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TMQ Vol IV.i - tim

1. I have occasionally been asked how to reverse the date conversion procedure for a single file under the LS DOS 6 3 re lease That brings me to the file undating program FUNDATE presented here I touched on this program back in TMQ liL i4 on page 36 see Moving files from LS DOS 6 3 to TRSDOS 1 3 My origi nal intention was to put FUNDATE in that issue but I ran out of time and space So here it is Enjoy By the way please note that macro invo cations of the form LOGOT are use a macro definition of the form LD A LOGOT RST 28H Page Display PRO WAM Application Jacques has submitted a program called PG2 APP see the PAGE2 ASM source file This program is a small PRO WAM application which is used to page through either of two data files The data files need to be named DATA1 TAB and DATA2 TAB PG2 APP is based on Dan Velting s PG CMD which was presented in Issue IIL ui of THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Applications for the User 53 Applications for the User Volume IV i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i This is DATA1 TAB it is written with TED CMD and can be seen thru PROWAM using PG2 APP If not include in WAMO APL use Prun cmd 30 col are possible in this sample if you want a larger window change line 970 length of file his not limited with data2 you will see data written with a Basic program a long time before I had this usefull PROWAM I do
2. That can only gain access to the specified file if the file already exists because BASIC uses the OPEN S VC in the DOS If the file doesn t exist then the DOS OPEN returns an error to BASIC which reports it to the program When you issue an OPEN O 1 MYFILE BASIC doesn t use the DOS OPEN it uses the DOS INIT service Call The thing about INIT is that it will create the specified file if it doesn t find it Okay now knowing that INIT will not create the file if it finds it what does it use to look for it Well OPEN of course This is the same DOS OPEN service facil ity that BASIC used for the OPEN T When INIT completes it returns a flag value indicating whether or not it had to create the specified file The requesting Volume IV i program could then know whether the designated file was new or old Most programs which do not offer pro gramming control over file access use the DOS INIT service function to gain access to afile So any file designated by the user will be created if in fact it wasn t available to the DOS In the case of a single disk containing more than one file of the same name what had to occur was something like the fol lowing 1 A program requested access to an exist ing file on a specific drive via the INIT DOS service call 2 INIT called OPEN 3 OPEN failed to find the file because the DOS CKDRV facility failed to detect
3. which should be the last key called in this chain as it is self repeating and is exited with BK ALLWRITE allows in addition to numerical shifted or unshifted soft keys the use of shifted or unshifted X Y and Z each of these letter keys is the same whether shifted or not Avoid using shifted zero which is the upper lower case toggle like CAPS The last key in the key 2 chain calls itself with F1 and sets up a self repeating loop to eliminate unwanted spaces by globally changing two consecutive spaces to one until only single spaces remain which requires several passes each time around ALLWRITE tells us how many changes have been made and prompts for EN When it has told us that zero changes have been made we can exit the loop with BK held down until it stops This will cause the editor to flicker between the CMD and the edit modes Press BK once again to return to the editor if you happen to stop at the CMD mode In the case of key I found that the limitation on number of repetitions as in key 1 is no problem as empty spaces can be easily eliminated within the allocated number of repetitions Applications for the User Volume IV i Applications for the User VolumeIVi THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i Storing the soft keys The special soft keys may be stored in a version of the ALLWRITE editor de
4. Out of environment space during AUTOEXEC execution on boot I tried command p e 384 c with no success Doing a set gt temp txt and doing a hex listing on temp txt shows that the environment is less than 384 bytes It seems that after going over 256 bytes using set or path will give that error regardless of environment size I am us ing Tandy MS DOS 3 20 The version of GBASIC supplied does support the graph ics and sound modes of my 1000A prop erly so it is not an early release Fm Kerry Wilson 71006 440 I am get ting an Out of Environment Space error message when I boot my 1000TX during the AUTOEXEC BAT execution I as sume there is a way to increase the amount of allocated space Could you please elabo rate on how to do this Fm MISOSYS Inc Use a command in your CONFIG SYS file of the form SHELL path COMMAND COM E 512 P The path is the path leading up to COMMAND COM say CADOS for example The 512 would represent the environment size in bytes The P is absolutely necessary which says to keep that instance of COMMAND COM resi dent My hunch is that it also winds up keeping the second instance of the resi dent portion of COMMAND COM in memory Why MS DOS does not allow you to establish an environment size irre spective of COMMAND COM is a mys tery to me But that command line in COMFIG SYS will get you going Fm LDOS Support 76703 437
5. Clock Voice Synthesizer Aero comp Double Density Controller still around R S Modem and a Holmes Engineering Speed up kit raising my clock speed to 5 1MHZ and 3 DSDD 80 track drives on my own system Epson MX 100 We are THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 talkin HOG HEAVEN I ve got spare parts til the next century I was buyin software as fast as I could afford it and even tried harder as the CLOSEOUTS came by I have COPYART II a fine early wordprocessor which handled GRAPHICS and MULTI COLUMN linked to ELECTRIC WEBSTER the COLLECTOR TRASHMAN string garbage collector the ANALYST FASTER and BETTER program which told the programmer which variables should be first for fastest operation the PRO DUCER for program WRITING NEW BASIC additions for BASIC allowing Volume IV i SCREEN GRAPHICS Z BASIC for those really fast compiled programs just to name a few My Christmas list always had plenty of requests for SANTA to fill in the Software and Hardware arena One Christmas I particularly remember my wife had somehow saved the 360 re quired for a DSDD 80 TRK drive from AEROCOMP What a surprise I never guessed Here I sat with 2 1 Meg ON LINE running at 5 1 MHZ Not to mention the fine job of wiring The UL would be proud real nice surge suppressors and multi socket ac plugs for the 3 disk drives monitor expansion interface crt main em er SS DOS Subjects 20 DOS Subjects Volu
6. Proper FOR NEXT loops Fm John L Sullivan North Highlands CA Gentlemen I recently purchased your Pro EnhComp BASIC compiler I have found the compiler to be as advertised I have compiled almost all of my interac tive BASIC programs by simply editing the interactive version to conform to EnhComp standards recording the pro gram back to diskette in ASCII format then loading it into the S program on the EnhComp diskette After a little more editing I make a final compilation which works as well as did the old interactive version I have been having a devil of a time with one program which works beautifully in the interactive mode but fails in the compiler mode The compiled version will not make a decision where a Yes or No Y N gt prompt is located Ihave marked three of these BASIC state ments in green lines 3220 4360 and 11560 When either Y or N is pressed the computer simply hangs up Sometimes strange characters such as Japanese char acters or graphic characters will appear on the screen in no particular pattern Sometimes the system or lower drive will spin and the LS DOS logo will reappear I thought at first that the INKEY subrou tine was at fault although it works on other similar programs I rewrote the statements involved using a simple input of Y or N after which the ENTER key is pressed but the same thing happened the computer hung up with scattered for eign characte
7. perience e Qualitative development enploving metrics Statistical process control e Automated software deve opment Based on an SEI survey of 113 software development organizations now doing business with the DoD SEI found that 85 operate at the first level and 14 operate at the second Only one organiza tion operates at the third level Dying Software Support Fm Bryan J Barbalace 76010 2320 Will Radio Shack hire any DUMMY to sell computers This morning I went to ae trusty Radio Shack dealer in search of an editor as sembler program This was the most depressing morning I ve had in a very long time The sales person laughed at me and told me to buy an MS DOS machine He told me they had a CUTE model on sale They had to pry my fingers from this IDIOT S throat and told me never to come back One consolation was when they were beating me trying to get me to release the salesman s throat they hit me with THE SOFTWARE BUYER S GUIDE I am very fond of my Model 4 and after perusing this guide I became even more depressed Does anyone know where I can get an editor assembler for my trusty Model 4 I would also like to get a copy of Vidtex I remember seeing a version for the Model Stay with your TRS 80 Volume IV i 4but can t seem to find itin any catalog s any more Fm MISOSYS Inc Sales of computers are no different these days from sales of any other commodity merchandise
8. then I can explore the root cause of the failure But how big should the loop be i e how many times should I be able to open the file without entertaining a fail ure Everything has some failure rate One in 10 One in 1000 Probably the failure rate should be a random event in the magnitude of 1 in 1 000 000 or 1 in 10 000 000 Thus if I can obtain a failure with greater than a 1 in 300 chance I do have a problem There are differences in Tandy machines Ihave run this test program on five differ ent machines at my disposal One 4D a gate array 26 1070 one 4P a gate array 26 1080A one 4P a PAL machine 26 1080 one 4 Rev C PAL 26 1069 and one early 4 PAL Note that loops of 6000 produced no failures on the PAL based machines I could not get any of the gate array machines to loop past 300 Iam confidant that the non gate array machines would satisfy the expected error rate but there is something wrong with the gate array hardware You may have been bashing on ALLWRITE for six years but you most certainly were not using gate array ma chines all of those years When did you get your first one either a 4D 26 1070 or a 4 26 1069A That s when you could have first started seeing the problem Granted if you introduced a speedup to your machine and were using TRSDOS 6 2 then you were more prone to experi ence the problem because LSI switched to using CPU timed loops in 6 2 s CKDRV double the speed and you
9. 80 track drive Can you give me a patch or undocumented command to do this If you can t could you consider enhancing SYS8 SYS with the following command SYSTEM DRIVE dn DSTEP gt to enable double step and SYSTEM DRI VE dn DSTEP NO gt to disable it DOS Subjects 31 DOS Subjects Volume IV 1 I think it s a shame that both NEWDOS 80 on model I and MS DOS on a PC can do it but not the best LS DOS on the model 4 Do you havea decent Turbo alike Pascal compiler Because Alcor Pascal is so difficult to use on the TRS 80 And I heard a rumor in holland a very active TRS 80 users group there they told me that MISOSYS is about to release a hard disk controller for the model 4 4p priced between 50 and 90 software included Is this true Whoopeceeee let me at it Please send me additional infor mation about this as soon as it is available If I can hook up any PC hard disk to my computer How much is a subscription to The MI SOSYS Quarterly S amp H to Europe in cluded Finally I am thankful that you still sup port the model 4 4P 4D with soft and hardware I hope that the model 4 4P 4D survives and good support makes or breaks a computer Please continue to do so Fm MISOSYS Inc Jan Tandy did not document JCL properly in their manual This was covered in THE MISOSYS QUAR TERLY 3 4 page 33 A sample program which illustrates one technique of reading the video screen
10. It doesn t matter where the JR branches to Itcan even bea IR it s not going to be used The two words at MODTCB are really not needed They would be used for drivers but your task module is not a driver so nothing will a aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalulMllMlllMMlMlMlMl DOS Subjects DOS Subjects Volume IV 1 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i be using those words Itis useful for one register to not be saved restored by the task process That s so a little time can be saved Using index reg isters takes more processing power and interrupt routines should be short and quick The one index reg available as a task control block LX should be suffi cient How much data do you need to access anyhow So don t use IY If you really must then save it Fm Adam Rubin 71320 1052 Hi again A few short comments on your task The label ENDBYT is multiply defined You might want to make your end of module label point to the byte after the last byte of the whole module Otherwise you ll have to calculate the length of the module as END START 1 The TCB canbe anywhere between where you ve put it after the module name and the end of the code If this task is used only while a particular program is running the TCB and task code can be within the program and no memory header is needed I realize these are general suggestions but they may be useful Fm Bob Haynes Oops That secon
