting this way may cause some problems when implementing a multiplication algorithm in software Remember that the Z80 chip in our TRS 80 computer has no hardware multiplication instruction the 64180 used in the Roy s Technical Corner Volume 111 ii XLR8er does The problem we could run into stems from the fact that if you multiply an 8 bit number by an 8 bit number the product can be a 16 bit number If we use an algorithm of shifting the multiplicand left we need a st
197. ngs she has said to me I have the feeling she has aged a few years during the few months in school so far Things like you re treating me like a baby and boy you don t know anything seem a little too soon There was this Story about the high school graduate went off to college thinking how little his father knew and was shocked to find out how much his father leamed while he was away at college I did tell Stacey that if I was as smart as she when I was young why did I forget everything I knew Ah youth why we waste it on the young I am pleased to see the development in small motor control which has occurred over the past few years with her Starting from crayoning in coloring books where the whole page appeared to get the same color to now where each segment of the picture has its own correct color and all within the lines seems like a miracle She s even starting to draw freehand She did a crayon sketch of me which just has to be saved No I won t print it in TMQ The Blurb THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY FALL 1988 Volume III ii The biggest step I see in development is the beginning stages of reading Now I never grew up with Doctor Seuss But we Started getting those books a few years ago Of course we had to read the words then I can now sit down with Stacey and get her to read most of the words of some of the easier books I think learning to read is a big leap in development Now our job is to nurture that abi
198. nguage is so efficient to program that re writes are trivial I m not proficient Fm Kevin R Parris Well Bill since it turns out to be RPN logic based I am less interested than before since I am I suppose a traditional programmer I spend the workday tending a large mainframe operating system IBM MVS 370 in assembler language Thanks for the explanations HART Forth manual errata Fm Pete Betz Roy Has anyone called your attention to the printing flaw in HARTForth s documentation In the word reference section the printer decided not to print any s or s leaving blanks instead Sooooo R should be R blank C lt blank S gt IN 2 F A thousand pardons if you already know all this Fm MISOSYS Inc Not sure whether anyone called out all of the omissions I know that some of the characters were supposed to be handwritten in before duplication They didn t get in An errata was never prepared Here s the errata in TMQ and I worked up the same data for the README file which is on the HartFORTH diskette Thanks for the prodding OOO OOO Qoob Gana MISOSYS Products Tidbits THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 54 Volume III ii MC C Compiler MC DOS 6 x M 21 064 LDOS 5 x M 20 064 If you are looking for a full C compller look no further If you are looking for a well stocked UNIX System V standard library look no further MC reviewed in the
199. nk Bank_0 may be swapped with Bank_1 or Bank_2 As far as the MMU is concerned these are always mapped at physical addresses x 8000 x ffff with CA1 starting at x 8000 and CBR set to x 00 the swapping being handled by the standard OPREG port It should also be mentioned that any of the banks 0 1 2 whichever is active can be shadowed by the keyboard and video memory at x f 400 x ffff Now comes the 256k extended memory located at physical addresses x 40000 x 7ffff It can be accessed by setting CBR properly The value held by CBR may be considered as an offset as it is shifted 12 bit positions left that s 3 nybbles and added to the Starting address as set by CBAR For x 38 shifted gives x 38000 add x 8000 and you get x 40000 start of extended memory As 532divided by 32 equals 8 we can logically define 8 banks labeled Bank_3 to Bank_10 Physical addresses are linked to bank numbering x 4ffff x 50000 Up to x 78000 x7ffff If we take the 2 high nybbles of each starting address and subtract x 08 we get the value to load into CBR Acceptable values are x 38 x 40 x 48 x50 x 58 x 60 x 68 x 70 Computation from bank number is easy subtract 3 multiply by 8 add 38H load CBR I decided not to change speed while accessing the keyboard After performing numerous tests including Rubin s test I found out th
200. nual L 40 020 n a 30 00 D LDOS 5 3 Max Upgrade Kit M 10 833 n a 34 95 LDOS 5 3 Mod3 Upgrade Kit M 10 033 same 34 95 SA tes L 30 020 L 30 021 29 95 34 95 Little Brother M4 n a L 50 510 74 95 F LS DOS 6 3 Upgrade Kit n a M 11 043 39 95 LS DOS 6 3 Site License n a M 11 143 varies AI o sc kw cw 6s ce 0s n a L 35 281 59 95 t EA PAE AAA n a L 32 150 29 95 A PP A M 20 064 M 21 064 124 95 D Mister ED i a Sepak a n a M 51 028 39 95 B MRAS PRO MRAS M 20 083 M 21 083 89 95 D AA rr n a M 51 025 74 95 E Programmer Toolkit n a M 51 225 29 95 i Programmer s Guide DOS 6 n a M 60 060 25 00 B 5 LAORE T L T sss 6 SG ka ceases L 51 500 n a 24 95 Gog go TS cc cosas M 21 073 99 95 F RSHARD R S HD driver M 12 013 same 29 95 3 switch box AB 36 same R SB PAB 40 00 E ewitch box ABCD J6 cussas same R SB PAD 50 00 F Switch box cross 36 same R SB PX2 50 00 F UNA 7 LO EDA inici L 21 010 L 21 011 39 95 D TeleTrends TT512P modem same H 4P 512 79 95 E F The Gobbling Box same M 55 020 19 95 4 THE SOURCE 3 Volume Set n a L 60 020 40 00 E A M 32 054 49 95 E a Ae I ir ds same M 30 054 49 95 UITUERERE airis L 32 070 n a 29 95 XLR8er e w OK RAM n a R MB 003 175 00 F XLR8er e w 256K RAM n a R MB 004 255 00 F 4 LC 890 Laser Toner n a R LP 910 20 00 D X LC 890 Laser OPC Kit n a R LP 920 110 00 H 3 Final
201. nvenient file access method which can handle that The data record portion of the file could be handled with R or D access since all records are fixed length blocks That trailing field is a duplicate of the same data that s in the data DEF file and both are read and compared to ensure data integrity The data DEF file may also be kind of tough As long as your BASIC program is just going to set up data for adding to a data LB file why not just have it output a file in AUTO ADD mode format That was discussed some time ago in TMQ We also have a little booklet which discusses that file structure which we include with LB actually formed from TMQ excerpts I would recommend that approach LB Patch Fm Daniel L Srebnick I have an auto file for Little Brother M4 that creates several indices It worked fine until I recently applied the patch to the sort module that fixed an open file problem 1 myself never encountered this problem It seems that after creating the first index LB closes all files including the JOB file causing the auto sequence to terminate MISOSYS Products Tidbits A A a E Volume III ii Fm Roy Soltoff Daniel I have found the problem you were experiencing with the AUTO facility prematurely terminating after you applied the LBSORT1 FIX to LBSORT of LB It wasn t a case of the auto file being closed Actually the auto file is already closed earlier in the sort select module with the state of the aut
202. o 128 LD HL D Reset to start of buf TYPAHD1 CP A Set Z flag RET pkkkkx no character in CL buffer get from CL KK CLSCAN LD DE CLDCB GET RET pkkkkxk scans CL amp saves char called when scrolling y TYPTSK1 CALL CLSCAN scan for a char RET NZ Ret if no char LD HL TYPBUE p u type switch LD B A put char in B LD E HL p u PUTPTR LD _A E amp compare INC HL to GETPTR CP HL Jjump if key JR Z TYPTSK3 buffer empty p k k k Char to stuff check if buffer will overflow e x X INC A If the next loc n wraps CP HL to the GET loc n RET Z don t permit overrun TYPTSK3 PUSH HL save ptr to GETPTR INC HL pt to start of keybuf LD D 0 3 amp calculate PUT loc n ADD HL DE LD HL B store the char POP HL rcvr ptr to GETPTR DEC HL backup to PUTPTR INC HL Bump past the char RET P Back if not to 128 LD HL D else reset to lst RET position in buf 0 k X Routine to set the wakeup interrupt vector k X SETWAKE LD IY TYPTSK1 Add our wakeup SNDCTL4 LD DE CLDCB LD c 4 CTL RET p k k x Routine tests for any PRO WAM function key okak TESTKEY LD HL KEYTAB LD B 6 Init for 6 values TKEY1 CP HL INC HL Bump to next value RET Z Back with Z if match DINZ TKEY1 RET Else ret NZ on no match k X x Y Key sequence in code order for PRO WAM e k k Xk KEYTAB DB 93H 83H 92H 82H 91H 81H HELLO DB CURON HOME Mini Term DB LF
203. o allow cooling air to circulate around them and through any side grilles You will need connectors for the cable ends described later When installing them previously check carefully to see that The Hardware Corner Volume UI ii all teeth are accurately aligned The teeth bite into the cable insulation displace it and make contact with the wire inside tolerances are close and alignment is important Poor connections can cause problems and may be hard to trace The Tandy system for control cables on many of these computers requires the omission of certain pins from the cable connectors for drive selection TEAC drives and perhaps other brands do it differently and accept all pins See the section on Drive Jumpers To install the connectors open them by gently prying the end tabs that hold them together Then place one section of the connector near one end of the cable inserting the cable carefully so that it fits exactly within the space assigned to it in the connector One of the connector sections is made so the cable fits accurately so it is properly aligned with the teeth without sideways play this is the first of the two sections you should insert the cable in Be sure the connector is square with the cable length then holding connector parts and cable together firmly and carefully put the connector in a vise with parallel jaws be sure the jaws can t damage the connector and tighten evenly until the locking end pie
204. o facility preserved in the DEF file What actually was the problem was that I forgot to add a PUSH HL into the patch code That PUSH was supposed to insert a 0 return code at the conclusion of processing the LBSORT module Since a O was not on the stack LBSORT was passing an error return This is what kept the AUTO function from being re enabled There s a simple patch LBSORT2 FIX to apply to fix this up after the LBSORT1 FIX has been applied LBSORT2 FIX 09 15 88 Corrects application of LBSORT1 FIX Apply via PATCH LBSORT LBSORT2 D10 F3 21 00 00 E3 F10 F3 D1 21 00 00 I fixed it up by getting rid of the preceding POP DE which cleaned the stack and changed it to a EX SP HL after loading the 0 into HL Converting PFS File data to LB Brad Stiles Zugemachtes Feld 11 D 8551 Hemhofen Federal Republic of Germany I thought I would pass along some lessons learned in the process of converting several PFS File data bases to Little Brother PFS File is a rather nice data base simple to use and very flexible in regards to expanding field or record length on the fly But it is these same capabilities that make it difficult to deal with when printing reports or dumping data for other applications This is because both PFS File and PFS Report determine the report column length from the longest length of the corresponding data field which is never fixed or limited being printed and they don t allow truncation in th
205. oading solenoids I thought it might be a good idea to set jumpers so as to have the heads load come in contact with the disk when a drive was selected rather than when the motor on signal went out to all drives thus preventing a head rubbing against a disk except when the drive is selected That didn t work well in practice as sometimes when a file was being copied sector by sector from one disk to another or when DISKCOPY copied a disk track by track drive select has quickly changing back and forth and the heads were being rapidly loaded and unloaded in quick succession making a loud clatter and showing the drives were obviously being used in a manner they were never meant to be used So I changed head load to respond to motor on instead of drive select even though some heads were now sometimes rubbing on disks that weren t being read or written to As it turned out those drives treat the disks so gently that there was never any problem with disk wear or scratching On some TEAC drives I have seen over several years the manufacturer recommended using jumper U2 only on TRS 80 s or IBM PC s that was for TEAC FD55B 2x80 cyl drives More recently I have encountered a later version FD55BR 506 where jumpers are somewhat different I had good results in setting head loading as I wanted it by removing jumper HS In any event if you purchase your drives from Aerocomp and can t figure out the jumpers a call to their tech will probabl
206. ocesses So its entirely possible that the implementation of overlays was subject to the 64K limit due to a design oversight I would think it impossible to have a VMF exceed 64K for the linking of a single CMD file which could run on a Model 4 Since I have a new version of MLINK on the drawing board one which handles Microsoft FORTRAN modules I ll include a fix for this problem There would be no easy patch to supply other than one which detected the 16 bit overflow and aborted with an appropriate error message The fix may not be easy I ll probably have to look at using 24 bit register handling switch the VMF to LRL of 256 and use internal page buffering routines PRO MRAS MLINK Fm Jim Beard Roy You re right of course Nothing as complex as a compiler can be entirely free of bugs Remember Beard s Law If the probability of writing a line with a bug is MISOSYS Products Tidbits 57 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 Volume III ii p the probability of writing n lines without a bug is 1 p n Thus if you write a line with 99 probability that the line is bug free a program with 69 lines will have a 50 probability of having a bug A program with 2000 lines will have about one chance in a billion of being bug free Find them all The wheel has to squeak to get some oil For p small and n large a good approximation of this expression is exp n p It s all a matter of degree Since there is so much more