11. X Y3 YS CHRS PEEK X Y INC UNTIL Y CHRS 13 RETURN X Volume IV i EnhComp and DIM statements Fm Michael Dauphin 76010 3262 Is the following use of ALLOCATE CLEAR amp DIM valid in EnhComp The program works if an argument is not specified on the command line And it works with an argument IF the DIM state ment is removed If the DIM is left in and an argument is specified CRASH The manual says that ALLOCATE may only be executed once in a program But I found it SEEMS to work and is necessary after a CLEAR The GETARG function is a modification of the one ROY had in TMQ IILi page 51 This one is for a multi char argument This is just a test program I am trying to check memory and DIM arrays and CLEAR string space based on available memory and argu ments on the command line INC Y ENDFUNC MISOSYS Products Tidbits ai Volume IV i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i time passes I finally got the example program to work Some time spent looking at the compiled EnhComp code with DEBUG and FEDII gave me an idea as to what was happen ing I said idea because I don t really know what is going on within the code I just sort of have a feeling It seems that EnhComp sets up some pointers to vari ous data areas If more than one CLEAR or DIM statement is used some of the pointers used by EnhComp are destroyed The problem is that
12. as soon as a batch of disk contents has been processed with the special soft keys the space taken up is apprecia bly compressed You can check available and used space from the ALLWRITE editor with the STATUS command or knowing the overall size of your WP buffer also from STATUS you can make an approximate estimate from DOS with 12 If you have a sizable pile of disks to catalog which might not fit into a single ALLWRITE file you could put them in two or more files using the ALLWRITE append and backward commands sap filename ext and ba filename ext to link them together You would then apply the special soft keys to each file individually When searching in such appended files you would shuttle between them an easy matter involving only two keystrokes with the advantage that ALLWRITE car ries the search string along when shut tling 13 The resultant catalog can be printed out from ALLWRITE but as it lacks the spp Paragraph delimiters it will print out right across the page and may look a bit crowded unless you use the print time option CO OFF it can be printed out from DOS with LIST and the P parame ter Printouts in this system aren t much use for locating which disk s a file is on as file names are grouped together under the disk names and searching visually through such a printout would be labori ous 14 The following shows how to code what ALLWRITE calls soft keys which are shi
13. bers measured with a stop watch not computed from a book I tried other val ues In some cases my keyboard refused to work correctly while in others I got strange patterns on my screen If anybody wants to set or reset bits to try to do theoretically better do it But please do notcomplain if anything should go wrong Why didn t I try to do what the FIXALL filter is supposed to do i e temporarily reduce speed when the keyboard is polled Well I did but first I find it hard to believe thatif something goes wrong with the keyboard everything else should be right To convince me hardware hackers must also answer previous questions Second things are much harder to do than itseems Itis much more than a filter You must take into account the possibility of leaving prematurely the interrupt handler when the BREAK key is pressed To enter DEBUG or any other application that uses that genuine documented DOS func tion SVC 103 You must think that the TASKER is re entrant Any call to ENADIS_DO_RAM re enables interrupts The serial port may generate interrupts while the TASKER is busy from the RTC And what happens when an interrupt occurs while the keyboard driver is active I think that interrupt driven tasks must be kept short it seems paradoxical to slow CPU down Anyway I wonder what the real read measured improvements would be DO NOT USE FIXALL FLT with Michel s patches It modifies the CBAR and CBR ports
14. contents into 24 string elements follows this letter This subject will be presented in TMQ 4 1 you really ought to consider a subscription You can tell LS DOS to double step so as to read a 40 track disk in an 80 track drive by using the READ40 utility which is part of the LS Utility disk That s not something supplied with the DOS As far as a Pascal compiler I don t have one I had received word from some folks in England as to their Model III Pascal compiler being ported to Model 4 mode but they don t seem to respond to my letters You misheard the remark or it was THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 misspoken as to what we were getting ready to release MISOSYS will be offer ing a HOST ADAPTOR priced some where in the 50 100 range price range narrowing to 75 This H A will support a Xebec 1410 or 1420 controller or equivalent such as a Konan DJ10 or an Adaptec 4000 controller I ll also be pro viding Xebec 1420 controllers for about 95 A subscription to TMQ to Europe is 35 year that s 4 substantial issues of ap proximately 80 pages each Brief overview of BASIC SVC access of video screen The following program DEMOSVC BAS provides a brief exposure to accessing the Model 4 video screen contents using the VDCTL service callof DOS 6 3 and the USRI11 interface provided in the LSI enhanced BASIC Note that an under standing of SVC interfacing as presented in either the Radio Shac
15. grams designed to provide additional fea tures to LS DOS 6 3 operation The pro grams in this group have been rewritten fo Model 4 LS DOS 6 3 You get DOCONFI for manipulating CONFIG SYS files DOEDIT to provide command editing MEMDIR to get a memory directory PaD for the provision of Partitioned Data Sets PARMDIR to obtain parameterized direc tory information for listings and Job Contro Language processing SWAP to switch drive assignments WC for wild card command in vocation and ZSHELL to provide command line I O redirection piping and multiple commands on a line All documentation ha been revised and is printed in a convenient 5 5 by 8 5 format Order M 33 200 fo 59 95 TRSTimes magazine 20311 Sherman Way Suite 221 Canoga Park CA 91306 TRSTimes the bi monthly magazine devoted exclusively to _ the TRS 80 Models Ill 4 amp 4P features Type In programs in Basic amp Assembly language Hands on tutorlals Hints amp Tips Reviews CP M coverage Questions amp Answers Letters humor and much more 1989 calendar year subscription rates U S amp Canada 18 00 Other countries 23 00 SUBSCRIBE NOW Rent this space 20 SS eS SSS SS Ss Ses hese The Marketplace 80 The Marketplace le Fe Cabin f Ti p Pre you alarmed over the high cost of A long distance rates while downloading J y Public Domain Software THE FILE CABINET has the answer TRS 80 Model 4 5 0
16. ics board that provides for 4096 color displays in 640 by 480 resolution and it s accessible through the expansion connec tor on the MISOSYS XLR8 accelerator card for the Model 4 But before I get into the GT 180 some background The September 1985 issue of Byte maga zine featured Steve Ciarcia s SB 180 single board CP M computer This computer a forerunner of our XLR8 used the Hitachi 64180 Z 80 compatible CPU clocked at 6 144 Mhz What s important to us Model 4 owners is the XBUS expansion connec tor that Steve built into the SB 180 Over the following months he presented sev eral projects that attached to this bus the GT 180 being among them in December 1986 These projects are commercially available from the Micromint Fortunately the designers of the XLR8 took notice of these developments and incorporated the XBUS into the XLR8 as an inexpensive option kit Knowing this only the purchase of a GT 180 could put an end to my incessant drooling Because I haven t yet purchased a suit able monitor this will have to be a two part report I should mention that the GT 180 is not inexpensive I paid 600 for mine pricing depends on current DRAM costs A monitor worthy of the GT 180 s capabilities doesn t come cheap either In this installment I will describe the GT 180 its documentation and some ideas THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 on how to best implement it on the Model 4 The GT 180
17. included This is something I ve been giving serious thought tolately as my disk storage requirements don t seem to have gone anywhere but up over the past 8 years I d be willing to publish the code and circuit schematic if needed in TMQ if you re interested I was also very interested in the Model I 5 3 patches that have been talked about quite a bit in the past few issues I already own a copy of Model III LDOS 5 3 pur chased from you when I got the Model III about two years ago and it would be nice to have a 5 3 update for my Model I also I spent a night 12 31 87 as a matter of fact working up my own patch to make the initial bootup Date prompt accept dates from 1980 1999 I didn t don t have any documentation on how the SYS libraries are formatted or how to use PATCH to patch them so I couldn t patch the Library commands such as DATE DIR etc I did disassemble quite a bit of SYSO it s somewhere on a disk in my library so I suppose if I finished it I d find the answer to how the libraries are for matted I don t have the SOLE package but I m still planning on getting the patches just to check them out I may adapt them appropriately to work without SOLE Ido have a Doubler for the Model I but I prefer to avoid mixed density disks so I would attempt to put the utilities on an LDOSXTRA disk and the actual DOS itself on the main disk I may even at tempt to disassemble re
18. only one computer The products listed under the special sale price although very reasonable don t say whether or not they will run on more than one computer nor what the charge is if you want them to run on more than one computer Therefore what do I need to do to return all the products on the invoice Do I need a return authorization number or what Please advise Fm MISOSYS Inc First off Lenox there is nothing in any software package sold by MISOSYS which prohibits you from making as many backup copies as you desire But all copies are for your own use backups are not to be provided to others Thus there is nothing which pre vents your prime directive from being satisfied Secondly if you maintain multiple ma chines for hardware backup purposes I see nothing there which violates the single user license Our software is licensed for use On one machine at a time We have many users with a machine at work anda machine at home legitimately using a single copy of a software package be cause the use is limited to one copy ata time If you have multiple machines with multiple users then that justifies the re quirement for a site license or multiple copies if a site license is not available There is nothing in Quizmaster which prevents its use on more than one ma chine I am therefore puzzled as to your statement it works on only one com puter also The wording specific to LS DOS 6 3
19. printer plug which is the pin for the MSB My theory was by disconnecting that lead the computer could never let it go high Thus causing the printer to ignore the MSB Alas it did not work The printer printed from its set of weird characters of CHR s 128 bytes HIGHER than what the com puter was sending rather than lower If anyone sees what I am trying to accom plish please give me a hand It will also come in handy for anyone else who wants to embed control characters in their text files Fm Bob Haynes 73075 77 Hi Louis From a hardware standpoint you were close but no cigar The TTL input lines On your printer have pullupcircuits which force the signal high when left discon nected This is standard with TTL cir cuitry So what you now have is bit 7 always high rather than low A technician could open up your printer disconnect pin 9 and hardwire it low through a low value resistor 68 ohms or so but that is permanent and the least desirable solu tion If you re driving the Toshiba under LDOS LSDOS the problem is easily solved using a printer software filter LSI had one for LDOS called STRIP7 FLT in their Filter Disk 1 package check with Roy For LSDOS there may be one floating about in the DLs here If you strike out there let me know I ll hack out a version for you it s pretty straightforward code OK What WP are you using that can t handle con trol codes 0 31 time passes Just
20. s printer default file eg DMP400 DEF all of these characters are translated down at the time of printing to the appropriate character on the printer Thus the characters are correct on the CRT and also on the printed file they are not correct on the formatted file when viewed on the CRT ie the VI or VS commands I have also set several of ALLWRITE s programmable control keys to directly give me the European charac ters that I use most often I get the machine into the alternate char acter set with PRO WAM s CHARSET command In my Initialization file which sets up the ramdisk initializes PRO WAM etc I have included a statement PRUN CHARSET The response is to hit the lt T gt key to toggle the charset and the lt BREAK gt key to exit CHARSET I appreciate your latest emphasis on user s groups and bulletin boards We will be returning to the states in September and I am looking forward to accessing such bulletin boards and also the Compuserve Forum However for many of us MI SOSYS and TMQ is in effect our user s group In that regard the above contribu tions may be published at your discre tion Fm MISOSYS Inc I ve answered the question before about distribution of files which have been uploaded to our Com puserve forum It is just not legal for anyone to download them and re distrib ute them via some other medium Com puserve is running a business and they derive income from
21. 2400 8N1 24 hrs day 7 days week Letters to the Editor Volume IV i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i Stone Mountain GA Resource Companies CA 95030 408 866 0127 404 292 7603 1200 baud 8N1 Resource Computer Clubs Mid Cities TRS 80 Users Group MCTRUG P O Box 171566 Arlington Tx 76803 HUB Computer Users Group HUB CUG 530 Buschman St Hattiesburg MS 39401 National Amstrad Tandy amp General _ User Group Oakfield Lodge Broad Lane Ram Hill Coalpit Heath Bristol BS17 2TY Great Britain NYBBLERS CHABOT COLLEGE 25555 Hesperian Blvd Hayward CA Adelaide Micro User s Group Inc G P O Box 214 _ Adelaide South Australia 5001 AUSTRALIA F J Seccull General Secretary TRS 80 SYSTEM 80 COMPUTER USERS GROUP INC 41 Montclair Street Aspley QLD 4034 AUSTRALIA SYDNEY TRS 80 Users Group PO Box 223 Bankstown 2200 AUSTRALIA The Hobart Users Group Inc THUG PO Box 420 Moonah Tasmania 7009 AUSTRALIA Letters to the Editor Aerocomp PO Box 223957 Dallas TX 75212 214 637 5400 TRSTimes magazine 20311 Sherman Way Suite 221 Canoga Park CA 91306 Try o Byte 1008 Alton Circle Florence SC 29501 803 662 9500 Anitek Software Products PO Box 361136 Melbourne FL 32936 407 259 9397 Computer News 80 PO Box 680 Casper WY 82602 Computer Reset PO Box 461782 Gar land TX 75046 214 276 8072 Cornucopia Software Inc 1625 Beverly Place Berkel
22. 3 and 13 Ghosts Fm Thomas Crompton 76430 135 Is there something on the lines of special XLR8 software needed torun in the model 3 mode on the model 4 equipped with the XLR8er board All of my TRSDOS 1 3 disks system when I run them they just re boot the system If I try to run any cmd TRSDOS 1 3 file it re boots and when I try torun SCRIPSIT model 3 mode using TRSDOS1 3 it re boots What s the prob lem Also 13 GHOSTS LDOS 5 1 4 updated to LDOS 5 3 won t work any more Your response is appreciated and your response to my message to Frank Slinkman about installing the MICRO LABS graphics board in the computer with the XLR8er already install will be ahelp I don t know but I may need to order a new longer connector cable 7 1 2 Are you in the business of doing or re doing Micro Smart s HD Driver or how can I start to learn to re write it myself What aids for this type of project soft ware hacking is available thru MISOSYS I bought a new driver from them thinking it was smaller butit s over the 500 mark But one thing is that it did not give me the bad header in low memory and it also relocates to hi mem So much of my prob lem was indeed solved that way But the driver is still to large and I would like to re write have it re written or purchase a smaller driver Fm Thomas Crompton To Mark Mueller I m having a problem with 13 GHOSTS and TRSDOS13 programs us ing the XLR8er When Irun 13 GHOS
23. 4A V2 0 6A 1 5A V3 0 4A 2 1A V4 0 005A 0 1A for Hard drive use V1 2 5A 5A V3 0 75A 2A V4 0 005A 0 1A Check the current on the supply using the listed values to see if you are overpowering the Supply the next alternative is to adapt a MS DOS PS to the Mod4 a 100W job Fm Bob Haynes Ah but that s on the 12v line With all your add ons I can see you might have to beef that up abit but on mine only the RS 232 drivers use it so not muchcurrentis really required My power problem is with 12v which the fan the video and floppies all use I even tried installing a 120v ac fan instead but the noise drove me nuts The original is much quieter But the screen breathing on floppy access is relatively minor l H get those offending drives changed out one of these days the intermittent tremor is the real problem that flyback s gonna go pretty quick no doubt All voltages are rock steady when no drive access is happen ing Appreciate the ideas and info BTW using an IBM type ps might actu ally make problems worse switching supplies can have a MINIMUM current draw requirement too anything below that results in poor regulation The Hardware Corner 76 The Hardware Corner Volume IV 1 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i Fm David Mandeville 71171 2074 I have a RS 5 meg drive that is getting kind of noisy Sometimes it is a chirping sound sometimes a squeal sometimes it
24. B M 20 083 M 21 083 1 59 95 D n a M 51 025 1 74 95 F n a M 51 225 29 95 n a M 60 060 20 00 B L 51 500 n a 3 19 95 M 21 073 2 59 95 F M 12 013 same 3 29 95 same R SB PAB 25 00 E same R SB P25 4 25 00 F L 21 010 L 21 011 2 19 95 D n a H 4P 512 S 79 95 E same M 55 020 3 19 95 n a L 60 020 3 40 00 M 32 054 2 29 95 same M 30 054 2 29 95 L 32 070 n a 4 19 95 n a R MB 003 4 150 00 F n a R MB 004 4 200 00 F same H FD same H HD Final 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 MISOSYS Inc P O Box 239 Sterling VA 22170 0239 703 450 4181 Orders only 800 MISOSYS 800 647 6797 Volume IILiv THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Spring Summer 1989 Volume IIL iv e GO CMD product is a collection of products designed to provide additional util ty for your computer operation The prod cts in this group have been rewritten for odel 4 LS DOS 6 3 You get FASTBACK and FASTREAD for hard disk large file archive restore PRO CESS to manipulate executable command files COMP to com pare two files or disks FED2 to investigate and zap di
25. I don t care I LOVE MY MODEL I I WON T SELL IT Maybe FIH start my own museum sometime Maybe I ll just look into the Model 4 Deal 489 Ya say I m still gonna stick it out with my MODEL I OK OK OK The following sources still have MODEL I software Howe Software 205 556 4070 Home Budget and Checkbook Analyst Mailing List System Diagnostics Small Business Accounting w Payroll Small Business Management System Assembly Language course for beginner Typitall Word Proc essor w Speller MISOSYS Inc 703 450 4181 Editor Assembler EDAS Relocatable Assem bler MRAS Disassmbler DSMBLR ZEDCOR Inc 800 482 4567 Basic Assembler ZBASIC This is not a complete list but gives an idea that the MODEL I still has plenty of support Those readers who also subscribe to CN80 have been following Christopher Fara MICRODEX and his excellent tutorial on assembly language I trust We Model I owners are and should be really greatful for the support that has been shown by those companies and individuals that have continued to support the real early tech nology We don t represent ANY VOL UME of business Most early users that I know have at least upgraded to the MODEL 4 since it will run both MODEL III and MODEL 4 software like having 2 com puters in one MISOSYS still supports operating systems for the MODEL II and 4 and STAND ALONE in operating sys tem support But THAT IS NOT WHAT I
26. MC Printer Output Fm Rick D Jones 75130 354 I pur chased PRO MC a few weeks ago The manual I got doesn t have ANY THING about STDPRN the printer Can anyone help Fm Les Mikesell 70010 266 Rick STDPRN is an MSDOS concept not C On the model 4 just open or fopenQ the printer device PR and use the returned fd or fp Fm Shane Dawalt 71076 511 Rick I don t believe PRO MC has stdprn The only compilers that I know of which have stdprn and stdaux on some are in the MSDOS area If you want to get to the printer define a file pointer for the printer stream I d call it stdprn Use the fopenQ call to open the stream for writing like so if stdprn fopen PR w NULL You should provide error trapping in the event fopen fails You can use stdprn just like stdin stdout stderr I find this most convenient Of course if you re going to port this to MSDOS you can always comment out the above if con struct stdprn will be correctly used Fm Rick D Jones Les STDIN STDOUT STDERR are standard I O files for PRO MC STDPRN and STDAUX are two additional I O files in ANSI C MicroSoft C I just figured out how to go around not having STDPRN on my model 4 just open a file stream called STDPRN to the PR device Fm MISOSYS Inc Better to use a con struct such as ifdef DOS if stdprn fopen PR w NULL abort Some error
27. MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i TRSDOS6 LSDOS command RESET filename ext dr to close it and then go to ALLWRITE to check what the Situation is whether any text has been lost and clean things up accordingly 5 Go to ALLWRITE and call the catalog file created as above You will find many blanks between entries that take up a large proportion of file space also attribute abbreviations especially on invisible and system files which are good in normal use of the CAT or DIR command but might cause con fusion in this application 6 At the ALLWRITE editor press CLEAR keep it held down press key 1 coded as below and keep it held cycle at a given point you will be informed there are no more items found by an error code which is really only a statement so release CLEAR and 1 and press ENTER to exit this phase Then press CLEAR and release it press key 2 also coded as below and re lease it That will give you a com spaces will have been removed The file you started with created by the ROUTE command will have shrunk to perhaps less than half its original size and filenames are displayed four across in easily readable form As soon as you have your compressed file you must of course save it to disk using the same filename ext as in item 2 Key coding and operation are explained below Use these two keys in the correct se quence first 1 then 2 The reverse sequence would upse
28. WAY TO 320 K from 80 MICRO 10 1987 p 60 This memory expansion replaces the upper 8 pieces of 64k chips with 256k chips Switching of the new available four blocks of 64k memory is done in my model 4 by an OUT command to port 9C hex other than the port 00 in 80 MICRO setting the value of the desired block of the new 64k part within the 256k chips by data bits DO and D1 A startup or reboot always gives the value 00 to the added memory LS DOS 6 3 uses 128k as with Tandy s original 64k in upper sockets I did like to get your patches to LSDOS 6 3 to MEMDISK in order to use both the expansion boards I mentioned Alpha Seatronics and the homebrew type 320K THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 from 80 MICRO If there are problems between my 320k project switching four blocks by 64k with bits DO D1 using port 9C hex and the patches which you have designed please tell me I m able to rede sign my add on electronic as well as I would be able to work on an assembler source code with Tandy s ALDS pack age I think you should know my system s specifications TRS 80 model 4 desktop with two double sided 40 track drives add on RS 232 board and memory control is done by PAL chip U 72 for 128 k stan dard My model 4 has a German QWERTZ keyboard and my DOS is LSDOS 6 3 with German QWERTZ modification submitted from Tandy serv ice after the company closed its computer centers T
29. ample I m running Tandy s MS DOS 3 20 banner report on boot and chang ing my config sys statement from shell c command com e 384 p to e 512 drops my CHKDSK reported memory by exactly 128 bytes Removing the shell statement entirely regains 272 bytes so it appears that there is a sixteen byte over head for extending one s environment beyond the default 128 bytes Fm Jim Beard Joe Apparently there is an environment on a lower level that increments itself in paragraphs on boot PIH bet that it depends on what you put in your CONFIG SYS file Fm LDOS Support Jim Well the mas ter environment is maintained by the shell not by the part of DOS that reads COMNFIG SYS and nothing that goes into CONFIG SYS ends up in the environ ment other than what comes out of the execution of the shell i e COMSPEC and the size of the environment itself COMMAND COM may shrink the origi nal environment memory block to a singe paragraph and then fill it with some sort of flag that indicates an alternate memory block is in use and any necessary point ers Without disassembling COMMAND COM which would be in teresting in itself I don t think we ll know DOS Subjects 39 DOS Subjects Volume IV i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i ARRAY LOAD ROUTINE Random access and sequential files are great for saving string data or numeric data which needs to be appended to But what abou
30. and retrieval a UNREL j purposes is a normal DOS file that is requested by the MC supports command line O redirection for compiled 29 95 2 FORTH system when it is first entered Doing this has New price schedule effective 10 01 89 U S Add S amp H Canada use U S 1 Foreign S amp H use U S 3 M C amp VISA accepted 30 day refund on product if not acceptable Note Please specify Model I III or Model 4 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 ower case 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 MISOSYS Inc PO Box 239 Sterling VA 22170 0239 HartFORTH supports double length integers string handling cursor manipulation graphics random numbers and floating point Load up at these new low price