207. ode is in Pascal and pseudo Pascal but it is generally easy to understand I have the first edition a second edition is out now but I haven t bought it yet He explains a selection sort insertion sort shellsort bubble sort quicksort a couple of radix sorts direct and indirect heap sorts and a couple ways to do a merge sort Sorting is just one of the seven sections of the book Cua o e e o The Tower of Babel 45 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 Volume III ii THE NEXT GENERATION OPERATING SYSTEM FOR YOUR TRS 80 Model 4 4P 4D FROM THE ORIGINAL 39 a AUTHOR OF THE AO Sa MODEL 4 OPERATING SYSTEM LS DOS 6 3 is an update to the TRSDOS 8 x operating system for Tandy TRS 80 Mode 4 computers Due to the continuing popularity of the TRS 80 Model 4 this update was deesmed necessary to extend the usefultife ofthe computer through the 1990 s At the same time many other useful features have been added e Upward compatible with TRSDOS 6 x versions e Expanded date range 1980 through 1999 e Files now have a modification Time Stamp as well as a date LS DOS 6 3x The directory display shows file dates and times e New SVCs for screen print and decimal display e All new easy to use full screen ASCII text editor e Conversion program for pre 6 3 version disks adds new time date information e Automatic date time conversion when copying from TRSDOS 6 x to version 6 3 e One pass format
208. oe what if the Ao you RUN loads outside the overlay area I suspect its SLSR city huh Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaola Shane Fireworks a s depending on how much later the overlaid code gets used Fm Jim Beard Shane I believe you are safe if you keep to the 2400H to 3000H range Joe can tell you more about how to exit back to DOS prompt I once got him all bothered by suggesting to someone that they exit BASIC by SYSTEM BOOT The question was how do I exit BASIC without closing my files Also someone who wanted to make his MS DOS disks readable under LS DOS got my suggestion to FORMAT 1 q n I shouldn t do that Joe doesn t think it s funny either Em Joe Kyle DiPietropaola You could have a a that loads into the 2400H to 3000H region off loads 3000H to HIGH to disk moves itself to HIGHS protects itself and then invokes whatever you really wanted via CMNDR without DOS Subjects 25 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 Volume IIl ii the system command bit set and then puts things back later Messy Model 3 LDOS BASIC is smart enough to crunch itself up against HIGH moving all loose space low before invoking a command So you can execute anything you want Of course don t forget that the system loader doesn t honor HIGHS and no I don t want to bring that one up again Fm Jim Beard You re right about some people trying FORMAT 1 instead of HyperCross I wouldn t call that stupidity since lack of inf
209. oint as can be seen later Superlog uses its own stack but because it is task driven the Superlog driver needs to store the interrupt information before passing control to Superlog main This information comprising mainly of return addresses is held on the main system stack and depending where the interrupt occurred this information may take the stack below 0340H When using Superlog on its own this presents no problem however using Superlog and then calling Pro Wam will overwrite anything on the stack below 0340H and that is not a bug At this stage it will not affect either Pro Wam or Superlog and you are able to switch between them as much as desired The problem occurs when trying to return to the system You never know what will happen in most cases the system will crash I will try and explain in simple terms I hope the sequence of events leading to the problem I have mentioned above when Superlog is invoke the return address of the calling program is stored on the stack before passing control to Superlog Depending what else is running in the system this may push the main stack below 0340H Superlog maintains its own stack O7EOH for those interested in its own work area and has no further call on the main stack At this point everything is still OK If you now call Pro Wam which incidentally is already installed and is quietly sitting in high memory in most cases above OF300H but always in bank 0 Pro Wam will now take
210. om TRSDOS 6 2 LDOS or LS DOS format your new system disk in a new drive specifying number of sides and cylinders to suit For example to format double sided 80 cylinder in drive 2 FORMAT 2 SIDES 2 CYL 80 Then BACKUP SYS0 SYS 0 n S n newly installed destination drive That must be the very first thing you put on your new system disk FORMAT will already have put BOOT SYS on cylinder zero and DIR SYS on a central cylinder unless you had some reason to place it elsewhere with the DIR n parameter the system needs SYSO SYS to be able to boot and if it gets put somewhere else it may end up on the wrong side of the double sided disk and the system may not find it at bootup when it first starts up expecting to find a single sided disk in drive zero SYSO SYS is not required on a purely data non system disk i Then BACKUP 0 n NEW I S Q Y still using your DOS system disk as source in drive zero Answer the prompts with Y or N according to the files you need on your new bootup disk Copy everything you may conceivably need including SYSn SYS BASIC utilities etc That will give you your new double sided system disk If you are not familiar with what each SYSn SYS file does for the 4 s its in the Technical Reference Manual copy them all just to be sure You can easily delete any unwanted ones later DOS files are password protected If you have the passwords handy you can use REMOVE otherwise PURGE will do it The Hard
211. on N Min and Max for set of up to 60 variables When the program encounters a 0 or negative value on an item it assumes the data is missing and deletes the observation Program output goes to a user specified disk file KKK KKK KK KKK KE KKK EK KKK KEKE KKK AAA AAA AAA AAA AAA RARAS The Tower of Babel THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 38 Volume JIL ii This program compiles with over 29 000 bytes free To dimension for a larger variable set increase all but the BYTE array variables by the same constant In the event you wish the program to read more than 1000 cases extend the upper limit on the DO I 1 1000 loop kkkkkkkkkikkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkikkkkkkkkkikkkkikkkkkkkkkk N B This program is intended for use with a carefully structured Mapfile with an LRL of 81 The file should be structured as follows 1 The format of the data file including the beginning and ending parentheses should begin in the first column of record number 1 and may be up to 80 characters including the parentheses Use F fields to input both integer and real data into the X array 2 Records 2 through 7 of the Mapfile should contain room for 60 variable LABELs 10 per record in A8 format All 6 records should be present Optional records 8 through n can be put to any purpose the user finds appropriate CCE CCOCCCOCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC COCSC CSCS SS SS PS k kok k ES INTEGER I J K NX NS 60 LRL REAL X 60 XSUM 60 X2SUM 60 MEAN 60 VA
212. only with public releases of the product and other methods are used to distinguish the various beta test releases Fm Hardin Brothers Adam Some companies Word Perfect comes to mind as a good example don t change version numbers with each update Instead they use the file date to identify which version you have As I remember their reasoning goes something like this We don t want our users to think that there s anything wrong with the software so unless the user finds a bug there is no reason for him her to know that a newer version exists Fm Shane Dawalt Yeah Hardin but if a newer version exists doesn t that imply the older version had some sort of defficency cosmetic as well as operational Seems that when any piece of software is of a newer version the company selling the software would want EVERYONE to be up to date The reasoning you stated sounds to me that the company is actually saying To keep from being bothered by a mob of people wanting updates to a newer software version we will hide the fact that we indeed have a newer software version unless the version fixes a bug which we consider serious Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo Well Hardin the way I heard the reasoning was Gee when we find something wrong we should fix it right Should we follow the same policy as others do and only make Letters to the Editor Volume III ii these corrections available once a year or so How about if we make bu
213. ontents of a Document If you type LIST DOS HLP on my computer you get the Aiai half of the file with white letters on black and the last half reversed black letters on white Is there any way you can make this file all black on white or white on black Also this file Dos Hlp appears on the screen with no separation Letters to the Editor THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 o 17 Volume IIl ii between words and apparently contains some sort of code Why no separation between words Lazy Writer will give you the Checksum of a file What is Checksum QExactly what steps do you go through to apply a Patch I notice this procedure is mentioned rather frequently in your discussions and it appears to me that an awful lot of patches get applied QIf the program was designed for a specific Computer why would a Patch have to be applied I can understand if the said program is being adapted to work with an different Computer that you might have to apply a Patch to make it work Perhaps my questions will give you some ideas for the type of articles that are needed After all I rather imagine there are a flock of customers or potential customers out here with me who are in just about the same boat I am Weak on Computer knowledge but willing to learn I have more questions but will have to close and get this in the mail Thank you for your kind attention Fm MISOSYS Inc Your 26 1069 Rev A non gate array machine cannot use b
214. ood of 4000 It s interesting that a full Model IN with two external drives was about 4000 when it first came out A Model 4 was about 3000 with two more drives I spent about 4000 on my Model 2000 It seems like 3000 4000 has been par not including printers But this 386 will be more Now will it last longer than the Model I Here s some good news for Model 4 LB Data Manager users I have enlisted the services of RicLin Computer Products nee Rich Deglin author of MC to work on our LB package This work is long overdue My plan is to develop a new version for release sometime next year This work is to be broken up into phases The first phase was to groom all of the source code to compile under PRO MC on the Model 4 side of the house and Microsoft s C compiler 5 1 on the MS DOS side of the house I am happy to report that this first phase is complete A benefit of this completion is that the Model 4 version no longer has the memory restraints which the Aztec C compiled version had Thus LB4 can run with PRO WAM installed Since LB is a behaved program it works hand in hand with PRO WAM you can pop open a WAM window from LB and import export to your heart s content This is what I have been waiting for Note that if you are limited to a 128K Model 4 and are using the extra 64K as a MemDisk you cannot have PRO WAM installed You either need more than 128K XLR8er or Alpha Tech board or are operating with more than two flop
215. or Tandy cat 276 1564A at each end Plug one end of the cable onto the card edge underneath the computer marked as the external drive connection so the cable exits naturally towards the computer rear without bending around the connector and plug the other end onto the card edge behind the drive case Note previous statements about establishing the correct way around to plug the connector and item 2 under Caution Installing drives zero and one Planning the job You are switching drives zero and one which came originally with the computer I explained above that I recommend leaving these installed in case the computer has to go to a service center But there are other reasons If you buy bare TEAC 5 1 4 drives with the intention of installing them inside the computer you may find on some computers that they are longer than the originals and that rather severe surgery has to be performed on the tower that holds the drives which in turn may mean further disassembly and removal of the tower for attack with a hacksaw That may not be a tough job on some models where parts of the tower are plastic but I ve seen 4D s where the tower is heavy gauge sheet steel all riveted together and that is really tough to carve The screw holes in the tower may not fit the drives and will need some very careful work to drill accurately Drives must be mounted so the mountings don t put the drive frames under tension otherwise the frames may warp
216. orage register the same size as the one used for the product If we are multiplying two 8 but numbers both the multiplicand and the multiplier would need 16 bit registers That seems kind of wasteful Is there another way we can do our shifting Let s examine an algorithm where we shift the multiplier and the product left Since the product has to already be stored ina double wide register we save one double wide register by not shifting the multiplicand In this example I ll shift the partial product initialized to zero left Then I shift the multiplier one bit left and test it for zero or one If a one I ll add the multiplicand to the partial product If a zero I ll skip Then I loop until all bit positions of the multiplicand have been examined The reason that I shift the partial product left first is that I have to wind up adding the multiplicand as the last thing I do assuming the last multiplier bit is a 1 So I need to shift the partial product before I test the multiplier bit In this example I have built out the multiplier to 4 bits so it s easier to see I have to loop four times I am also noting the letter C if the left shifted multiplicand bit is a one meaning add or an NC meaning skip if the bit was a zero Init O partial product 1101 muitiplicand multiplier Step 1 left shift shift product left multiplier left multiplicand partial product left shift shift product left multiplier left
217. ords 310 LSET LRLS CHR 64 LRLS Logical Record Length 64 bytes 320 LSET FSTDATS CHR 8 FSTDAT First record that contains data 330 LSET KEYLENS CHRS 8 KEYLENS key length used by PSORT for sorting 340 PUT 1 1 CLOSE 1 350 SYSTEM PRO PaDS amp LS FED II John Grindey 1 Chapel Terrace Beeley Matlock Derbyshire DE4 2NT Great Britain Here are some patches for a couple of your discontinued product s namely PRO PaDS and LSFEDII that have been asked for by other TMQ reader s Patches for PRO PaDS for 6 3 dating With these patches PRO PaDS directory is compatible with all 6 x dating I have used PDS dir entry byte 9 bit s 4 and 5 which were reserved for future use to store the year s two extra bit s as in the standard directory and the rest of the directory is as before so it will read the directory of PDS files created before the patches were applied The patched version of PRO PaDS will only operate with 6 3 it uses SVC 95 which is not in 6 2 and should only be used with it and no testing for pre 6 3 is included There is a choice of dating types either the original type where the date is taken from the system or use of the file s original creation date this patch uses code from Notes from MISOSYS 4 Patch PPADSD FIX ALL PATCHES are to the members that have been copied from PRO PaDS not to PRO PaDS itself As the patching is fairly lengthy I have created a JCL file PDSMOD
218. ormation would be the real cause 1 felt guilty as soon as 1 posted the message A couple of hours later I saw your reply and left it up but I was going to yank it It wouldn t be hard to write a loader which 1 fit between 2400H and 3000H 2 honored HIGHS and 3 would save BASIC and add command line arguments Something like JCL would have to be invoked to call another module to restore BASIC to memory and return I suppose Hmmm Fm Dave Spiceland Shane Aha Therefore running CMD programs in BASIC is impossible 1 had thought it could be done in Model III NEWDOS Thanks Fm MISOSYS Ine Yes it could And it could also be done in Model HI LDOS BASIC DOSPLUS and about every DOS except Tandy s And you can run certain CMD programs under Model 4 BASIC if they adhere to the restrictions noted Don t forget that Model 4 BASIC is stock Microsoft What Microsoft did at the least was to allow you to access LIBrary commands via the SYSTEM command string statement On the other hand Microsoft originally had BASIC ORG d at 3000H you would have lost another 2 5K of program space We convinced them to ORG BASIC at 2600H and separate out that portion of BASIC from 2600H 2FFFH into an overlay BASIC OV1 Upon return from a SYSTEM command BASIC reloads the overlay This lets you access any CMD program which runs entirely within the library overlay region by using the library RUN command as a program executer as Joe noted
219. ossible We are very pleased for you and by we I mean both I and my wife Pam When the MQ arrived she called to announce its arrival and also the good news Pam is not at all interested in Computers but she has an enduring interest in the Family section of the MQ Here s a plea for help with an Alwrite Electric Webster Pro wam conflict My normal system configuration except for the printer routing is indicated in the following DEVICE B and MEMDIR listings Note listings omitted to conserve space as the end result indicates they are not needed for publication editor I have an Alpha Tech 512K Ram Board and use the RAMDRIV4 DCT driver from RAMDRV LQR on Compuserve The configuration also includes your KSMPLUS2 FLT The DOS is at LS DOS 6 3 0 K CustiD 15815 with all patches obtained from the LSI FIX files on the DISKNOTES disks The DOS is also patched with your AT patches from DISKNOTE VI with the correction from MQ Vol Lii pg 110 applied DOS Subjects THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 29 Volume III ii I have always noted that when using Alwrite Rel 1 13 together with Electric Webster and or PRO WAM 2 x Ser 010265 the Device B command will eventually result in the normal display followed by a bunch of sporadic characters and junk This never resulted in any serious inconvenience until a few months ago when I began using the machine on my job 8 10 hours a day At this time I noticed unusual behav
220. oth the XLR8er and a hires graphics board Since your board is an early one I can t be positive that the XLR8er will work If it doesn t we will refund your money Incidentally I believe H I Tech chose XLR8 as a moniker for the board since you prounce it accelerate The XLR8er makes your machine run faster thus it will do that for every program you run You cannot presently fit a graphics board in there in addition to an XLR8er board The problem is a physical one your 26 1069 cannot work the XLR8er with a connecting cable longer than 3 5 The graphics board installation prevents the mounting of the XLR8er I currently have a Model 4 Graphix Solution board which I am trying to install into a 26 1069 Rev C along with an XLR8er board If I succeed I will advise folks in TMQ I have published that answer before See TMQ ILiv Spring 1988 page 19 For those who missed it MISOSYS is pronounced MY SEW SIS it is an acronym for Microcomputer Software Systems I originally wanted to use the three letters MSS but Michael Shrayer Software beat me to the punch How many remember him Electric Pencil hint hint The LRL can be any number from 1 to 256 That s all that the DOS supports Most folks if not most high level languages use a fixed length of 256 which is the size of one sector and do their own blocking deblocking The latter terms are used to denote the operation of working with a fixed record length less than 256 chara
221. paraged them the way in which they now disparage others My best wishes to Brenda Stefanie Stacey and Benjamin Charles Ah yes newborns are wonderful even though there are 2 00 am feedings colic and wet diapers Of course my memory may be faulty after twenty seven years Four years ago I learned that a newborn is best when its your granddaughter Now we re expecting again our second grandchild is due in December Fm MISOSYS Inc I suppose all of us are guilty at one time or another of being unable to revert to novice level It takes a great deal of skill to teach and perhaps a certain kind of personality There are those of us who have spent years de veloping an expert skill level but have a difficult time in relating to those newcomers with the questions we have long ago forgotten Perhaps those of us who you tried to reach in your letter will reflect on what you said and come to grips with this problem should that have been whom you tried Now as far as grandparents are concerned according to my mother in law as related by my wife nothing brings a bigger smile to a grandparent than seeing their now grown up child struggling with the same problems in dealing with the new offspring as they dealt with with us when we were little Bill Cosby s TV dad raises that issue a number of times on the Cosby TV show I see it at home I m forever telling my children to turn off the light when they leave their room and close th
222. ponding function This version of TERM APP appears on DISK NOTES 3 2 it has already been placed on the PRO WAM distribution disk along with an appropriate note PRO WAM and SuperLog Fm MISOSYS Inc In the previous issue of TMQ ILL page 3 I noted that John Coyne of the NATGUG user group in Great Britain had succeeded in discovering the root of the problem in using Superlog together with PRO WAM Gordon Collins editor of NATGUG NEWS the official publication of the group was kind enough to send me the text file of John s article for publication in TMQ For those who may have an interest in corresponding with NATGUG here s their address NATGUG NEWS c o Gordon Collins 11 Elizabeth Road Sutton Coldfield West Midlands B73 SAR Great Britain Tel 021 354 3299 f Moving SuperLog 4 into the XLR8 Board by John Coyne I have been using Pro Wam for some time now and must confess it is a fine utility but 1t has what I consider one shortcoming it lacks a large window filing system database call it what you like Superlog on the other hand does have a large window but lacks the many facilities of Pro Wam however these two utilities can be made to compliment each other Superlog is a database which can be called up through a windowing facility similar to Pro Wam but each of these two utilities fulfill the windowing task in a different manner Pro Wam always works from bank O and uses the allocated ram bank as a dat
223. program I m working on is huge Not so much in executable code as it is in the source code I attempted the INCLUDE assembly and got no where fast Just too slow I went to the relocatable assembly since I need only reassemble the source modules I modify then relink them all The linking doesn t take but a couple of seconds The assembly was taking upwards of 2 minutes and when you re fixing bugs the wait just makes all that more time for me to go crazy in BTW it is either PUBLIC or GLOBAL in MRAS MRAS accepts either directive so you re safe Fm Shane Dawalt Jim I ve got a hex calculator round here but it s nice to just look and see rather than performing the extra operation of fetching the calculator and adding and hoping the correct buttons are pressed which I tend to blunder sometimes I may look into a program which using the LST from MRAS and the SYM from MLINK to generate an MISOSYS Products Tidbits THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 58 Volume III ii absolute output Now that I know the code I can debug by simply watching the registers change It s just the first few debuggings I get lost on Fm Jim Beard Shane The software to convert a relative map to an absolute map using data from a loader map should be easy time consuming to write But I haven t seen one lately The problem with uploading or marketing one is that a version change in either the compiler or loader will require a rewr
224. programs such as ALDS ALLWRITE BASCOM BASIC C COBOL EDAS ELECTRIC WEBSTER FED FORTRAN HARTForth Little Brother MULTI BASIC MZAL PFS FILE PASCAL Payroll PowerMail PROFILE SUPERSCRIPSIT TASMON VISICALC ZEUS and more Runs on PCs PS 2s compatibles and laptops with at least 384K of memory ONLY emulates Model 4 mode of Model 4 To use it you must transfer your old files to MSDOS disks using PCXZ or Hypercross Prices Order PC4 79 95 alone PC4H 104 95 with Hypercross SX3PCM4 PC4Z 119 95 with PCXZ Available on 3 5 disk format PCXZ reads TRS80 disks on a PC XTorAT PC Cross Zap PCXZ is a utility that lets you copy files to or from TRS 80 disks ona PC or AT Transfers alltypes of files Converts BASIC automatically no need to save in ASCII first You can also formata disk copy disks explore read and write sector data repair bad directories and muchmore Supports all double density Model I III and 4 formats Requires PC XT AT or compatible You must have at least one 5 1 4 regular or high density drive and 256K memory Not for PS 2s Order PCXZ iii iii 79 95 Exclusive Only PCXZ lets you repair and modify TRS 80 disks on a PC Read CP M CoCo amp PC disks on your TRS80 Use HYPERCROSS to COPY files between TRS 80 disks and those irom many CP M and IBM PC type computers on your TRS 80 I III or 4 4P FORMAT alien disks read their directories copy files to and irom them copy directly from one alien
225. puter and wish to add two external drives or change from the computer s original drives to others of greater capacity or better quality adding or not external drives up to a maximum total of 4 numbers zero through 3 etc I first became involved in the matter when using model III and the quality of the original drives I got was unbearably bad and each computer had been to a service shop about five times for drive adjustment and alignment before I realized that they either didn t know how to fix them or just plain couldn t due to the poor quality of the drives I was also having problems reading disks generated in other computers probably indicating severe misalignment That led me to disconnect the Original drives and use others I bought at the same time adding a pair of external drives to increase the available disk KB on line My experience is limited to models III 4 and 4D I am not covering the 4P on which I have had no experience there was an article on adding drives to the 4P in an 80 Micro some time ago Caution There was an error in showing how certain connections had to be soldered to a board which was corrected in a subsequent issue When deciding to use drives purchased separately for numbers zero through three I also wanted the maximum possible The Hardware Corner 67 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 Volume III ii capacity at that time there was no 3 1 2 drive I knew of that would be suitable so I con