31. and the right experience I found the Tandy CRT to be neater and safer than the TV s that I have seen Hi Res and Screen Problems Fm Ted Haigh 73327 442 I have noticed that my model 4 with the RS Hi Res board will sometimes cause the screen to shrink then enlarge shrink enlarge as long as it is scanning Le drawing a picture I have taken the power supply out and resoldered the power in out connectors this did not fix the problem I would like to know if anyone else has had this same problem and is it a power supply prob lem or just the way Radio Shack de signed its board Please give me some insights on fixing this or minimizing this problem I find that it is very annoying to watch the screen do this as it draws Fm Ken Stiefel 72305 1303 Ted I can t claim to be an expert on the inside of these beasts but I have the RS Hi Res card ina model 4 several 4P s and a 4D and the only time I saw any movement in the display was when we lost a power supply You can check the output voltage on the power supply to see if you have any variation as you rewrite the screen It almost sounds if you have a bad filter or regulator Fm Ted Haigh Ken I will check the PS very soon I am now in the process of getting the RAM in working order I sus pected that the PS was going on me so now I will give it the once over and let all know the problem s if I find any I have guessed that it might be the PS just does not h
32. assume that the drive is not available What I need to do now is find out specifically where the failure is oc Curring and find some workaround I doubt that Tandy will admit to any problem or rectify it if one is proven Model II LS DOS ALLWRITE stack Fm John H Mercer Mortdale NSW Australia Dear Roy Belated congratu lations on the successful arrival of Ben jamin Charles When last I wrote to you I had not taken time to dip into either of the last two copies of TMQ so was unaware of the happy event I trust that Brenda will now be able to get back to work The lengths that people will go to to get time off Sorry Brenda I was really only jok ing and can well imagine just how busy you must be with all you have on your plate I pray that the children will be a continuing source of joy to you both Our group SYDTRUG has just recently been presented with two TRS 80 Model 2 computers one of which has an external hard drive They came with TRSDOS Volume IV i 2 0B and we are wondering if itis possible to get a version of LS DOS which would suit these machines Would you please advise if such a DOS is available and if so what is the cost As a matter of interest were the LSI produced DOSes for the Model 2 set up to require braces rather than parentheses to enclose the parame ters of system commands As one who has grown used over nearly six years to using LDOS and LS DOS it has proved traumatic to have to re
33. be transferred from one to the other if desired Fm MISOSYS Inc Dear Henry in re sponse to your letter of July Sth concern ing Our upcoming hard drive let me re spond to your questions It is for the very reason that you can t reliably connect more than one peripheral to the external bus that I decided to design the hardware clock and joystick port op tions into my host adaptor A drive package uses a case and power supply standard item hard drive very standard item connecting cables stan dard items hard disk controller stan dard item but not necessarily repairable usually replaceable host adaptor our own design and manufacture and our software The clock module will not be identical to the Newclock it is in fact a current tech nology device and freely available Cer tainly if you switch from a NEWCLOCK to some other clock you will have to unpatch SYSO As of this writing I have n t decided on the totality of the clock software so I cannot say if you will need to patch SYSO I have implemented a program which can be run from a startup JCL to read the clock and update the DOS storage areas I ll probably also provide a patch t SYSO for those wanting to avoid using a program to read the clock on BOOT Additionally I expect to provide a patch to SYS3 SYS to read the clock and update the system storage when a file is closed This process avoids taking up any resident memory for clock proc
34. be true I cannot remember the source of the quote Thank you for allowing me the privilege of a soap box if even for only a moment J mMISOSYS Inc Bill you have good perception On the other hand programming com mercial applications for OS 2 or for the WINDOWS environmentis beyond the resources of a small company such as mine And another s renewal Fm Charles H Stones Here s my check for 25 for another year of The MISOSYS QUARTERLY The interview with Niklaus Wirth in IILiv was worth wirth more than the cost of a year s subscrip tion I m looking forward to a continu ation of the Soltoff computer math ar ticles By the way for the many fans of TED the version that came with 6 3 you might include in some future issue of TMQ a crashproof means of invoking TED while in BASIC without having to return to DOS Letters to the Editor Volume IV i Fm MISOSYS Inc I had hoped to con tinue into the fourth article on the math series in this issue but as you probably read in The Blurb I was really over loaded Things should be more normal by issue 4 2 look for it there There is no way to invoke TED CMD from LS DOS s BASIC as TED is not a library type command file Better to consider installing PRO WAM and use the TED APP which comes with the Mister ED application pac That s the way to have a pop up editor with just about every feature I put into TED CMD whic
35. chip If your Z80 chip is in the upper left corner of the CPU board 26 1069A you have a gate array CPU andno PAL chip is necessary but there are afew other goodies that have to be done in a gate array board You need to move the wire jumper from U5 pin 16 that goes to C39 and disconnect from C39 and solder to U33 pin and 16 On even newer ver sions of the 4 like the 4D there is just a jumper to move JMP13 from its present position to its alternate position Replacement for Anitek s SuperDriver Ramdisk Driver amp Foreign characters on Model 4 and Tandy Printers Fm Brad Stiles Hemhofen FRG I am reading through Volume IJIL iii I noticed that Ken Strickler Vol HLiii p 11 indicated that he benefitted from your solution to my problem with Pro Wam and Allwrite stack over flow It is a good feeling to know that by requesting a fix to my problem I have indirectly assisted other users I would suggest that there are probably numerous users who occasion ally suffer from this problem without recognizing it THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 In regards to Roger Storrs problem with Anitek s SuperDrive software Vol II iii p 6 for the Alpha Tech Memory Board the solution to the problem is the RAMDRIV LQOR on the MISOSYS fo rum on Compuserve PCS 49 The RAMDRIV disk driver uses no high memory and abides by system conven tions It also creates a ramdisk that can be loaded with a mirror image backup L
36. comes on a 5 by 8 board and is intended to mount directly over the SB 180 Thus it s quite simple to run the 40 conductor ribbon cable from the XLR8 behind the Model 4 s logic board to the GT 180 The GT 180 draws current from the XBUS but the entire board i is imple mented in low power CMOS Then the video cable not included needs to be routed out of the TRS 80 to a suitable monitor Any VGA or multiscan digital or analog monitor will work however a lower bandwidth CGA or EGA monitor can be accommodated by changing a crystal on the GT 180 The potential of the GT 180 can only be realized by using a high frequency analog RGB monitor The next consideration is the port ad dressing for the board The GT 180 re Volume IV i quires eight contiguous I O addresses The lower four are actually for the graph ics system the upper four are for a PC style keyboard adapter intended for use with the SB 180 which normally uses a standalone terminal for display Four base addresses are jumper selectable they are EOH E8H FOH and F8H As shipped E8H is the default address Also the soft ware provided with the board requires the E8H base address Of these four base addresses only one provides eight addresses that don t con flict with the Model 4 s port assignments FOH E8H through EBH are available but the next four conflict with the Model 4 s MODOUT control buffer Since these four are used only with the PC ke
37. construct If you come up with a modifi cation to expand the motherboard mem ory to any amount without affecting the operation of the XLR8er you would still be able to write an bank replacement which would use all of the motherboard memory and still have access to the XLR8er s 256K All your modification DOS Subjects 36 DOS Subjects Volume IV 1 would need to do is to be able to image your motherboard RAM into the first64K of address space Finally a stock LS DOS 6 3 disk cur rently has the address space from OFF4H to 12FFH free for additional low memory drivers filters A stock 6 3 does not use high memory unless the user installs some optional module into that region FORMS FLT COM DVR etc More memory expansion schemes Fm Hans G Bongartz Langenfeld West Germany Dear Mr Soltoff Upgrading my TRS 80 model 4 with more than 128 K of memory I run into the usual problem to use this new area of memory effi ciently Looking for help I took my batch of 80 MICRO reading publications per taining to my problem Besides objects from Mr Hardin Brothers THE NEXT STEP I saw your offer of patches to your DOS 6 3 Unfortunately I don t have the review of the Alpha Technology s Super mem board written by Mr Brothers Jan 1986 This board here distributed by Seatronics will be my finally choice with 512 K of memory Until this will be installed I finished the project ALL THE
38. 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 inadver tently deleted All documentation has been revised and is printed in aconvenient 5 5 by 8 5 format Order M 33 100 for 59 95 5 S amp H US Golden Oldies available from MISOSYS Inc PO Box 239 Sterling VA 22170 703 450 4181 PRACTICAL PROGRAMS presents THE LABEL MAKER for the TRS 80 Models 1 3 4 4D amp 4P e Utilize all the capabilities of the Epson or Compat ible printers such as Emphasized Compressed Double strike etc e Use in Dozens of Ways Retum Address Labels Property Tags Post Cards Any where multiple copies are desired e Select Number of Lines Copies and Width Store Labels on Disk for later reuse Control each line s characteristics by special prefix codes e Use on any printer Stock or size of label Specify infinitely variable line pacing E g 8 lines per inch 6 lines per inch or 3 lines per inch Easier to use than a word processor for labels e Receive full documentation on media e Get a Money Back Guarantee and free catalog with order New version available for 20 on diskette Send check to Practical Programs 1104 Aspen Drive Toms River NJ 08753 Phone 201 349 6070 The GO SYS product is a collection of pro
39. date received field too 3 6 89 if you re curious At the moment how ever I m trying to persuade myself that I ought to learn C and that purchasing Pro MC and Pro MRAS would be the best way to go about it I m also kicking myself for having missed last Fall s sale on these At the moment the desk isn t even deep enough to let me pull the 4P s keyboard completely out of the computer so it d be hard to raise the 4P Meanwhile the HD is under the printer stand Rubbermaid didn t call it a printer stand but I do I m not sure how much a phone book would do after all you have DC Suburbs which is close to 3 Poughkeepsie NY is just under an inch Anyway as I mentioned elsewhere eve ryone s suggestions have inspired me if I build a platform to hold the keyboard in front of the desk that ll put the keyboard at a better height and then I can raise or tilt the 4P Hopefully that solve several problems at once Sounds like a hard ware project though lt grin gt Thanks for The Hardware Corner Volume IV i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i all your suggestions _ PS Short notes What re those lt grin gt Fm MISOSYS Inc Don t kick too hard Hope you took advantage of last issue s M iv TMQ coupon which had another language sale And yes Ihave a rasher of phone books here There s a Maryland suburbs A DC book a Nor
40. disk drive Itis a function of the disk drive to send the index hole status to the floppy disk con troller The FDC shows or is supposed to show a 1 bit in its status register when DOS Subjects 27 DOS Subjects Volume IV i ever the drive is sending an indication that the index hole is over the detector After _ a thorough analysis of the machine code and a calculation of its t states the actual number of clock cycles used I was con vinced that the floppy driver call to access the FDC status register used to read the index pulse was executed at least six times during the time period that the drive should be seeing the index hole during one revolution of the disk Incidentally typical timing data for the index hole generation places the time between index pulses per rotation at 200 milliseconds plus or minus 150 microsec onds a single pulse generation can range from one to eight milliseconds with two milliseconds being typical LS DOS 6 3 will check the index hole status three times per millisecond at its worst case worst case being maximum BANK bank switching code being executed With the above calculations in mind I explored other tests I evaluated the code executed in the Model IH LDOS 5 3 mode and learned that the time consuming overhead of memory management in the Model 4 mode makes the CKDRV code over four times slower than that of the Model III mode thus over four times the numbe
41. during the day and overnight No failure I moved to an other Model 4 26 1069 non gate array Again running two iterations of 3000 each in succession brought no failure I have one more machine an early non gate array 4P I am currently running the test on that machine At this point I am suspecting a hardware problem My sus picion is that the index pulse is being suppressed in a burst mode short enough to impact the six observations per rotation executed by the Model 4 CKDRYV code but not sufficient to impact the 24 obser vations per rotation executed by the Model HI code I ruled out differences in the floppy disk drives themselves by using an external disk drive connected to the 4D which failed and then subsequently connected to a 4 non gate array which did not fail Same drive same cable both machines Now what s different about the Gate ar ray machines like your 4D and the non gate array machines As far as disk access goes the floppy disk controller is differ ent The non gate array machines use a Western Digital 1793 FDC a WD1691 floppy support logic chip except for the 4P 26 1080 and other discrete logic chips The gate array machines 26 1069A 26 1070 and 26 1080A use a newer WD1773 FDC and other discrete logic chips Per haps its a defect in the FDC chip itself I don t know but I do know that the ma chines in my possession which have a 100 failure rate in my test program all use the
42. for all sorts of things I have one dumb question though make an extender out of 1 8 Plexiglas TM that s four or six pieces glued together to make a box My specialty is software not hardware lt grin gt Thanks again for your advice on this Fim Bill Brandon I dunno I was pictur ing more of a flat plate velcro d to the side of the 4P Maybe I don t understand how the clip attaches but I can t see it taking a box like construction to do the 71 Volume IV i job If the clip needs a right angle bracket to attach to like an inverted L then I d use heat to soften the Plexiglas so it could be bendarounda form suchas the edge of a workbench or a2 X 4 The long part of the L would be attached with Velcro to the side of the 4P leaving the other part sticking up in the air above the top of the computer Would that work or do I have the wrong picture here Fm Gary Phillips 72425 354 Adam On your Curtis Clip problem do you have your 4P sitting righton the desk top I find that is too low for comfortable viewing especially if the surface is the correct height for typing I put the cover of the 4P open side down on the desk top and set the monitor part of the machine on it so that it is raised and tilted slightly back That might both improve your viewing angle posture and give the clearance you need Fm Adam Rubin Roy Of course I no ticed the TMQ coupon And I even filled in the
43. for down loading files from Compuserve and re distributing them Some of our readers who do not have access to our forum have an interest in those submissions So if you want to help out the most numbers of fellow users don t limit your submissions to just one source DISK NOTES 4 1 Each issue of THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY usually contains program listings patch listings and other references to files we have placed onto a disk DISK NOTES 4 1 corresponds to this issue of TMQ If you want to obtain all of the patches and all of the listings you may conveniently purchase a copy DISK NOTES is priced at 10 Plus S amp H The S amp H charges are 2 for US Canada and Mexico 3 elsewhere If you pur chase DISK NOTES 4 1 with the coupon which accompanies this TMQ issue you can save 2 50 the cost then being only 7 50 S amp H Out of print TMQ s available For out of print issues we are providing back issues of THE MISOSYS QUAR TERLY via copier reprint The price is 12 50 plus 2 75 S amp H in the U S and CANADA For foreign zone D the S amp H rate is 5 50 zone E is 6 50 The price for regular back issues still in print is 10 S amp H We are currently out of print on all issues of Volume I and Volume II Here s a synopsis of past issues Volume I See the index in issue Ti See the index in issue IIL iti Ili Reading NEWDOS 80 disks An LB archival utility Popup Application Window XMODEM i
44. for repeated opening and closing of an I modality sequential access file from Basic at timed intervals and then refer to the number of times you could run without failure I m notclear as to what sort of failure you have in mind The failure I have com plaints about is doubling up of the same file on the same disk If you are testing in the Input modality I don t see how you can generate any file duplication as no writing to disk is involved I suspect that you were testing for something else but I fail to see exactly for what If I could understand it I might run the program on one of my machines but I would have to know what I am looking for As I said pardon me if that s a silly statement At the end of your letter you state that the problem is certainly not restricted to use of the XLR8er I won t argue with that but I must definitely state that DOS Subjects Volume IV i in my own personal experience every instance of doubling up of a file on a disk has definitely occurred when using an XLR8er and never on a 4 or 4D in the original configuration as purchased i e without XLR8er I can imagine you ex Claiming Aha and how do you know that you never had a file doubled up which you didn t notice The answer is that I have been using model 4 since its incep tion about 1983 and switched to 4D s as soon as they came on the scene Over those six years or so I have run about four ma
45. have atleast one 5 1 4 360K 720K or I 2M drive and 256K memory Not for PS 2s Order PCXZ 79 95 The Utimate Cure Some TRS80 disks may be formatted such that the first sector on each track cannot be read on some computers by ANY transier program We offer several remedies for this including a hardware adapter that provides a permanent fix Requires internal installation Will NOT work with TRSCROSS Order A001 15 00 Also may we recommend for your PC XenoCopy II runs on PCs and reads writes and format 300 different CP M CoCo P System and other formats Order Xeno 81 95 Uniform PC runs on your PC and lets you read write and format approx 200 different CP M and MS DOS formats Supports Matchpoint and Compaticard see below Order UFPC cccccccccsecscceessescceces 69 95 COMPATICARD disk controller card lets you attach 3 5 720K or 1 44 Meg 5 25 360K 720K or 1 2 Meg and 8 disk drives to your PC XT or AT Control up to 16 drives with 4 Compaticards May require Uniform PC Order CORD ssasssssenvenssssenesansnernarorsssae 125 00 UniDOS Z 80 CP M card installs in your PC andlets you run CP M programs on its builtin 8 MHz Z80 Includes a free copy of Uniform PC to transfer your old CP M programs Order UZ80 0 08 175 00 For the TRS 80 Read CP M CoCo amp PC disks on your TRS80 Use HYPERCROSS to COPY files between TRS 80 disks and those from many CP M and IBM PC type c
46. is the licensing stipulations prepared by Logical Systems Inc MISOSYS inter prets them to allow use on more than one machine but not CONCURRENTLY This interpretation is in line with that dis Letters to the Editor 10 Letters to the Editor Volume IV i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i cussed in point two above You will note from our flyer that any product other than a closeout can be returned within 30 days of the invoice date No prior authorization is needed If you don t care to honor our copyrights and don t want to use our software then you may return the packages in re sale able condition Note that The SOURCE cannot be returned Can t use DOS in MemDISK Fm Dale Parsons Dear Roy Thank s for your 6 March 1989 reply to my 2 March letter about problem s running Visicalc and installing Memdisk as the system drive on a Cat 1069 Model 4 see TMQ IIl iv page 32 ed The trouble was a sick PAL chip The answer came when I picked up a used Model 4 initial 64K from factory for a grandchild Lo itran Visicalc perfectly So did the old machine when the extra memory bank was pulled and the original jumpers replaced With a replacement PAL the old machine is doing all the tricks I missed for so long I had forgotten the memory upgrade was performed before getting Visicalc This came in a house cleaning drop package at a Radio Shack store in Clearwa
47. like planes trains and automobiles How s this grab you I asked one of my DRAM suppliers about the quality of some pulls The remark was that they are very pretty Incidentally if you don t know the term pulls means memory previously installed in boards where the Chips were pulled for re use There are pulis and trimmed pulls The latter usually arises from the removal of sol dered DRAMS which had the excess lead length clipped when the chips were first installed and soldered But ee being pretty Fm Donald Shelton My M4 s 4 of them do a lot of things better than MessyDos machines thanks mostly to LDOS TRSDOS 6 Every time I even look at 1 MSDOS I cringe at all the things it can t _do compared to LDOS Then I really cringe at thinking about learning a new computing environment just to be cur rent The hundreds of hours necessary to do that are hours I could be enjoying my M4 So I just sit back and relax My computers do everything bought them for and quite a few things that I didn t even know they could do I laugh at people who are dump ing their PC s for OS 2 to have the latest thing They lightened their pockets by at least a couple of G s but if I feel like another TRS 80 4 isn t enough 300 and I m set Software is i too So there Roy before you throw out those LDOS refence cards you mentioned in TMQ I would be willi
48. message endadif In that way you have to comment out nothing PRO MC predefines the identi fier DOS while MS DOS compilers such as Microsoft C predefine the identi fier MSDOS The typical method to write high level language for portability across environments is through condi tional code which is no different than writing assembly language source files to assemble to various operating environ ments HiRez C library Fm Rick D Jones 75130 354 Where can I get a High Rez Graphics library for PRO MC Fm MISOSYS Inc If you have the R S hires board along with the GRLIB FOR TRAN graphics library then issue II ii of The MISOSYS Quarterly has an interface between MC and GRLIB MISOSYS Products Tidbits 62 MISOSYS Products Tidbits Volume IV 1 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i PRO WAM PRO WAM query Fm Edmund L Wilkins M D Bowling Green KY Gentlemen Please send me more detailed informationon PRO WAM as advertised in CN 80 Does it have the ability to generate windows from BASIC programs like earlier ads for PRONTO would suggest Can it be used to generate shells around or pop up windows in Visi calc Scripsit Powerscript and the like Fm MISOSYS Inc Dr Wilkins This is in response to your letter of June 26th concerning our PRO WAM package I am enclosing a brochure of our product line which has a small description of PRO WAM 7 To answer yo
49. more than a thousand readers Let me give it one more year To all of you who are Supporting my efforts thanks for being there BBS and Clubs Isetaside space in TMQ as aserviceto the Model I IH 4 community of users to pub licize the following three things a list of phone numbers of companies still serv icing and supporting this market a list of public computer bulletin boards and a list of computer clubs which support the TRS 80 user The responses received to date appear in the Letters to the Editor column note that the list of Resource Companies was generated by me Mail me any additions deletions or changes TMQ Schedule Our target for mailing the THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY is the last week of the re spective month as follows Spring issue in February Summer issue in May Fall is sue in August and Winter issue in No vember I slipped a little on this issue as you will have read about elsewhere Note that your mailing label usually has the expiration date of your subscription For instance those with 89 11 om plete their subscription with this issue If you want to save me the cost of mailing a renewal notice send in your renewal fee quickly I usually wait about a month after TMQ is mailed before sending out renewal notices a te re The Blurb 3 The Blurb Volume IV i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i TMQ advertising If you are interested i
50. mounting arrangement was explored A Model 4D at MISOSYS was used to evaluate a different XLR8er installation using the normal 6 cable This proce dure placed the XLR8er board to the rear of the motherboard but facing it compo nent side towards the motherboard The 6 ribbon cable was draped around the left hand side of the motherboard The instal lation worked perfectly The following details the installation procedure used to install the XLR8er with a 6 ribbon cable where the gate array motherboard has a graphics board installed The procedure should be sufficiently detailed for all to follow Procedure A Perform steps 1 4 on pages 6 and 7 of the XLR8er Operator Manual 1 Remove the two screws holding the keyboard cable shield to the left of the motherboard Then unplug the keyboard cable please don t bend any pins 2 Remove the one remaining video cable and ground lead at the upper right of the motherboard remove the cassette cable at the right hand side 3 Remove the floppy cable connector at the bottom left of the motherboard 4 Remove the nine 9 screws holding the motherboard The least obvious screw is located 3 from the bottom and 2 from the night 5 Pull the motherboard straight up and remove it Place on a flat surface 6 Plug one end of the 6 ribbon cable into the XLR8er The XLR8er header connec tors are pointing down you are looking at the component side of the XLR8er