226. py drives or a hard drive Now phase one was not supposed to incorporate changes however Rich and I discussed some small changes and introduced two We added the View Modify Path command to the Model 4 which you use to specify what disk drive the various data files are on This speeds up the process of getting to your data And we reduced the number of keystrokes needed to specify sorting criteria The Blurb ar maa mm O ar Volume IIL ii LB is a very large and complex set of programs As such it requires a great deal of field test Therefore I have not cut this new version into production But I will make a copy available to any current LB user so you can try it out All you need to do is send me your existing LB executable disk and I ll return it with a copy of this beta version of LB As a service to the Model 111 4 community of users I d like to set aside some space in TMQ to publicize the following three things First a list of phone numbers of companies still servicing and supporting this market If you are a company who sells Model M1 4 products send me the information This must come from the company not a statement from a third party Second 1 would like to publish a list of public computer bulletin boards If you run a BBS that supports the Model III 4 please forward the particulars to me Third I want to publish a list of computer clubs which support the TRS 80 user Please forward your input I don t envision th
227. r SAID advanced full screen text editor which can be used to generate your assembler source code C language source code or edit any type of ASCII file PRO MRAS Bug Fm Shane Dawalt Roy PRO MRAS v1 0a insists there is an ILLEGAL ADDRESSING MODE error with the following instruction LD A 80 LOW SYS SET SHR 1 LOW SYS SET In theory this should subtract the LSB of SYS_SET from 80 then shift that result right by 1 The shifted result should then be added to the LSB of SYS_SET This final result should then be loaded into A I thought MRAS was choking on the expression length so I broke it up as follows and rerun MRAS TMPY EQU 80 LOW SYS SET TMPY SHR 1 TMPYi EQU LD A TMPY1 LOW SYS_SET MRAS gave the same error On the line with the symbol TMPY1 I retyped the long expression as LD A 80 LOW SYS SET 2 LOW SYS SET and this assembled fine There is no difference in meaning just in syntax Why doesn t MRAS like the previous coding The immediate mode operand was calculated correctly with the SHR 1 replaced by 2 The program runs perfectly Sorry didn t say what SYS_SET was did I SYS_SET was an MISOSYS Products Tidbits THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 56 Volume III ii EQUate in a definition file which was INCLUDEd way in advance of it s usage Before I uploaded the message I checked for all my usual clutsy mistakes Didn t find any so I though I d see what your diagnosis
228. r if you don t mind doing pasteups where graphics are required then consider Pro Soft s ALLWRITE After an extensive evaluation period of almost a year we ended up adopting this formatter Since it is not available for MSDOS that committed us also to the Model 4 The laser package available as a separate add on for ALLWRITE and which incidentally is also available for the Model 3 and works quite nicely under LDOS5 3 provides the necessary utilities and font tables for most needs Supported fonts include both Times Roman sizes 6 30 point and Helvetica same sizes as well as all of the HP internal fonts These fonts are available in regular bold and italics Hewlett Packard does not support bold italics so the Allwrite people thoughtfully added an internal Allwrite command to produce that as a fourth font Also an add on but one worth the small purchase price is a set of programmer utilities for font management and for the creation of special font table files for customized use Allwrite supports just about every capability of the standard laserjet or DOS Subjects THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 mes yee Volume IIL ii laserjet plus Rough copies can be printed on just about any standard dot matrix printer also This is an important consideration Laser printers do not have ribbons but the cartridges and toner packs run anywhere from 100 to 200 depending on brand Will Allwrite do anything that you could possibl
229. r programming Relax with an interactive fiction MegAdventure from MISOSYS Adventures sharpen your wits and keep you on your toes Meg Adventures challenge you like no other Pit your wits against an ill tempered dragon Track it down in the mysterious northem mountains the likes of which only heart quickening tales of terror and death are told Lair of the Dragon contains well over 160 locations over 200 recognizable objects and has a vocabulary of over 600 words Lair of the Dragon M 86 021 Just 29 95 S amp H 2 US 3 Foreign MC amp VISA MISOSYS Inc P O Box 239 Sterling VA 22170 0239 800 MISOS YS or 703 450 4181 Programmer s Journal downloads are now available from MISOSYS forum on Compuserve GO PCS49 ED ASM 86 Integrated Assembler Editor assembler linker and debugger are integrated into a single EXE file to ease you into assembly language Handles 8086 80186 80286 and 8087 A full featured line EDITOR with intra line editing block move copy partial save load A full screen Turbo type editor included ASSEMBLER supports structured coding can directly generate COM or EXE file assemble to memory for faster debugging The DEBUGGER supports symbolic disassembly of arbitrary code to disk Purchase now and get a free update to ED ASM 386 available soon MISOSYS Inc P O Box 239 Sterling VA 22170 0239 800 MISOSYS or 703 450 4181
230. re important to use a compiler which is more stable in terms of less bugs than simply working around a known broken compiler Of course I don t get down and dirty with a compiler bug If I find one I report it and the project gets delayed until a fix comes out Unfortunately companies can t do this Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo Shane In a world full of totally rational people many decisions could be made based on doing the right thing as they are now but with the advantage that right could be defined quite a bit differently RE using a compiler wich is more stable in terms of less bugs than simply working around a known broken compiler Given that choice I d pick the fixed compiler too Unfortunately those aren t the two options you have except in rare instances The choice is typically between the older better understood product and a newer roduct that has as many or more bugs in unknown locations The ones you found in the old version may or may not be fixed or may have merely been moved This brings up an interesting discussion I read recently I think in the latest issue of Byte An engineer developing a safety related product was discussed The engineer picked the Intel 8008 microprocessor product used in a dual redundant CPU design for a control application The 8008 hasn t been in production for years and is basically the second microprocessor ever developed It has an address space of 16K
231. report Near the end of Summer we bought a lot down at Lake Anna where we go boating We also picked up an old 24 foot trailer from a neighbor and had it trucked to our lot So we now keep our small boat down there and have the option of breaking away from the hustle and bustle of life I think that it is important to be able to get away Don t let life slip by without enjoying some of the leisure activities The Blurb Volume 111 ii Letters to the Editor Discontinued Software Fm Bruce J Hutchison I missed out on some of your now discontinued products Knowing your position about copied bootleg software would you have any objection to my putting a message on CIS offering to buy used original disks and documentation from anyone who has no need of them anymore 1 would also offer to trade original legitimate packages that I either never used or do not use anymore If you have no objection and assuming someone is willing to sell trade could I then send the original disk s to you for refreshing and or updating with the appropiate fee Thanks for staying in the TRS 80 market I use my Mod 4 as a king sized tinker toy and have no interest in the overpriced MS DOS world Long live the Trs 80 Fm MISOSYS Inc Buying used software is a egtima activity You buy used machines don t you Phone Numbers a la TRS 80 Fm Jim Beard Here s my phone list for Tandy products I would advise you to contact a couple and ge
232. rest similar or possibly related discussions in the MQ Charles Ainsworth Vol ILiv pg 92 and your Blurb in Vol M i pg 3 re the system stack evolution I have included a self addressed stamped envelope in the hopes that you can shed some light and solution on this situation I realize that you are backed up with activities right now but if you would Q this up for future consideration I would really appreciate it Example of unusual behavior with software KSM filter codes getting through into Alwrite text instead of the normal Alwrtte macro stored under same code eg KSM lt Clear gt E device b Alwrite lt Clear gt E to end of file Fm MISOSYS Inc Brad The biggest clue as to unfortunate behavior is your statement about the DEVICE B command display When the device map produces a junked up display at the conclusion of the correct device streams it is caused by a Corruption of the page of memory which contains the device control blocks DCBs It so happens that the DCBs are stored in memory from 200H through 2FFH The system stack is placed at 37FH and is used towards lower memory It is also split into two parts one from 37FH to 340H and a second DOS Subjects Volume IT ii from 33FH to 300H This provides a 64 byte stack which is acceptable for system use 1 purposely designed the system stack to immediately follow the DCB page so as to incur the least possible damage from a stack overflow there is no pro
233. retive language of considerable power It is considered to be best for interactive type applications less good for number crunching though it s not too shabby It is very fast 10 times faster than compiled BASIC and produces very compact code the same application in FORTH will often be smaller than in m l because of threading However it tends to be difficult to leam especially if your first language was BASIC or FORTRAN The code drives conventional programmers up the wall because it just LOOKS weird even though if well done it is highly structured Go by B Dalton s and get a copy of Brodie s book Starting FORTH What good is FORTH Well there seems to be an awful lot of commercial processcontrol applications done with it industrial controls etc and many of the games at your favorite video palace are programmed in FORTH as well I understand there s lots of openings on the West Coast and in Florida for good FORTHers Oh if you learn FORTH be prepared to get a really odd look from other programmers when you tell them what you re up to It s the same look every time Somewhere between moral outrage and utter disgust The MISOSYS FORTH is first rate and that s according to professionals I m just a neophyte myself MISOSYS Products Tidbits THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 53 Volume III ii Fm Pete Granzeau Bill difficult very is Forth opinion humble my In Fm Bill Brandon Pete
234. riday December 23rd and will reopen fresh as a daisy on Monday January 2nd 1989 I wish you and yours a happy and safe holiday season We ll be off to the mountains of North Carolina stuffing 16 family members into the in laws cabin near Edneyville Turning now to other topics I ll try to keep this brief For one thing I am down to the wire in getting this TMQ prepared for the printer So what else is new I always find myself short on time and long on work But its great to be busy I thought it was time to pop a new machine in to here to help in speeding up the computing process So I went out and got an AST Premium 386 machine which hums along at 20 MHz A stock machine comes with 1 Meg of RAM and a 1 2 Meg 5 25 floppy I added a small 20 Meg drive for now as I intend to build this machine up over next year The memory card takes the small in line memory modules SIMMS Because of the volatility of the DRAM market these days most computer manufacturers are supporting both 256K and 1 Meg SIMMS the AST 386 does The memory board handles four banks of SIMMs four SIMMs per bank The first bank holds only 256K SIMMs that s the 1 Meg the other three banks hold either type You need to add SIMMs in groups of four to fill a bank Now the AST machine uses 70 nanosecond static column SIMMs which go for about 595 per SIMM the 256K SIMMs go for 140 But anyone who gets into the big machine market will find that 2 Megabytes of RAM is
235. rrectly upon startup BASIC sets a special flag in the operating system This flag tells the operating system that only library commands may be executed If you attempt to run a program other than a library command an error message will be displayed and you will be returned to BASIC Fm Jim Beard Dave 1 believe that the system overlay area 2400H to 3000H can be used from BASIC via the SYSTEM command You can check where a CMD file loads using CMDFIX BAS in DL1 I think of the LDOS forum If you compile languages yourself you can probably force them to load at 2400H You have 3K to work with If you are using commercial products check them out with CMDFIX Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaola Dave The other replis give you some of the story but the key is this BASIC sets the only execute this command if it is a internal system command bit before executing SYSTEM arg statement So if you know that your program will fit in the X 2400 to X 3000 area you can force it though by using the RUN verb As in SYSTEM RUN BSORT blah blah where BSORT CMD is an external utility Hah folks scoffed and said what s this silly command pee for Fm Shane Dawalt Jim If I recall correctly my TE phrase of the year BASIC sets the LIBRARY execution only bit bit 4 of CFLAG in LSDOS I don t believe the system allows execution of CMD files when this bit is set ds of their load origin Fm Shane Dawalt One question J