51. now in place Fm MISOSYS Inc The 2 sided 360K drives are directly replaceable But they are half height drives Thus replacing the internal III drives would leave a gap in the front panel In the case of the III and the 4P you need to do something with the cable connecting the floppy disk control ler FDC to the drives Tandy s cables have the head select pin pulled thus you need to either make up your own cable or add some connectors to the present on You may be able to just turn over the cable in the III 73 Volume IV i Making a 2 sided floppy cable Fm Ron McLain Parchment MI Dear Roy Received the 3 5 drive by UPS today Thank you for the promptness in shipping HELP HELP HELP I am really new to this computer thing and have a lot of beginner questions 1 When I talked to you on the phone regarding the external drive I mentioned to you that I had purchased a cable from my RS dealer here locally It appears that the cable from RS will support up to four external drives You mentioned some thing on the phone about removing pins from the cord Is any of this connection information available in written form Also you said something about reversing the drive cable as it exited the computer case Any back issues of TMQ cover all of this 2 Can you clarify again the procedure to use since I have replaced the faulty drive one with a DSDD drive so that I can access both sides
52. on without any dramas If this is the case would it not cause confusion to save the address of the top of the NEW stack instead I begin to suspect that there is a serious flaw in my reasoning but lack of knowl DOS Subjects 830 DOS Subjects Volume IV i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i edge prevents me from seeing what it is Well that s my story anyway and for now I m sticking to it Perhaps some other beginners in the assembly language field could also benefit from your further explanation of this point I know I would greatly appreciate some mention of if ina future issue of TMQ Warmest regards and please keep up the good work Fm MISOSYS Inc John I still have available the LS DOS 6 2 release for the Model II which LSI produced It is a Model 4 TRSDOS 6 2 work alike thus it uses parentheses not braces for parame ter demarcation There is also a hard disk driver and formatter available which supports 5 10 12 and 15 Meg Tandy drives It doesn t support the 8 Meg drive since that used a different hard disk con troller The 6 2 DOS product is simply the 8 system disk with one sheet of informa tion The product implies ownership of the TRS DOS 6 2 manual I used to sell the Model II LS DOS 6 2 for 49 95 S amp H but these days it can be had for 39 95 S amp H The hard disk driver formatter is TRSHD2 DCT and TRSFORM2 CMD the files are supplied without doc
53. sectors amp clusters for writing to a file Great for partial file recovery Edit bytes in hexadecimal or ASCII zap in Os Undo last edit v Search your disk drive a file or memory for ASCII or hexadecimal strings f Touch a directory file entry with your date and or time v Obtain complete disk statistics in one screen includes usage data f Alter file attributes archive system hidden read f Save Restore sectors to from auxiliary buffers for moving data around f DOS subshell available while using DED86 lets you shell to other programs d Handles 5 25 amp 3 5 drives amp RAM disks even large partition drives DED86 reduced by more than 50 Now only 29 95 2S amp H y 5 25 360K 1 2 height a 15 4S amp H Fujitsu Floppy 3 5 720K in 5 25 frame 85 3S amp H Disk Drives 3 5 1 44M in 5 25 frame 99 3S amp H cae PRICE LIST effective October 1 1989 Prices subject to change without notice Product Nomenclature Mod III Model 4 Pq Price S amp H 6 foot M M printer cable BSORT BSORT4 2cccee CON80Z PRO CON80Z diskDISK LS diskDISK DSM51 DSM4 DSMBLR PRO DUCE EDAS PRO CREATE EnhComp PRO EnhComp BPLLEGUS ccnd sear eee hose ES GO Maintenance GO System Enhancement GOsUPLIIEY vacet nea Geese Hardware Interface Kit HartFORTH PRO HartFORTH Lair of the Dragon LBMU Mf 5 foc Saco ete Jew es LDOS 5 1 4 User Manual LDOS 5
54. some and not all are destroyed With a second DIM EnhComp has some conflicting pointers The solution at least for the example program is to completely reset the point ers by using both CLEAR and DIM twice For example the program will work if the following changes are made Line 30 gt DIM AS 1 ALLOCATE 1 Line 50 gt CLEAR 2000 DIM A 100 ALLOCATE 1 Golden Oldies GO CMD ZCAT bug Fm Jane A Layman Waukesha MI Dear Roy Am inreceiptofbothGO CMD and Michel Houde s XLR8er interface package and am extremely pleased with both I believe I have however encoun tered a minor bug in ZCAT when using the lt S gt earch option If I search a CAT file for a specific extension e g DAT the search command appears to find only those files whose filestem does not ex ceed 7 characters You can easily reproduce the above mentioned behavior by creating a disk with 3 files such as SPACE6 DAT SPACE07 DAT amp SPACE008 DAT cataloguing it and then searching for DAT This search will only find SPACE6 amp SPACE07 DAT while a search with SP will find all three files Am enclosing a SASE in the hope a quick fix is available Fm MISOSYS Inc Jane This is in re sponse to your letter of January 25th concerning GO CMD s ZCAT utility I know this is kind of a late response You would not believe my desk Your letter was in a stack which was part of one heap I hav
55. speed increase But no one actually tried to measure the real values and show the unreality of the expected increase Like no one wants to see the relation between erratic behavior and so called speed increase As a researcher I am accustomed to the scientific method Which means that everything you write must be proven or provable If experimental facts give dif ferentresults than expected by theoretical computations then you have to revise your model When I wrote that setting 1 wait state and refresh period to 40T instead of O_ws and 80T speed loss was only 8 the only reaction was we must get rid of these 8 Nobody wondered why it was not 24 as predicted by theory Please have a look at the values in TMQ l ii pages 79 80 and TMQ II 1i page 54 Nobody should believe that Rubin s test is the definite speed test for Model 4 s But it is short and easy to implement and as arough test it should be OK Note that the original program as published by Roy runs interrupts enabled so as to use the internal clock as an automatic stop watch I ran the original test to make direct comparisons with Roy s results and the same with interrupts disabled to measure pure speed 2 convenient calls to SOUND helped use of a manual stop watch AJl 3 tests with EI gave the same results as Roy s The first obvious remark is that all speed addicts should run their computer with interrupts disabled They wou
56. the mother board for several others around the country and there s a plethora of programs to be found online Fm Michael Stark San Diego CA I ve included a card with information about my Model 4 BBS 8 Bit Tandy BBS San Diego CA 300 1200 2400 8 N 1 Model I IIT 4 100 102 200 OS 9 619 571 6366 24 hrs 13 Volume IV i TRS 80 Clubs amp BBS systems Fm MISOSYS Inc In our issue Mii of The MISOSYS Quarterly I requested input from any club or BBS still serving the TRS 80 community of users I wanted the information to start a section in TMQ which would list the known clubs and bulletin board systems In this issue Iam publishing the two lists of responses I have so far received If you are a representative of a club or BBS catering to the TRS 80 users and are not yet on my list please submit your information In addition I would be willing to include an ongoing list of company addresses and telephone numbers for those establish ments still catering to the TRS 80 Adver tising in TMQ is not a prerequisite to be included in this list Contact MISOS YS to be included Resource Bulletin Boards The Midlands Plaza BBS Columbia SC 300 1200 24hrs 7 days 803 776 9600 TRS 80 Model I 10 Meg HD MOTHERBOARD 415 352 8442 8 N 1 94545 SIG 2 for TRS 80 s West End BBS 300 1200 band 24 hrs 914 858 8722 Model III 10 Meg HD TBBS 1 3 hello world 817 840 2140 300 1200
57. the video RAM and keyboard image were addressed 100 of the time within the Z80 address space Tandy designed the Model 4 devices to be port mapped The DOS drivers map the key board and video into the Z80 address space during I O under very precisely controlled memory management condi tions Whenany program isrunning those two devices are just not available That gives programs an additional 3K of RAM Ican offer youno further direct assistance in using the USR11 SVC interface The 6 3 documentation had one program with many examples here are two additional I published others in THE MISOSYS QUAR TERLY to which you should consider a subscription that s where folks keep up to date on their programming techniques Fm Jan Vanden Bossche Brussels Bel gium J read your publication Required Reading with great joy but I didn t react to it sadly I have some questions regard ing LS DOS 6 3 I noticed that JCL doesn t work as adver tisedin the manual E g the EXIT macro doesn t return to BASIC Ready when calledas SYSTEM DO JCLFILE Nor does STOP ABORT or anything else They all stop LS DOS Ready DOS 6 1 and 6 2 did the same I can t get my screen into 24 strings It should be possible in the new BASIC Actually I ve asked before HOW DOI USE USR11 TO GET A SCREENLINE INTO A 80 CHR STRING It really bugs me HOW do I tell LS DOS 6 3 to double step thus reading an 40 track disk in an
58. their Modula 2 dynamically re configures the 64180 s MMU registers to allow object programs exceeding the 64K logical address space It would be nice to see such software on the XLR8 under LS DOS The supplied software is adequate for testing the GT 180 s installation but I dislike using CP M and dislike even more the thought of learning Modula 2 I hope to work up a graphics driver for use under LS DOS So Pil now describe the board from the programmer s perspective This is the good stuff The GT 180 hardware is extremely pow erful and makes the programmer s job much easier The Hitachi HD63484 a programmable intelligent graphics con troller is implemented with 512K of dis play memory a color palette controller and three highly integrated VLSI glue chips The 63484 which actually con tains 3 separate 16 bit processors on a single chip responds to 38 microcoded graphic drawing commands including LINE POLYLINE RECTANGLE CIRCLE ELLIPSE ARC PAINT COPY PATTERN ZOOM WINDOW and POLYGON There are three big advan tages to having these algorithms built into hardware 1 software development is just a matter of sending graphics commands to the 63484 2 the execution speed of the drawing algorithms is much faster than even machine code and 3 the drawing algorithms don t occupy any 64180 memory space a vital consideration under LS DOS The 63484 contains 200 bytes of on chip registers t
59. to restore archived files to the hard drive 7 A utility to park the hard drive s read write head to a safe area on power down At some near future date MISOSYS will also supply a software installation facility for generic Xebec 1410A controllers The Xebec 1410 was popular a number of years ago and was used by VR Data ARM and others It also is available as the Konan DJ10 and another manufac tured by Scientific Micro Systems The host adaptor has provision for a hard ware real time clock module This option uses a Dallas Semiconductor DS 1287 clock module Its internal battery has a lifetime in excess of 10 years Software is pro vided to update the operating system s date and time data areas from the time data stored in the clock The clock mod ule has an internal RAM area of 64 bytes 14 of which are used by the clock This leaves 50 bytes of RAM available for your use The RAM is accessed by simple port I O commands Since the RAM is battery backed it is non volatile its con tents are retained even when the power is turned off Volume IV 1 Another option which is available is a joystick port and joystick A Kraft MAZE MASTER joystick is provided with this option The joystickisa simple 4 position Switch action joystick with a fire button The port interface is identical to the joys tick available some time ago from Alpha Products thus any software which oper ated from that joystick will oper
60. 0 TRS 80 High Resolution MacPaint 4 00 Orchestra 930 Music Files 2 00 CATALOG PRICES ARE REFUNDABLE WITH YOUR FIRST OROER ee All New 1989 AS TRS 80 Model 4 Disk Catalog FOR THE PAST FIVE YEARS THE FILE CABINET HAS COLLECTED PUBLIC DOMAIN SOFTWARE FOR THE TRS 80 MODELS 1 3 AND 4 FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD THE SOFTWARE HAS NOW BEEN COMPILED INTO THE LARGEST CATALOG OF TRS 80 PUBLIC DOMAIN SOFTWARE IN EXISTENCE EVERY DISK IS CRAMMED TO NEAR CAPACITY WITH SOFTWARE FOR BUSINESS ENTERTAINMENT EDUCATION PROGRAMMING AND COMMUNICATIONS SPECIAL CATALOGS ARE ALSO AVAILABLE FOR THOSE WITH HIGH RESOLUTION GRAPHIC BOARDS AND ORCHESTRA 90 tm MUSIC SYNTHESIZER HARDWARE SO QUIT TURNING OVER HALF OF YOUR PAYCHECK TO MA BELL BECAUSE OF ALL THOSE LONG DISTANCE MODEM CALLS GET YOUR PUBLIC DOMAIN SOFTWARE AT A MERE FRACTION OF THE COST THROUGH THE FILE CABINET IF YOU DON T OWN A MODEM YOU HAVE BEEN MISSING OUT ON A LOT OF GREAT SOFTWARE OVER THE YEARS AND THE FILE CABINET IS THE PLACE TO GO TO FIND THE BEST SELECTION SO ORDER YOUR CATALOGS TODAY AND SEE WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN MISSING THE COST OF THE CATALOG IS REFUNDABLE WITH YOUR FIRST ORDER SO WHAT HAVE YOU GOT TO LOOSE MODEL 1 3 CATALOG 5 00 MODEL 4 CATALOG 5 00 MODEL 4 HIGH RESOLUTION READMAC CATAOLG 4 00_ ORCHESTRA 90 tm CATALOG 2 00 atianga a eip Y Download Through The Mail SEND ALL ORDERS TO COMPUTER NEWS 80 SO EXCLUSIVE MAIL ORDER DISTRIBUTOR FO