236. rum which can load restore a RAMDISK image That may be has to be faster than BACKUP Also see Michel Houde s contribution in this issue Fm Frank Slinkman Roy I press the reset button EXTREMELY gingerly always when all 10 banks are used and it is being used as the system disk Since I wrote that message though I ve noticed that sometimes not always it stays intact if I use only banks 3 10 Let me experiment a little bit more with it and PH give you a more detailed report later The Hardware Corner Volume III ii Fm Roy Soltoff Frank Some Model 4s lose their refresh if the RESET button is depressed for too long a time Don t know why Maybe Joe knows Fm Frank Slinkman But I DON T press it too long I barely touch the damn thing I ve noticed that if I use the top 8 banks instead of the top 10 the ramdisk survives more often but not all the time Does make it sound like refresh problem doesn t it Or does it Fm MISOSYS Inc It does Sounds like a local machine problem Some 4s are more touchy to the RESET button than others Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaola Frank I ve never really done an analysis on this but the problem is that the Z80 and 64180 supplies the refresh in software via refresh cycles during M1 opcode fetch cycles That is if the CPU ain t running code you don t get RAM refresh On the Model 4 systems the reset button is tied to the CPU RESET input rather than generating
237. ry number system touched on converting numbers between our familiar decimal system and binary and discussed the first two functions addition and subtraction It s time to move on the the other two basic functions multiplication and division Again as before since our computers are steeped in binary Operations multiplication will be discussed using binary mathematics Binary you shall see is quite a bit easier to deal with than our decimal system But before I go further let s take up a quick review of decimal multiplication Everyone put away their calculators Get your brain back in gear Terminology first for those who have forgotten the terms and for those who were never taught them Multiplication has three components a multiplicand a multiplier and a product In mathematics multiplication generally follows the commutative law which means that A times B is equal to B times A But that is not always the case in implementation especially with floating point But that will come later In any event for our discussion here when multiplying any two numbers which one is the multiplicand and which one is the multiplier is arbitrary it involves the position As an example let s multiply 13 by 5 multiplicand multiplier product I added the terminology of each component Notice 1 said multiply 13 by 5 That puts 13 on top But that was a simple Roy s Technical Corner Volume IILii multiplication Yo
238. s from an offset to START by only two bytes If we temporarily add two to the relative branch offset in the first jump relative instruction it would branch directly to START and thereby bypass the test for filtering The code illustrated in the TERM program first makes sure it can locate the WAM module in memory If so it positions the pointer returned by GTMOD to the address of the jump relative offset It then saves this address in the ENAWAM routine It does that so that the routine can later ensure that it has a valid pointer before it starts altering code in memory Any PRO WAM application can use this same trick to temporarily disengage and re engage the PRO WAM facility MISOSYS Products Tidbits Volume IM ii The whole purpose of disabling PRO WAM is to ensure that while TERM has established an interrupt routine within its code space for COM wakeup vector processing you cannot invoke another PRO WAM application which would overwrite that interrupt routine This version of TERM still allows you to invoke an application while in TERM say the DIALER facility to autodial a telephone number by testing keystrokes for the function key code values normally interpreted by PRO WAM If it senses that you pressed a function key it then disables the interrupt routine thereby avoiding a system crash then re enables PRO WAM for one keystroke If you then enter a function key code a second time PRO WAM sees that and invokes the corres
239. s 60 80 PRINT 2 LEFTS field variable LEN field variable gt x CHRS 13 Should be used where x is the column separation added by REPORT Be sure to field the dummy column and the carriage return but don t bother to print them to AUTO JOB If the BASIC program corresponds accurately to OLDDATA TXT the program will generate an AUTO JOB file that will show each record in the same configuration It can be edited and examined for consistency Populating the Little Brother Data Base a The LB data base shouid be defined to correspond to the original FILE data base If fields are added or deleted allowances must be made in the reporting or AUTO JOB generation phases of this procedure Before using the LB 6 Run automatically command the appropriate screen format must be defined Define Screen Formats and the format must also be set as the default screen Set Screen Add Index Populate the LB data base with the FILE data by choosing Run Automatically and entering Use and AUTO When Data exceeds the Capacity for one Report As noted earlier when the FILE data base has greater than 14 fields or the report exceeds the maximum report width 256 MISOSYS Products Tidbits THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 52 Volume IIL ii the data base must be split into two or more separate reports The second report should include the fields not included in the first report and the dummy field as the last
240. s Tandy might not service a unit with alien drives inside My own drives zero through three were all installed outside and I used drives provided in their own enclosures two half height drives per enclosure with their own independent power supplies At times I have run them all so hard for hours on end that I feared overheating so I set up a household fan blowing on the cases to keep them cool If I had used internal drives that way maybe the computer innards would have been fried It is interesting to note that many newer computer models are provided with internal fans to avoid component overheating Bootup disk If you are changing drives zero and one from single to double sided and or from 40 to more cylinders in the case of III s or 4 s or perhaps from double sided 40 cylinder to double sided 80 cylinder on a 4D you will require at least one bootable system disk formatted to suit the new drives Don t work yourself into a corner and end up with new drives and no disk you can boot up with If you are installing four new drives install numbers two and three first and format and prepare a bootable disk in drive two for instance with the existing system disk in drive zero If you are only installing new drives as zero and one hook one up temporarily to prepare your boot disk Although it has been described before in several places there may still be folks who don t quite remember how to set up a bootable double sided disk Fr
241. s2 sys lsidos d using xlr8s2 fix o o sysl2 sys lsidos d using x1r8s12 fix o o backup utility d using xlr8bu fix o o sysO sys lsidos d using xlsys0a fix boot sys lsidos d using xlboota fix o n sys2 sys lsidos d using xlr8s2 fix sysl2 sys lsidos d using x1r8s12 fix backup utility d using xlr8bu fix XLR8S12 FIX Patch to SYS12 SYS Apply via PATCH SYS12 SYS LSIDOS XLR8S12 DO3 7C 12 F03 7c 09 DO3 86 40 F03 86 20 D03 9C 40 F03 9C 20 op XLSYSOA FIX To use XLR8 special features 03 Sep 88 PATCH sys0 sys lsidos USING xlsys0a fix must also PATCH boot sys lsidos xlboota fix O N d06 0 57 5c 7B C9 06 f0 c5 57 AF 06 08 d06 5 ED 38 7c 32 02 02 C9 06 5 87 23130 01 82 10 F8 d09 74 CD 08 09 74 3E 66 EF d0b 97 67 D6 06 0b 97 F5 21 78 00 d0b c2 E1 OF 19 0b c2 F1 32 02 02 dod 07 CD 21 f 0d 07 00 00 00 al0 2e 3E 40 ED 39 32 ED 38 36 E6 FC F6 02 ED 39 36 AF f10 2e 00 0000 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 XLR8BU FIX Patch to BACKUP CMD Apply via PATCH BACKUP UTILITY XLR8BU D17 22 12 F17 22 09 rc el D17 28 40 F17 28 20 ica 43 D17 3C 40 F17 3C 20 yor 74 eop t 4 The Hardware Corner 80 MISOSYS ra o TM i MISOSYS has been supplying PRO WAM Version 2 a been supplying LB Data Manager Window amp Application Manager professional quality software A flexible data manager since 1978 that s over nine l Our applications
242. sette mode prompt is due to the faster speed of the machine I don t know if its due to not being able to read the ROM probably not because that s what s displaying the message but if you slow down the XLR8er prior to issuing the BOOT command it reBOOTs fine My guess is that the timing loops in the ROM boot code are executed too fast with the XLR8er running at maximum thus the ROM boot loader doesn t see the disk drive I looked at the BOOT command code It executes an SVC_0 That SVC_0 does a few things It first moves a small routine to 4300H That routine switches the machine in to the ROM Model II mode then does a RST 0 The RST 0 is then executed from ROM If you have a 4P then the RST 0 is executed from RAM becasue the routine noted above does nothing on a 4P The RST 0 code in DOS 6 switches in the 4P boot ROM which then continues to execute the code starting at address 5 Therefore in order to have the BOOT command switch back to a slower XLR8er speed you ould have to come up with some code to replace the BOOTCOD stub routine I don t think that has a great deal of priority to use up valuable low memory space However you could probably add that code to SYS1 There s some space at the end Grab THE SOURCE and hop to it The RAM disk should not disappear during a reBOOT It may be your Model 4 doing that Try to not lean on the RESET button too long There are also fast loading dumping utilities in the LDOS fo
243. ster environment Every program can spawn any Exe or Com program including a new copy of Command Com Any competent programmer could write a better batch interpreter than Command Com s and include it as part of a new shell If you want to write a new shell to replace Command Com it has to be able to provide the interface that programs expect keeping an environment spawning processes interpreting BAT files and user commands But other than that it can do almost anything you wish Do you want to give MS DOS the look and feel of LS DOS Simply write a shell which implements the commands in LS DOS s LiBrary Do you want your DOS machine to act like a Mac Use Windows as a shell Do you want Command Com to be more forgiving of typographical errors in a command line Simply replace or supercede it with a shell which can handle typos neat algorithms for doing so in the latest Dr Dobbs and Al Expert Do you want your computer to ONLY run WordPerfect Simply replace Command Com with a small shell which only and always invokes WordPerfect You could designate WP as the shell program itself but then there wouldn t be any environment strings set up for it to find its dictionary and macros Besides Command Com doesn t receive any environment from MS DOS since it is in charge of maintaining the environment itself BTW spawn should be able to spawn ANY EXE or COM program assuming enough memory space It simply calls the sam
244. stuff I wonder about at 3 in the morning Egads Fm MISOSYS Inc We have a shrink wrap machine here Actually that s two things One is called an L sealer and the other is a shrink oven which has a conveyer belt running through a metal housing oven which has plenty of heating coils in it The oven runs off of a 230V 30A line The L sealer is also used to poly wrap THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Letters to the Editor Volume 111 1i Em Shane Dawalt Oh You wrap the product seal it with the L sealer put it on the belt amp bake it rare I bet you don t let that oven run too long between wrapping parties do ya Fm MISOSYS Inc Actually I rarely use the oven except when I go to batch production It takes too much power and generates too much heat Of course it does feel good in the winter when its quite chilly down in the dungeon MAXDOS 6 3 for the MAX 80 Fm Bryan Headley Roy I see you forgot to mention MAXDOS in the last issue If you don t mind I d like to upload a short text description of MAXDOS into one of the data libraries I have had good sales selling to the CP M based Max 80 community I d like to reach the LDOS 6 3 crowd now Also in this issue there s talk of modifying Model MI HD Profile to the Model 4 Why when Small made a Model IV version already The Model 4 has a page to itself in the new catalog with all the Model 4 software still available Profile should still be there or
245. t for planning and scheduling a sequential series of activities After one editing session I accidentally edited the calendar directly from the sort mode without first returning to unsort then returning to the day page and then returning to the main menu Everything turned to manure The calendar entries were pure chaos and every free granule on the HD partition was filled with crud No where in the manual did it warn of this danger Thank heavens for backups I then began a campaign to resuscitate TMgr and PrjMgr I Suffered third degree frustration trying to discuss possible solutions to my problems with our RS CC experts I finally phoned Ft Worth It took eight different long distance calls to discover someone at Tandy who knew that RS had a version of both TMgr and PriMgr that worked with a HD set up Goodbye DM 4 If local RS CC people knew their own products I could have saved money time and anguish Surely RS could create a mailing list of customers from a data file based on product registration cards and notify us of the availability of new versions of their software They knew how to contact us to demand that we update our TRSDOS Oh well someday I ll buy a new computer BUT IT WON T BE FROM RS I use ProSoft s Allwrite and Dotwriter Cornucopia s Electric Webster PowerSoft s Super Utility and Tool Belt and MISOSYS PRO WAM in Mod 4 and RS s TMgr and PriMgr and Powersoft s Tool Box in Mod MI I ve jus
246. t purchased PowerSoft s Back Rest so I can backup individual Mod III data files that are too large for a floppy disk I ve also acquired a modem and after I m certain of what I m doing with it Pll probably signup with CompuServe My wish list includes Little Brother order enclosed and a good thesaurus that s compatible with Allwrite I began this letter to respond to the comments of some of your Compuserve correspondents concerning the stupidity of some TRS 80 users TMQ Vol 2 iti and iv I know you ve experienced a terrible pain in the posterior over the date business and the public s confusion of your LDOS 5 3 with LSPs LSDOS 6 3 The antagonism this confusion has generated yours and ours was misdirected Tandy should be the target not you and not their customers Letters to the Editor Volume IM ii It s easy for your correspondents to be critical of others for not being as in the know or as informed as they Without having to explicitly state it each has managed to point out how superior he is to those whom he criticizes Did anyone else notice that they directed their criticism almost exclusively at women Ah hem Your correspondents need to remember that they weren tbom knowing what they now believe they know They learned through experience through school or through work Surely they too asked Stupid Questions of someone sometime somewhere along the way They should be glad that no one dis
247. t what you want now while me availability and price are right Powersoft 214 733 4425 Aerocomp 214 637 5400 MISOSYS Inc 703 450 4181 order line 800 647 6797 Ft Worth Computers 800 433 SAVE Tandy franchise Elek Tek Computer amp Supply 312 677 7660 Tandy National Parts 817 870 5600 Tandy switchboard 817 390 3700 Letters to the Editor se THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 Volume III ii Testing Alpha Beta Fm Adam Rubin May I ask your help with definitions of alpha test beta test gamma test and so on as they apply to programs Rightly or wrongly here s how I ve been interpreting them no name Testing by original programmer s Alpha test Testing by in house test staff Beta test Testing by outside group of testers Gamma test Bug reports by end users Delta test No idea Epsilon test Fm Ray Reyes Adam Delta test alpha testing of the revised version resulting from Gamma testing of the original version Epsilon test beta testing of the above Fm Adam Rubin Ray Does that mean my first four definitions are more or less correct Fm Ray Reyes Well yes except that there s really no such thing as gamma testing It all stops with beta and then the product is thrown to the wolves whereupon the process starts all over again as bugs are reported Only this time the version number changes Fm Adam Rubin Ah Ray I see So for most programs the version number changes
248. t when the owner s manual stated that when you decide to upgrade your system simply upgrade your Plug N Print module The Okidata people let me know in no uncertain terms that it was meant only for a Commodore 64 I have a friend who now owns the printer I was given She has a Commodore 64 I do understand that the Okimate 20 will work with my 4P if I used an IBM module I however will never own an Okidata Okimate printer even if it is given to me I appreciate your time and trouble in coming to my aid I am not that great at knowing the language s of this old 4P yet Letters to the Editor THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 16 Volume III ii but I have a vast background in electronic work Being that I am permanently disabled now and unable to work I have the time necessary to become great friends with this machine I have a DWP 220 which is a great daisy wheel printer I plan on getting a Star Micronics with IBM Epson modes in the very near future I have learned a great deal about the Okidata 10 but there was no practical way to hook it to the 4P I feel good about going with the Star Micronics for it has a wide Carriage Again thank you for your concern and your time Some basic questions Fm James L Lopez Dear Roy First let me thank you and Congratulate you for your article Getting into Computer Math in Volume III i Although I already have a smattering of your subject matter in my head this
249. task The reason is simple When any interrupt is generated the Z80 services it and essentially inhibits further interrupts If the task processor is executing you don t want to allow the CPU to accept another interrupt say from the RTC as that would force another entry into that task processor That in itself is not destructive as the task processor is re entrant it utilizes no static storage On the other hand the interrupt processing is very stack intensive A recursive interrupt handling may very well cause the stack to overflow That could be problematic Clear now Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaola Shane No All the byte I O routines GET PUT CTL for example end up turning the interrupts back on This caused Les quite a bit of trouble in LS Host Term as I recall Even if there is no file I O involved the byte YO calls will turn interrupts back on if they are currently off Where this comes in as a problem was in the following scenario With the CL driver wakeup vector set to your handler routine you will be called whenever a character is available The character will be in C but that is the raw character To honor any filtering on the device you must use GET on the device instead Problem is you were called with the interrupts disabled If you get the character via GET the interrupts are turned back on At high baud rates this can cause your interrupt code and the system interrupt handler to be re entered before f
250. te back Trade in offer expires March 31 1989 1200 baud internal modem for Model 4P That s right you heard it MISOSYS has acquired the TeleTrends 1200 baud Hayes compatible modem which slips right into the Model 4P s internal modem slot As soon as we get our feet wet with this unit we ll be working up a package for the desktop Model 4 For now you Model 4P folks can upgrade to a real Hayes compatible modem operating at 1200 baud Our introductory sale price is just 79 95 5 S amp H in US It s just what you needed for your 4P Hard Disk Drive Components Because of our pending development of an external hard drive package MISOSYS is now stocking components for its assembly We want to make these available separately Here S what we have along with your cost i The Blurb ee THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY FALL 1988 Volume IIL ii 1 Seagate ST 225 hard drive 20 Megabyte formatted 225 5 Ibs 7 50 10 50 S amp H 2 Western Digital WD XTGEN drive controller 75 1 1b 4 00 6 00 S amp H 3 External hard drive case e w 60 Wt ps for 1 full or 2 hf ht 125 10 Ibs 13 00 18 00 S amp H 4 Items 1 amp 2 plus connecting cable set data amp control 285 6 lbs 8 50 11 50 S amp H Note that S amp H figures are US 48 States Hawaii amp Alaska Outside US please write for shipping charges Standby UPS Power Supply If your area is subject to unexpected outages surges brownouts and other nuis
251. tem date and time to 12 00am CALL EXTRA ROUTINE D04 16 CD 90 F04 16 3E 58 DO4 1C 42 F04 1C EF ALTER VERSION NO D10 BD 33 F10 BD 30 EXTRA CODE D12 77 4E 6F 20 4D 65 6D 6F 72 79 20 74 6F 20 6D 61 F12 77 49 6E 73 75 66 66 69 63 69 65 6E 74 20 4D 65 D12 87 20 6C 6F 61 64 20 6D 6F 64 75 6C 65 20 66 69 F12 87 6F 72 79 20 74 6F 20 6D 61 70 20 6C 6F 61 64 D12 97 65 03 4E 6F 20 4D 65 6D 6F 72 79 20 74 6F 20 F12 97 6D 6F 64 75 6C 65 20 66 69 C 65 03 49 6E 73 D12 A7 61 70 20 64 69 72 65 63 74 6F 72 79 03 D5 11 F12 A7 66 66 69 63 69 65 6E 74 20 4D 65 6D 6F 72 79 D12 B7 00 19 36 00 23 3E 00 77 D1 3E 58 EF C9 00 00 F12 B7 74 6F 20 6D 61 70 20 64 69 72 65 63 74 6F 72 END OF DATE ROUTINE D1C 30 32 FD 33 7E D6 50 32 99 42 00 00 F1C 30 4F 7E D6 50 30 01 AF Bl 32 FD 33 CHANGE MESSAGE ADDRESS DIE 38 75 F1E 58 7F AS THIS VERSION IS COMPATIBLE WITH 6 3 TYPE DIRECTORY THIS CODE CHECKS FOR IT AND ABORTS IF NOT DO00 16 C3 90 64 00 F00 16 ED 73 08 30 X 6490 ED 73 08 30 3E 65 EF FD 7E 1B FE 63 D2 OE 30 21 X 64A0 A9 64 3E OA EF 21 FF FF C9 4D 75 73 74 20 62 65 X 64B0 20 4C 53 2D 44 4F 53 20 36 2E 33 OD EOP MISOSYS Products Tidbits Volume IIL ii The Hardware Corner Adding floppy disk drives to TRS 80 Models III 4 and 4D by Charles A Ainsworth Introduction There are several reasons why one might wish to add or change floppy disk drives One may have a pair of drives in the com
252. teractive RATFOR FORTRAN Programs by Jane A Layman 36 C Language miscellaneous oo 40 Roy s Technical Corner 0 o 46 Getting into computer math Multiplication 46 MISOSYS Products Tidbits lt 50 Little Brother Data Manager 2 1 eee ee te te eee es 50 Converting Pfs File data to LB by Brad Stiles 51 AMPRORTAO e gs ce cod ea dc aci it a aa 09 MC CCOMPI acc oc di ee ee OR ai ds a 54 Sia Ce Pea ee ee O PRO WAM Windows amp Applications lt lt 58 A Detter TERM APP conca igh give aed Wes da Ge id Bek Wik Ee 59 PRO WAM and SuperLog by John Coyne 62 Using PSORT by The Sorcerers Apprentice 64 PRO PaDS amp LS DED 0 0 oo oooooooooooo on 65 The Hardware Corner o o 67 Adding floppy drives by Charles A Ainsworth 67 A new XLR8er Interface by Michel Houde TI Copyright 1988 by MISOSYS Inc All rights reserved PO Box 239 Sterling VA 22170 0239 703 450 4181 Volume III ii The Blurb by Roy Soltoff Points to Ponder The year end holidays are coming up and as has been typical for many years now MISOSYS closes up shop and vacates the premises This year is no different Please be advised we will be closed for business starting on F
253. th and we CALL two patches which is more space saving than JP s Please note that no additional stack space is needed compared to the standard TASKER which might be valuable in some cases Now is the problem of ENADIS_DO_RAM the routine that deals with keyboard and video RAM The first idea is to bring in bank 0 either on each call or on the first of subsequent calls I did it but it slowed things down significantly After careful checking and deep thought I decided it was not necessary to do that Keyboard routines are standard driver type ahead task KFLAG scanner task All 3 routines bring in Bank 0 before calling ENADIS_DO_RAM either byte I O or tasker With one exception the same is true with video routines standard driver cursor blinking clock trace alive The exception is VDCTL we must handle it As with the tasker we only have to set CBR to 0 after saving its current value There is no need to save change LBANKS as the VDCTL routine is closed with no alien calls The worst that could happen is an interrupt but then the tasker sets bank 0 anyway However in those days of stack space scarcity I thought it would be useful to first check the current value of CBR If it is null it is not necessary to change it As stated before alternate banks can be shadowed by KB DO RAM This saves 2 levels of stack and I think that the most frequent case is Bank_0 active The cost is 4 bytes but they might prove worthwhile
254. the number of each subroutine it uses as it creates your program REF CMD is a cross referencer that details the variables user defined functions user defined commands symbols and labels and program line numbers in your compiled program I don t use REF very often but the cross reference report it produces is detailed and thorough The Manual The instruction manual is a good reference guide for experienced BASIC programmers It could provide more examples particularly in areas where Pro EnhComp differs from interpreted BASIC but any question you have can be answered either from what the manual implies or by trial and error The writing style of the manual is direct informative and often humorous The manual does contain a few errors they are corrected in the README TXT file supplied on the Pro EnhComp disk You ll probably want to print out a copy of README TXT and refer to it as you read the Pro EnhComp manual The Reviewer Volume III ii The Language Pro EnhComp s implementation of BASIC is powerful It combines the standard features that everyone expects with unique enhancements that make the programmer s job easier For instance Pro EnhComp allows in line assembly language programming At any point in your program you can switch the compiler to Z80 mode and start programming directly in assembly language Furthermore the assembly language portion of the program has full access to all of BASIC s varia
255. the SWAP utility we used to sell It s now available in the GO SYS product bundle Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaola Dave In addition to SWAP you can use the commands SYSTEM DRIVE 1 DISABLE DRIVER FLOPPY SYSTEM DRIVE 2 DISABLE DRIVER FLOPPY 2 and SYSGEN the result Note that SWAP would be much faster and easier to use as you can flip and flop at will This technique requires multiple commands and answering prompts or using JCL DOS Subjects THE MISOSYS Fall 1988 97 Volume III ii Interrupts and tasks Fm Shane Dawalt Here s a question which has been nagging at me If a code segment is written and linked to the task processor that code segment is not allowed to issue an EI instruction I m not sure why it would want to in the first place but humor me Something along those lines can I assume ANY non disk I O SVC will not execute an EI instruction Fm MISOSYS Inc I don t think you can make that assumption If I read you correctly you didn t limit your query to interrupt tasks Any program or routine which is not an interrupt task has total freedom to issue either DIs or Els A program can have a DI without an EI But if it issues a disk 1 O request which is satisfied by the floppy driver that does an EI The CMNDI does an EI to ensure that interrupts are on following a program s conclusion and EXIT So you can EI anywhere in any program as long as it is not an interrupt