61. 003 1504 5S amp H XLR8er 256K Ram R MB 004 200 5S amp H Please specify Computer Model amp Number 26 and if Hires graphics board is installed The Hardware Corner Upgrade your existing SMeg drive or build anew Expand your PC to an XT with these standard components 1 Seagate ST 225 drive 20 Megabyte 225 5 Ibs 7 50 10 50 S amp H 2 WD XTGEN hard drive controller 75 1 Ib 4 00 6 00 S amp H 3 Extemal hard drive case e w 60 Wt ps for 1 full or 2 half height 125 10 lbs 13 00 18 00 S amp H 4 Items 1 amp 2 plus connecting cable set 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 or call for shipping charges 77 Adaptive Equalization Dual RJ11C modular telephone plugs 11T512P H 4P 512 89 95 5S amp H Speed up RO Model ks commu fas tions ca FAY ties with 4 S W only full gage Ny Wher 300 baud in modem 4P available from MISOSYS TT512P 1200 bps modem for 4P Full AT command set Features On board AT command set Automatic Answer Automatic Dial Automatic Fallback High speed signal for use with BBS Call Progress Messages Analog loopback self test mode The Hardware Corner WW MISOSYS HartF ORTH 86 implementation which provides an execution speed between 10 and 40 Vi Progr
62. 1773 FDC whereas the machines in my possession which have a0 failure rate in my test program all use the 1793 FDC I certainly realize that you are uncon cerned with where the problem lay but are interested in a Solution Well I am 28 Volume IV i certainly interested in finding a solution But I recognize that 1 the problem is certainly not restricted to use of the XLR8er _and 2 a solution can only be developed once either the root cause of the index hole suppression is determined or until I stumble onto a code stream for the Model 4 DOS which is unaffected by the root cause I am continuing to evaluate the situation When a solution is forthcom ing I will so advise Fm Charles A Ainsworth Dear Roy Many thanks for your letter of June 28 regarding doubling up of files on the same disk Your time effort and courtesy are much appreciated as usual This letter does not call for a specific reply and is only intended as comments Your explanation of the possible causes of the problem has to a certain extent gone way over my head The nuances of DOS operation are not among the collec tion of weird and wonderful things that my tangling with modern technologies forces me to become involved in Any how I get the general trend which is quite sufficient to follow your outline However I plead to be forgiven if under such circumstances I make what seem to be silly statements You show a Basic program
63. 3 Max Upgrade Kit LDOS 5 3 Mod3 Upgrade Kit LED LS LED Little Brother M4 LS DOS 6 3 Upgrade Kit LS DOS 6 3 Site License LS Host Term e00 LS UTILITY Sato tees ee oe MC 7 PRO MC 646 tees Ss Mister ED 65 eke ware we es MRAS PRO MRAS 6 PRO WAM sereine ee et ew Programmer Toolkit Programmer s Guide DOS 6 QuizMaster 200 RATFOR M4 2 cc awe ec cee RSHARD R S HD driver Switch box AB 36 Switch box AB 25 TBA LS TBA assonans TeleTrends TT512P modem The Gobbling Box THE SOURCE 3 Volume Set UNBRBEL CPM iire So eee cet UNREL T80 ccc ecw ees WY retas Soe oe Ew XLR8er e w OK RAM XLR8er e w 256K RAM Floppy drives see ad Hard drives see ad 95 24 95 same R 06 CMM 4 19 95 D L 32 200 L 32 210 3 14 95 M 30 033 M 31 033 2 19 95 L 35 211 L 35 212 3 29 95 L 35 204 L 35 205 3 49 95 M 30 053 M 31 053 2 24 95 M 20 082 M 21 082 1 44 95 D M 20 072 M 21 072 2 59 95 D L 32 053 n a 4 14 95 n a M 33 100 S 59 95 F n a M 33 200 S 59 95 F n a M 33 300 S 59 95 F n a M 12 110 4 29 95 M 20 071 M 21 071 4 49 95 B same M 55 021 3 29 95 n a L 50 515 1 29 95 L 40 020 n a 4 15 00 D M 10 833 n a 4 34 95 M 10 033 same 4 34 95 L 30 020 L 30 021 3 19 n a L 50 510 1 74 95 F n a M 11 043 39 95 n a M 11 143 varies n a L 35 281 2 49 95 n a L 32 150 4 19 95 M 20 064 M 21 064 2 79 95 D n a M 51 028 1 39 95
64. 95 lt lt lt lt Back Rest Super Fast Hard Disk Backup and Restore Saves hours of time For I IM or 4 34 95 gt Original 1986 price 99 95 Initially written for ourselves BACK REST has proven to be a great time saver for thousands of TRS 80 hard drive users When reviewed by 80 MICRO they gave it FIVE STARS perfect It saves hours of time and is very easy to use BACK REST can back up 10 megabytes in about 18 minutes and 20 meg in about 30 40 minutes It also tells you how many disks to have ready Works under LDOS or TRSDOS 6 both versions on same disk Great utility for hard disk users Superior Hard Disk Drivers for Tandy disk systems Mix Model II and 4 easily 49 95 gt Original 1986 price 99 95 Our hard disk drivers out performs the Tandy drivers in many ways Our drivers allow you to combine LDOS and TRSDOS 6 on the same drive and boot from either system with floppy disk They run faster and take much less memory from the system Only for use with Tandy Hard Drives PowerMail Plus Please specify Model 4 III I 5 Star mailing list data system 34 95 gt Original 1986 price 99 95 This program was also written for ourselves when all the other mailing list data base systems couldn t keep track of all the types of data we wanted to keep track of We needed speed we needed hard drive support and we needed a crash proof data structure PowerMail was top rated 5 stars in several publications and has never been top
65. AR F if necessary to repeat the search and delete when found with the delete word command CLEAR W To add a file to a disk search for the disk name and insert the file name below it To delete a cataloged disk search for the disk name and delete disk name and contents with the block delete command If the changes to a disk are extensive it might be simpler to delete the disk name and contents en tirely and then add the revised disk per item 10 Whenever searches are made remember that ALLWRITE searches after the cur sor unless other special instructions are given so get to the top of the file initially with CLEAR T 10 To add further disks to the catalog proceed exactly as when you created the original file items 2 4 ROUTE PR to your existing catalog file without the REWIND parameter which would over write and cause the loss of the existing file Without REWIND new material is appended to the file and you then go to ALLWRITE and proceed as before item 6 to process the added items with the specially coded softkeys Again remem ber to RESET PR before leaving DOS 11 When cataloging a number of disks keep an eye on the space you will have Applications for the User Volume IV i Applications for the User r eai a e Volume IV i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 available at ALLWRITE The addition of too many disks at once may cause mem ory overflow but adding fewer at a time will help
66. ASIC BASCOM C CHECKWRITER COBOL EDTASM FORTRAN HOME ACCOUNTANT MZAL OMNITERM PROFILE III SCRIPSIT SUPERZAP TASMON VISICALC XMODEM ZEUS To run PC Three you must be the legal owner of a Model III DOS You also need a BASIC ROM file image which must be either the file MODELA III or a copy of the ROM ona Model III you legally own We provide instructions on how to obtain the ROM image file Runs on PCs PS 2s compatibles and laptops with at least 384K of memory Works even better if you have a hard disk PS 2 owners must have access te anon PS 2 machine to run PCXZ to transfer disks Price Order PC3 PC3 with PCXZ cccccccssccecccconsovsevevcsscarencoece 109 95 PC Four Emulates a TRS 80 Model 4 on aPC Now you can run your favorite TRS 80 Model 4 programs on your PC with PC Four Not just BASIC but machine language programs as welll This is another Hypersoft FIRST PC Four is aprogram that makes your PC or Compatible behave like a TRS 80 Model 4 complete with operating system Z80 microprocessor and 128K of memory so you can run many of your favorite Model 4 programs such as ALCOR C COBOL MULTI BASIC amp PASCAL ALLWRITE BASCOM ELECTRIC WEBSTER FED FORTRAN Forth Little Brother PFS FILE PowerMail Payroll PROFILE SUPERSCRIPSIT VISICALC Model 4 BASIC and many more Recommended by Prosoft for running Allwrite on your PC PC Four even works with assemblers suchas ALDS EDAS MZAL and ZEUS and debugg
67. C number desired into the integer array Line 320 passes the desired row number into the integer array Since the row number is stored in register H we must shift the small integer 0 23 left by 8 bit positions to align the value into register H This is done by multiplying the loop index value by 256 Line 330 pokes the address of the string constant our line buffer into the integer array for the DE value Line 340 establishes the VDCTL request as function 9 transfer an 80 byte video line and specifies the direction to be screen to buffer Line 350 invokes the VDCTL SVC by using the USR11 function Line 360 copies the result of the video line transfer into our string array which holds the 24 lines each line a separate array element Note that the LEFT func tion is being used to force a copy of the characters If the program used a simple assignment statement such as S K RX only the string address pointer in the S array would be altered since BASIC as sumes that string constants are not going to be changed new strings would not be generated and each array element would actually contain the same result the last line transferred Line 400 simply displays the result of the DOS Subjects 32 DOS Subjects Volume IV 1 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i program s capture of the screen lines Lines 500 570 read the top line of the video screen by the single character p
68. CH The disk includes the famous games ANDROID NIM BEEWARY DUELING DROIDS DANCING DEMONS once sold by Radio Shack for 14 95 SNAKE EGGS and ANIMATED LIFE All games feature full sound effects and some of them are even in 3 part harmony You and your family will just love this disk Dancing Demon even features saving your song and dance routines to disk and four of them are included The possibilities are endless and it is always entertaining A great way to show off what your computer can do and always fun KIM WATT GAME DISK Space Colony Symon Capture Horse Race Slots 3 with Sound 7 95 Kim Watt author of Super Utility and other famous programs wrote some games that Adventure International published back in the early 70 s They are inter esting in that most people have never seen these as by the time SUPER UTILITY was established in the market these games as well as Adventure were gone Onginally these were sold on three separate diskettes or tapes but we have combined them all on one disk for you collectors LANCE MICKLUS GREATEST GAMES 3 Disk Set 17 95 This is a great collection as it features space games Space Trek adventure games Dog Star Adventure gambling games The Mean Craps Machine which also includes a Craps tutorial booklet on disk board games Mean Checkers Machine as well as some darn useful programs that you might use for real purposes Also has some educational games for the kids You will
69. CTION OF PUBLIC El Web Hyphenation 35 off incl 32 49 i DOMAIN SOFTWARE FOR THE TRS 80 MODELS 1 3 AND 4 IN E W Grammar amp Style 35 off 49 99 32 49 THE WORLD EACH DISK IS FILLED TO NEAR CAPACITY WITH 5 A fantastic Grammar Checker 80 Micro 4 85 i QUALITY SOFTWARE MUCH OF WHICH CAN T BE FOUND ANYWHERE The Works AIl E W features 119 99 149 99 ELSE LeScript 1 9 50 off reg 199 99 89 99 64 99 THERE ARE PROGRAMS FOR BUSINESS EDUCATION PROGRAMMING 3 Allwrite W P w o support 67 off N A 64 99 i ENTERTAINMENT AND COMMUNICATIONS THERE ARE EVEN Whoops Instant Speller Thesaurus 39 99 N A AND ORCHESTRA 90 TM MUSIC SYNTHESIZERS Combo Word Proc amp Spell 55 off 129 99 99 99 SO COME ON AND BEAT THE HIGH COST OF LONG DISTANCE PHONE Whole Works All EW Feat amp WIP 199 99 199 99 BILLS AND FIND THAT SOFTWARE YOU HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR i THE COST OF EACH CATALOG IS REFUNDABLE WITH YOUR FIRST Order N 41 5 5 38 7000 H i ORDER SO WHAT HAVE YOU GOT TO LOOSE raer INOW AN Catalogs Are On Disk C oe Visa MasterCard checks O K Add 53 for C O D Add 5 for shipping amp i TRS 80 MODEL 4 CATALOG 5 00 handling Add sales tax in Calif Specify W P when ordering Prices good until TRS 80 MODEL 1 3 CATALOG 5 00 8 10 89 while supplies last i TRS 80 MODEL 4 HIGH RESOLUTION READMAC 4 00 i TRS 80 ORCHESTRA 90 MUSIC FILE CATALOG 3 00 my Cornucopia Softw
70. Fm MISOSYS Inc Richard You ask a very interesting question concerning the memory switching facility of the Model 4 As you are aware The stock Model 4 can have up to 4 banks of 32K of RAM Port 84H provides the capability of imag ing all four banks into the 64K address space of the Z80 If we designate the banks as A B C and D then we can have AB AC AD CB and DB imagedinto the 64K address space other combinations cannot be imaged directly You also have the capability of placing the keyboard and video into either the Model III mode or switched in and out of the Z80 address space in the Model 4 mode Finally the Model III ROMS can be switched out to be replaced by RAM The bank switching facility I designed into the Model 4 DOS uses the memory management port to construct the follow ing images using B as bank 0 Cas bank 1 and D as bank 2 AB AC AD When a program requests a bank change using BANK the request is converted to a revised mask for the memory manage ment port Also background processing the task switcher device I O PUT GET CTL and block I O disk requests received by the DOS are handled Volume IV i by firstre installing bank 0 satisfying the request then re installing the previously resident bank That permits successful memory operations regardless of which bank is installed in memory It restricts device drivers and filters as well as inter rupt tasks to be resident in