256. ther one is that some PALs are coded such that you can t run code reliably within one of the alternate banks Data storage and retrieval works fine but code won t run M1 is the only real difference there Whether it is a lack of M1 waits on those machines i in the back banks or not I don t know Fm Shane Dawalt I would be tempted to blame a CAS RAS MUX generation problem for those M s who cannot successfully execute code in the banks Although I haven t tried it yet my M4 used to run back bank apps ok 1988 Calendar Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo I found this and thought you might find it handy Aggie Hacker s Hexadecimal E Texan Calander for 1988 SUNNDI CH CH AW E 7 C A E ES El ES 1A 18 1c 1F MUNNDI CH CH AW 6 4 1 D B 8 14 12 F 1B 19 16 1D TEWSDI CH CH 3 r5 A E C 15 13 1c 1A 1F Letters to the Editor le THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 Volume II ii WEDDSDI ME CH CH AW 4 1 3 B 8 D A 12 F 14 19 16 1B 1D THIRSTY ME CH CH gt 2 F C 9 E 13 10 15 1A 17 1c 1E FRAWDDI ME CH CH AW 6 3 1 D A 8 14 11 F 1B 18 16 1D SATTADI ME CH CH 7 4 2 E B 9 15 12 1c 19 1E Shrink Wrap Fm Shane Dawalt You d probably know I ve often wondered about that shrink wrap Do you have machines in house to wrap the product and shrink the wrap or is the product boxed up in some way and taken to a place that can shrink wrap stuff This is the kind of
257. tment at San Jacinto Junior College here in Pasadena for 5 years I am what you could call an expert in my field My next birthday I will be 74 I am writing a book Our Aruba Story and have not had the time to do much more than write with this Computer since I obtained it 6 years ago Letters to the Editor Volume III ii I have done a little with Basic in order to build up some Address and Labeling Programs I subscribe to Code Works Magazine and have learned something about Basic I have a Lazy Writer Word Processor Piggy backed on a LSDOS63L System Disk which I use as well as a Superscripsit Word Processor Both word Processors have their good oo and I use one to complement the other A friend of mine replaced the 2 Single Sided Disk Drives with Double Sided Disk Drives in my Computer about six months ago Otherwise my knowledge about what goes on inside the Computer is somewhat limited 1 think it is Stupid not to ask questions even if they appear Dumb or Stupid to you How else am I to learn something I should know And as a customer 1 know you will be patient and try to give me answers without getting bent out of shape This was what I tried to do in my classrooms A copy of Mod 4 By Jack written by Jack and Marie Klein Crest Software 2132 Crestview Drive Durango Colorado 81301 has saved my hide many times Explanations i in this 6 x 9 Owner s Manual type of publication is certainly easier and more helpful than th
258. to default to N ON I don t have the patch for that handy With FED2 it would take about 10 seconds to find it if I had a Model HI LDOS booted up but I don t Now that I do as I am composing this issue of TMQ the N parameter nostop of DIR in LDOS 5 3 is at address X 589F thus defaulting nostop to ON which would effectively keep the display scrolling would be PATCH SYS6 SYS SYSTEM DOB FD FF FF FOB FD 00 00 Now if you just want to get rid of clearing the screen before each page I really prefer to clear the screen as it is so much easier on the eye just change the X CD byte at X 5907 toa 21H effectively eliminating the CALL CES That s PATCH SYS6 SYS SYSTEM DOC 0F 21 F0C 0F CD In order to default the LIST command to nostop apply the following patch PATCH SYS6 SYS SYSTEM D29 4A FF FF F29 4A 00 00 RSHARD and drive step rate Fm Bruce J Hutchison I bought RSHARD from you and it works great on a used 5 Meg drive I bought On page 6 of the manual it explains how to set the step rate The default is 10 microseconds It goes on to say if there is documentation with a different value to use that instead The manuals for both my drive and a friends 15 Meg drive give a track to track access time of 3 milliseconds and that is the value I used on mine My friend had her drive set up by RS using TRSHD6 Who knows what value they used I usually like to use defaults as I assume the programmers know what
259. to work comfortably Discomfort and cramped quarters are no sort of ingredients for working on computers and can cause distractions that in turn cause errors Switch off the computer at its own power switch remove the plug from the wall outlet and don t plug in or switch on again until you are positively sure it s perfectly safe to do so Talk for kids you may say yet I have known an experienced worker blow an expensive motherboard for forgetting that Before you begin opening up have your machine switched off for about half an hour to prevent electrical shock The CRT image tube operates at high voltage and there are capacitors that may retain a charge after switching off and which may take time to discharge In any event avoid poking around The Hardware Corner 71 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 Volume II ii unnecessarily with fingers or tools in the upper section that contains the tube just in case Also before you begin opening up have pencil and paper handy to make notes of everything you remove to be completely sure of replacing things as they should be and in their right places It s easy to forget to replace something and infuriating to close up and find you have to start disassembling again because you forgot an item Get the grounding strap on your wrist and extend the cable with a length of hookup wire until it comfortably reaches the nearest ground connection with plenty of spare length to allow you
260. tor not on the cable which is rather delicate and easily damaged Don t nip the cable with the tool If you have b try pulling the connector off with your fingers and if necessary ease it loose very gently from both ends a little at a time prying with a small screwdriver taking care not to distort the pins Be careful on some models where components are mounted hard up against the header pins and might be damaged by careless insertion or removal of the connector Pull on the connector not on the cable Also bear in mind that you are pulling on the main board which may break if you overdo it so prefer gentle prying to hefty tugging Once the cable is removed either as in a or b fold it out of the way and tape it in place so it won t interfere with the replacement of the computer cover or the RF shield and simply forget it There are still the two power connectors usually white plastic female four point plugs that connect the power supply to the rear of the drives one per drive These should be removed if The Hardware Corner THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 79 Volume I1 ii reasonably possible It may be a very awkward job on some models and remember you may have to replace them if ever you take your machine to a service center If this looks too impossible just let them be The drive electronics will still load the computer power supply but the rotation and stepper motors won t run since the control cab
261. ts searching through the path an environmental string that it has control of looking for a Bat Com or Exe file that meets your command If it finds a Bat file it does the interpreting Otherwise it simply spawns your app as a child DOS Subjects Volume II ii The important point is that Command Com is nothing more than an application It has more knowledge of undocumented DOS features than most programmers but otherwise it is nothing special SO itis not exceptionally difficult to write a replacement for Command Com and there are many good reasons for doing so Some folks simply disable some Command Com commands so that users can t do things like Dir or Type for security reasons or have to run a custom Exe or Com program instead of Command Com s built in function Some folks replace Command Com entirely Some people run shells above Command Com which once they start never let the user see Command Com at all File access directory control etc are part of MS DOS not command com Certainly when you type CHDIR xyz Command Com interprets what you have done and then invokes the DOS commands usually through Int 21h to change the default directory It s important to realize that anything Command Com can do your programs can do also Every program has a copy of the environment for example and can create a new environment for its children which is what Command Com does although its copy is called the ma
262. tube to prevent very unpleasant and expensive consequences from breakage Before closing up check to see that the socket on the neck of the image tube at the extreme rear hasn t been displaced accidentally and see it is firmly seated by pressing gently Reread the item in this section re possible shock and remember that the socket sits on pins which are embedded in glass so be gentle Also check that there has been no displacement of the card edge connector on the video board near the image tube and snug it up if necessary Opening the drives If you get drives complete with case and power supply and have to open them be very careful Remove and replace the outer cover slowly and carefully straight up or down taking care that the edges or corners of the covers can t jab any sensitive parts inside which are quite close keep fingers and tools far away from the electronics and mechanism except where strictly necessary to make any changes Note that the screws that hold the drives to the base are special for those locations and that they must not be exchanged for any others lest the drives go up in smoke as mentioned previously If you remove the drives handle them with great care by their edges and avoid contact with the electronics or mechanism Do not touch any mechanical parts which are very carefully adjusted and will serve you as loyal workhorses if respected Remember that perspiration may be acid and corrode sensitive mech
263. turn your 128K Model years of experience captured in LB is easily used by anyone for 4 into a sophisticated business or per a host of other software managing their data Its menu driven sonal machine rivaling the best of them products ranging from lang for ease of use absolutely no Because easily installed PRO WAM uage compilers and assem programming needed Requires a Model comes with many useful and powerful blers fine crafted utilities 4 with 128K or a hard drive LB86 menu driven time savers and work pone i ome de a an MS DOS version is also available ais appeal p RO WAM is accessed publish a magazine THE B Store up to 65534 records per data base with a single keystroke its export and MISOSYS QUARTERLY 3 Up to 1024 characters per record import functions allow you to move which is available on a a Up to 64 fields per record _ data across windows between programs subscription basis for just 25 9 Scie sng yee for flexibiiy ect and sort on up to 8 fields Address CARDS LABELS and new per year in the U 5 or Keep multiple indexes for accessing data HEADINGS for display and export write us for a catalog of our B 10 input update screens per data base a Improved BRINGUP tickler file complete product line 10 printout formats per data base new PRINTING and sorting Extensive on line help available Improved CALENDAR flags BRINGUP items visually on screen ee
264. u didn t need your calculator for that did you Let s look at something more complicated multiplying 232 by 127 Can you do that in your head Usually not You work it out on paper performing what is called partial products Here s how that looks multiplicand multiplier partial product partial product partial product product Each partial product was calculated by multiplying the multiplicand by a different place digit of the multiplier 232x7 232x2 232x1 How would we do it if we had only one accumulator for the partial products We could multiply the multiplicand by the rightmost multiplier digit accumulate the partial product then shift the multiplicand left one place and the multiplier right one place then repeat the process until we have dealt with all digits of the multiplier Here s that concept again using the example multiplicand multiplier partial product accumulator accumulator Shift L R multiplicand left multiplier right partial product accumulator accumulator Shift L R multiplicand left multiplier right partial product accumulator product The difference is one of mechanical manipulation but it breaks the problem down into operations which computers are Roy s Technical Corner 47 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 Volume III ii good for In the binary case multiplication is as straightforward as the previous decimal example but the arithmetic is exceedi
265. ur PC Or maybe you are a hacker wanting to upgrade your Radio Shack 5 Meg drive to a 20 Meg drive Check out the next section of The Blurb New Product Announcements Golden Oldies Maintenance The GO MTC product is a collection of programs designed to provide maintenance support services for your computer operation The programs in this group have been rewritten for Model 4 LS DOS 6 3 You get DIRCHECK to perform an integrity check of your disk s directory and repair certain kinds of errors FIXGAT to re construct a corrupted Granule Allocation Table IOMON for trapping disk input errors MAPPER to check the granulization of files stored on your disk RAMTEST to perform an exhaustive test of all DRAM memory in your computer and UNREMOVE to restore a file inadvertently deleted All documentation has been revised and is printed in a convenient 5 5 by 8 5 format Order M 33 100 for 59 95 5 S amp H US Golden Oldies System Enhancement The GO SYS product is a collection of programs designed to provide additional features to LS DOS 6 3 operation The programs in this group have been rewritten for Model 4 LS DOS 6 3 You get DOCONFIG for manipulating The Blurb Volume IT ii CONFIG SYS files DOEDIT to provide command editing MEMDIR to get a memory directory PaDS for the provision of Partitioned Data Sets PARMDIR to obtain parameterized directory information for listings and Job Control Language processing SWAP to switc
266. vision in the Z80 to trap a stack overflow Unfortunately some programs do not provide their own stack space as would be expected in proper program design of complex stack intensive operations I know that ALLWRITE does not provide its own program stack area I feel strongly that it should The fact that it uses the system stack is the reason why it became necessary to alter the system stack split from 360H to 340H While writing this letter I checked the AL CMD file which I have with FED2 AL does use the system stack entirely I then checked ALF CMD it saves the contents of the SP register then sets it to its own area It then restores to the previous SP setting I assume when it exits or returns to the calling program The flexibility of device installation and filtering introduced into LS DOS 6 0 additional use of the stack be it program or system since a filter usually pushes the TY index register and issues an SVC to chain to the downstream filter or device This procedure would use four bytes of stack plus any additional used by the filter Thus each additional filter in a device stream adds to the stack usage If a memory bank other than zero is resident at the time the initial device call is invoked then four additional bytes of stack are used Enough folks have used PRO WAM with ALLWRITE without being exposed to any problems In your case 1t may be the additional usage of the KSMPLUS filter I checked the code on that filter
267. ware Corner Volume ITT ii Once you have your new drives set up you can then boot up with your new system disk check over the configuration you want to use and then SYSGEN as you will have lost your original SYSGEN by backing up by class instead of mirror image Those who are using drives 2 and 3 should also remember before SYSGENing the bootup disk to enable then when the DOS requires it see for example the SYSTEM DRIVE n ENABLE command in the TRSDOS6 LSDOS manual As an alternative LSDOS6 3 users may care to use the patch shown in TMQ I iti p61 Obviously you should remember to copy necessary files from your other working and data disks to your new disk format If you are changing over all drives to 80 track remember that at times you may need to read 40 track disks such as when you purchase new software and want to back it up to the 80 track drives There are several ways you can do this Personally I have RD4O CMD part of the MISOSYS PRO ESP package and READ40 CMD part of the MISOSYS LS Utility package which allow an 80 track drive to read not write to 40 track disks I have also known friends buy one external 40 track drive or adapt one removed from a computer and share it among them whenever they have occasion to work 40 track disks Getting prepared If you decide you can live with the original drives in your computer and only wish to add external drives two and three you have it fairly easy If you
268. was such a good presentation that I am recommending it to one of my grandsons who is Computer Minded I learned something too I am glad you are going to continue this subject I have a TRS 80 Model 4 Model 26 1069 Ser 0038747 with 128K RAM And am ordering an XLR8er for the expanded RAM memory As per your request I took off the top of my Computer and looked for the revision of the motherboard Since I am not all that knowledgeable about Computer nomenclature I deduced that the board on the back side of the Computer was the Motherboard and I believe what you wanted was 8769296 REV A Below that appeared the numbers 700219 As I looked at this board I remembered the remarks in Volume H iv page 88 from Mark Vandemeulebroucke so I made some notes about my Computer In socket U72 there is a PAL16L8CN chip and in socket U71 there is a SN74LS245N chip and a yellow wire W3 runs from U48 to US2 Does this mean my Computer can t use the XLR8er Will the XLR8er what do those letters mean give me improvement with my word Processor Programs Basic Programs data files Would I be able to fit a Grafyx Solution board in there also Now let s get some things straight here I retired after 36 years with Exxon Overseas My experience is with Training Industrial Safety Fire Protection Security and I cut my teeth for over 20 years on Industrial Instrumentation After retiring I was an Instructor in the Instrument Technology Depar
269. wever when using MCOPT numnodes receives a value of 256 define NUMVALS 257 int dctreehd 2957 main int numnodes numnodes dctreehd lt 0 0 dctreehd NUMVALS 1 Since this problem didn t seem to be arising from one of my own coding errors for a change I went ahead and dumped both the ASM file and the OPT file for comparison I think that you will probably see enough from the OPT code to MISOSYS Products Tidbits THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 55 Volume IILii deduce what the problem might be By the way it doesn t make any difference if you use the conditional operator or if else terms for the code Fm MISOSYS Inc Here s the fix Rich had already stumbled recently on that bug and just supplied me with a fix MCOPTSBS FIX 09 28 88 patch MCOPT5 CMD correct subtract operation D25 B5 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 F25 B5 2A El 6D 11 02 00 CD B4 98 7c B5 C2 94 80 D26 29 2A E3 6D 7C B5 20 04 F26 29 2A E3 6D CD B2 99 7C D26 30 21 E7 6D 34 2A El 6D CD EF 97 11 03 00 EB CD CO F26 30 B5 28 07 2A E7 6D 23 22 E7 6D 2A El 6D E5 CD EB D26 40 98 7c BS 28 2E Fl Cl El E5 C5 F5 E5 CD E6 88 21 F26 40 97 F1 11 03 00 EB CD CO 98 7C B5 28 26 21 C2 6B D26 50 C2 6B E3 2A El 6D CD A6 99 ES CD 3B 96 F1 E3 21 F26 50 E5 2A El 6D CD A6 99 E5 CD 3B 96 F1 Fl E5 21 03 D26 60 03 00 E5 CD 9E 88 F1 21 AE 6E E3 CD EF 5D F1 2A F26 60 00 E5 CD 9E 88 F1 F1 21 AE 6E E5 CD EF 5D F1 2A D
270. work or format composition on a page by page basis e g special newsletters fliers etc WYSIWYG is definitely what you want If your formatting needs are simpler and more routine as ours were and are Ascii formatters make a lot of sense If you are looking for enhanced document preparation facilities my first advice therefore is to decide just what you need If graphics and special layouts will be a major part of your priorities you want WYSIWYG You can then forget the Model 4 its screen controls are simply too primitive and its native memory too limited for such software Incidentally 8088 IBM clones are a bit better here but not much I own a Z 158 home system running at a clock speed of 12 mgz with 640K of standard and 2meg of extended memory I have several WYSIWYG formatters on this home system which has a 40meg hard drive including FONTASY a product by Pro Soft the people who produce Allwrite The screen formatting is powerful but the programs are all very slow I find myself using Pro Soft DOTWRITER on the Model 4 asa matter of choice where graphic fonts are needed the MSDOS stuff is a bit more powerful but nowhere near as fast as DOTWRITER If you are considering a graphics oriented publication project my advice would be to consider the minimal system to be an 80286 better yet an 80386 and best of all an 80386 running under XENIX rather than OS 2 or MSDOS If your needs do not include lots of graphics o
271. would be User perceptions are different Programers are used to working around compiler problems ask any Microsoft or Lattice C user that writes large or complex programs In many cases they may choose to continue to work with an existing version whose behaviour they understand rather than move to a new version Moving to the new version would require re learning the new patterns that generate broken code and the risk of breaking code that works with the old version That s the cost do the features in the new version warrant the change Each case must be considered independently Back to users perceptions Sure Tandy incremented the version number for SuperSCRIPSIT each time they made a change Were they released one at a time No they were batched together and released once every six months or once a year Even that didn t help them SuperSCRIPSIT still got a reputation as being a piece of junk Why Because it deserved it it was a piece of junk Letters to the Editor Volume IIL ii Fm Shane Dawalt I will certainly agree with you on SuperScripsit being a piece of junk Joe We both know that is true And I suppose your reasonings for this entire thread do make sense I suppose I was placing all software into it s group and not making note of the fact that different types of people will be using the software in different ways I can see your point about programmers working around compiler problems It just seems mo
272. y for extending the wrist strap connection to a ground and perhaps a pair of long nosed pliers on certain computer models as described later Don t be tempted to improvise that grounding strap the commercial one has a resistor in circuit to limit shock in case you were to touch a live part while grounded it is unsafe to connect yourself direct to ground without an intervening resistor Control cables If you make your own drive interconnections to the computer you will need flat 34 conductor cable but if Tandy doesn t have it you can get 36 conductor and remove two It comes in rolls of a few feet six if I remember correctly which should be ample for the job If you can only get flat cable with more than 34 conductors simply cut lengthwise with a pair of sharp scissors at one end exactly between the conductors you won t need and the rest of the cable This only needs to be a short cut about 1 2 long but be sure you cut exactly in the valley between conductors Then peel off the unwanted conductors as easy as peeling a banana However before you go too far be sure your cut was Correct an incorrect Cut may cause the insulation to be torn baring the copper strands which is totally unacceptable When you cut the cable to length use a pair of sharp scissors avoid running a knife across the cable to cut it as this tends to tear the strands and may produce accidental short circuits between Conductors sometimes hard to detect
273. y date release of those versions WPCorp will continue to supply and support 4 2 in parallel with the new 5 0 version The major reason I m tossing in all this stuff is that WPCorp was specifically named as using this particular version naming convention regardless of which they are probably the single most reasonable large software vendor when it comes to support and upgrades I d rather not see them get smeared when their behaviour doesn t warrant it The only reason that the file dating scheme is used is because they do indeed make optional upgrades available as bugs are corrected or small features are added They don t wait perhaps years to fix problems or add minor enhancements as virtually all other software houses do The version number is incremented for major enhancements Letters to the Editor 9 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1988 Volume III ii Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo Shane I already explained this Yes incrementing the version number would be easier but when At the time of fix or at the time of release Everybody else in the word processing business does the latter TurboC doesn t count Easier but not practical in the harsh world of the PC software marketplace unless you restrict when and how often fixes are made available Me I d rather have a new version whenever I care to ask for it that specifically fixes a bug that keeps me from completing a project I can t count the number of times
274. y fix you up quickly Regarding the setting of jumpers for drive selection Note that the TRS 80 system requires on many models that the card edge connectors be short of certain pins for drive selection The TEAC system does it another way by moving jumpers on the drive board so all connector pins can be active Just in case you do get to moving jumpers on the drives be advised that on all TEAC drives I have seen the jumpers have to be placed in locations DSO and Dsi for drives zero and one respectively and also in locations DSO and Ds1 for drives 2 and 3 respectively This didn t seem right when I first saw it but that s the way it works The reasoning is probably that drives zero and one are the first two on one cable and that drives two and three are the first two on another cable Those locations may be labelled DO and D1 in later versions of Teac drives CAUTION If you change drive select jumpers around be quite sure you don t have the same drive number on two drives on the same cable which would thoroughly confuse the drive controller and produce totally unpredictable results some of which just might be harmful Terminating resistors Another point that may need watching On a three or four drive system the last drive viewed by the computer as external 2 or 3 must have a terminating resistor Typically The Hardware Corner Volume III ii the absence of one is shown by drives revolving continuously wit
275. y want to do with a laser printer No and the Pro Soft people make no such claim for it If you want a text formatter which can literally do anything then EROFF is probably the best choice This is a full port of the UNIX TROFF text formatter and is available for a variety of minicomputers and also for MSDOS systems We purchased this for our Zenith PC clone which is on line to the laser printer It is rather expensive 695 versus about 200 for Allwrite but provides you with 10 full disks double sided and over 800 pages of documentation not to mention a macro library containing over 400 built in macros EROFF it should be mentioned is a formatter just like Allwrite It does NOT provide an editor and expects Ascii source code produced any way and any where you want It provides integration with graphics special fonts statistical libraries and also a host of utilities for doing anything you could ever want to do On the down side EROFF is slower than Allwrite and its syntax is also a bit clumsier Both systems have been available now in our User Area for quite some time 90 of our projects are done under Allwrite which is easy fast and friendly The remaining 10 are done under EROFF which is powerful and virtually complete Note the advantage of the Ascii source files expected by both Allwrite and EROFF Users can write proof and correct their files on ANY computer mainframe or micro under ANY editor which generates plain

TMQ Vol III.ii - tim

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