71. However I still have not been able to get it to work as described I have had some success with Scripsit 01 00 09 installed on LS DOS 6 3 The command DO SSFIX gave error message 07H and the patches did not take How ever I was able to install one at a time the 8 patches listed under SSFIX TXT The CTRL Z activating code then worked and I can now enter PROWAM from SCRIPSIT However I can not QUIT SCRIPSIT after I use any BLOCK for example to move a paragraph When I press CTRL Q I get an error message Logical Record Length Open Fault I have been getting by by simply wee the use of any Block Can you please tell me if you have en countered this problem and what the solution is also found that SSFIX would not take on SCRIPSIT 01 02 00 I then tried applying the patches individually but got a Line Mismatch Error when it came to apply ing the fifth patch listed under SSFIX On other subjects do you have any new Software for the TRS 80 Model 4 The list I have is dated Jan 1988 Would you have a SCRIPSIT Driver for the TANDY DWP230 printer I have been using the DPW2I0 driver for the DWP230 printer but it will not handle BOLD on a propor tional print wheel Fm MISOSYS Inc Dear A The Error 07 message you received when trying to invoke the DO command via DO SSFIX is simply explained Quoting from The Programmer s Guide to TRSDOS Ver sion 6 This error indicates that a request wa
72. I did get some letters asking what happened to it that it was missed I got no letters saying glad to see it s gone So here it is again And I thought no one noticed Have no fears I m not going to bring you all up to date by posting the happenings of the last six months Let me just note some of the recent events We were supposed to take the week of August 6th off for vacation Our original plans were to spend the time at Lake Anna a large lake about 70 miles south of here We have a small lot by the lake ina subdivision and a small 15 5 foot tri hull outboard boat Unfortunately as luck would have it the weekend before that the boat s motor developed a problem and I had to take it in to the shop for repair After being told there was no problem in having it ready in time for our vacation we proceeded to wait It s the 27th of August as I write this and the boat is still not ready So our vacation plans were fizzled Al though we have a small travel trailer on the lot since boat ing is the only thing to do we decided to stay home On the other hand maybe fate was working for us as RESSE Brenda S Mpi hse eel maternal grandfather took seriously ill and was hospitalized We were at least home to get the news Brenda decided to fly down to Lake Placid Florida to lend support to her grandfather mother and others in the fam ily I remained at home to take care of our
73. Jim There isa difference in the E nn option between 3 2 and 3 3 for the latter you specify the number of sixteen byte paragraphs rather than the number of bytes My CONFIG SYS file for 3 2 ends in SHELL C COMMAND COM E 512 P Fm Jim Beard Joe Nothing like upward compatibility in MS DOS 3 2 to 3 3 huh My impression was that environment space came in 128 byte granules Apparently they decided to formalize 16 byte gran ules Fm Kerry Wilson Jim What is the de fault amount of space for the environ ment What does the p mean Fm Shane Dawalt 71076 511 Kerry p tells the shell not to exit to any other higher shell In effect this implies that the shell invoked with p is your login shell For example say you are working in your favorite editor and you want to run an other program for somereason Normally you will select an option that Shells to DOS This spawns another instance of your Shell program After you have com pleted your work in the shell you type EXIT to return to your editor This termi nates the second instance of the shell and returns you to the editor If you type EXIT in your login shell it will be ignored because it IS the top level shell in your environment I don t recall what happens if you do not specify the p flag on your top level shell and you attempt to EXIT On my ma chine I believe the DOS reinvokes the standard shell without complaint It has been a lon
74. M C amp VISA S amp H are U S only companied by a copy of the origi HartFORTH 86 59 95 5S amp H US way branching decisions to be taken with execution continuing in line once the word branched to completes String manipulators include VARIABLE CONSTANT LEFT RIGHT MID COMPARE and gt DOS software and hardware interrupt vec tor accesS support via GET VECTOR PUT VECTOR THIS SEG DI and EI UN W V24 program input output and interrupt input support Overlay management words FORGET OVLY OVLYNAME PUT DATA OVLY ENTRY SAVE OVLY CORRECT LOAD OVLY NEW OVLY RUN OVLY and LEAVE OVLY W Screens provide trigonometric functions SIN COS TAN SIN COS and TAN Now get the clearest view of W your disk drive and memory contents with our DED86 Powerful features in Version 2 When you need to travel through your disk drive why settle for a tool that isolates you from the 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 Check out this list of features v Look by cylinder head sector sector or cluster even reserved hidden sectors f Scan free clusters to search for erased data Jump about subdirectories d Keep
75. ME PRODUCT ACTION US Knuckiehead junk throw it out Tandy of Goforth TX Sit Merchandise Lose it Radio Shack of Yuppie Mall _ Fm Spence Mabry 76615 2071 Roy Sorry this is later than the others but finally got back up and running But to answer in some more detail our question re merges with SuperScripsit Scripsit Pro Profile creates an ASCII file with s as the variable delimiter The way Jim Beard laid out is correct The only thing is that the variable delimiter has to be unique for both the form letter amp the merge document Since I do merge from Profile 4 to Scripsit Pro actually Allwrite with Electronic Webster amp Dotwriter I tend to use the character One of the reasons I don t use LB though I happen to own it all that much is because of the lack of this merge feature Glad you re adding it Fm MISOSYS Inc Actually even with the current LB it wouldn t take but a few minutes to create a print screen which would generate the form letter data file Just put the header tags as a print header then do the line by line data with what ever surrounding character you choose Nothing complicated about that once you know what the requirements are Make use of the LS DOS redirection fa cility by typing prior to invoking LB ROUTE PR MERGE DAT d Run the report in LB exit then close the merge file with RESET PR PRO
76. Pete Granzeau 72375 11 The prob lem is the drive cable in the Model 4 Look into the connector you attach to the drive and you will see several pins are missing One of those pins is pin 32 required for side select The other pins the missing ones that is are used to establish the drive address Hopefully your DS drive has jumpers which permit you to establish the drive address Set them and replace the connector with a 34 position card edge connector with all positions present Radio Shack cat no 276 1564 2 99 I am assuming you only replaced one of two drives If you replaced both of your drives you can try just turning the signal cable over so all the missing pifis are on the other side of the PC boards all of them The odd numbered pins are all ground so a few missing ones shouldn t hurt Too much Fm MISOSYS Inc 70140 310 John Pull the orientation tabs off of each card edge connector and invert each connector into each drive and the motherboard Then jumper the drives for the proper drive selects DSO and DS1 for 0 3 or DS1 and DS2 for 1 4 Tandy pulls the side select pins from their cable connectors Doubled sided drives DO needs SYS6 SYS Fm A Baracos Winnipeg Manitoba Canada Dear Mr Soltoff About a year ago I purchased PROW AM from you and tried to use it with SUPERSCRIPSIT As I had trouble installing SSFIX I wrote to you and on May 25 1988 you kindly sent me further instructions
77. R THE FILE CABINET COLLECTION COLLECTED CATALOGED AND SUPPORTED P O Box 680 BY TIM SEWELL CASPER WYOMING 82602 0680 pi ON LIWY3d WA But 437S dIYd 39YlS0d S Nl qivy yN p uereny ebejsod uinjey pue upIlemiod p s nb y u0l1j99110D SS IPPY 19 SeW SOd UO Ud V7 JOIIEW p Ulld S US UNOZ 6czo 0zizz VA 6UI8 S a eez xog Od V oul SASOSIIN
78. S DOS 6 3 from a specially formatted disk Dir on Cyl 1 Cylinders chosen to match the size of the ramdrive and directly SWAPPED into drive 0 The problem for European residents is that accessing Compuserve 1s not easy or cheap anyone know how to access Compuserve from Germany without great expense had to havea state side friend download the library and send it to me on disk Perhaps Mr McClung PD Software Librarian Vol II 1 p 3 can help sup ply such software If so perhaps you could explain in the Quarterly how a person would go about requesting such software from Mr McClung I also noticed Vol III iii p 16 that Mr Houde had trouble getting European char acters on the Model 4 The Model 4 alter nate character set includes most if not all of the European characters decimal 192 254 The Tandy printers also con tain all or some of these characters My DMP 200 has only the first half as decimal 160 191 My DMP 130 also includes the second half as decimal 192 222 see chart DMP200 A 6G n seae echt RODdE a GB iprkanda sf DMP130 4 tf anv 416i j AeA ads Arovges Volume V 1 The obvious problem is how to get these characters translated down to the correct decimal values for printing This can be done with the MAXLATE FLT MISOSYS product or more conveniently with ALLWRITE By including the transla tion command str 192 254 32 in ALLWRITE
79. THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY In this issue ts Cataloging files with a word processor by C A Ainsworth ts Page display PRO WAM application by Jacques Verhelst w File undating with FUNDATE by Roy Soltoff te Array load routine by Robert C Stone cs XLR8er and the GT 180 graphics board by Jeff Joseph t The Model I Corner by Ken Strickler t Resources Bulletin boards Clubs and Companies ts and MISOSYS now shipping hard drives THE WAIT IS OVER HARD DRIVES NOW SHIPPING f i Volume IV i 10 Fall 1989 TRS 80 Model I II1 4 Language Software from MISOSYS BASIC Compiler RATFOR Compiler EnhComp pos6m 21 072 LD0s 5 M 20 072 RATFOR M4 M 21 073 Released in 1986 and reviewed in the March 1987 issue of RATFOR compiles to FORTRAN is fully structured 80 Microcomputing and October 1987 issue of COMPUTER facilitating modification and debugging comments are sim SHOPPER EnhComp has lots of great features handles pler and more versatile than in FORTRAN simplifying self the bulk of Model Ill Microsoft BASIC and supports addi documentation This allows changes without the subsequent tional commands and functions Standard is floating point debugging tolerated when modifying FORTRAN RATFOR with both single and double precision functions random compiles source code to an object of FORTRAN use your file access X mode for reclens to 32767 turtle graphics existing FORTRAN compiler to convert this to execu
80. TS after the fanfare it locks up When I TRSDOS 1 3 CMD or Scripsit itre boots How do I run my TRSDOS 1 3 programs with the XLR8er installed Your help and explanation would be appreciated I put a TRSDOS 1 3 boot disk in drive 0 and it boots ok But when I run a CMD or Scripsit it re boots The Hardware Corner 67 The Hardware Corner Volume IV i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i Fm MISOSYS Inc There is an LDOS interface disk for the XLR8er TRSDOS 1 3 requires patches they were published in TMQII 1 a SASE gets you a Xerox or actually a Toshiba It s also reprinted in this issue If memory serves me you have a non gate array That won t work with a longer interconnect cable for the XLR8er What you need to do is what I did for my installation Check out page 48 of TMQ IIl ii that s where I noted my worka round by relocating the graphics board I am not in the business of re doing Mi croSmart s HD driver My hunch is that your desire to learn how to redo it yourself would be a road to hoe Nothing against your abilities but you first have to be come skillful with assembly language Writing a hard disk driver is not fools play Correction writing a GOOD hard disk driver isnot Apparently MicroSmart thought otherwise I can t offer any good recommendation re that driver all I could say is to shove the thing back to Mi croSmart and get your money back Then come back to m
81. UARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i Points to Ponder Well folks here I am again There s cer tainly some important news to relate as far as the hard drive project goes by the time you read this I will have commenced shipments Details on the drive package appear later in The Blurb I began last issue with some complaints about trouble reports directed to MISOSYS concerning programs which MISOSYS has no responsibility for support Let me touch on another aspect of trouble re ports the ineffective report I recognize that when sOmeone has a problem with something he or she cer tainly wants the problem fixed But a report which provides no information whatsoever does nothing to satisfy a reso lution of the problem it only serves to waste the time of the person submitting the report as well as my time in trying to extract information when none is avail able There are many folks out there who appear to lack the insight as to how to report a trouble Here s a small sample of a representative report which cannot be resolved User I have had this LS DOS 6 3 since 1987 and I can t get it to work Me What do you mean you can t get it to work User Only the ID gets transferred Me Can you tell me exactly what you did User I followed the instructions in the manual Me Please Telling me that you followed the instructions gives me no information as to whether you followed the correct instru
82. WANT I want someone who will SUPPORT MY SOFTWARE be it Operating System or Application which I currently own re gardless of origin or to WRITE CUS TOM SOFTWARE to do my particular application whom Ican CALL upon 24hrs a day 7 days a week to answer my ques tions or explain the material written in the MANUAL which IHAVEN TREAD YES THAT IS WHAT I WANT AND I WANT IT NOW SO DO I AND I WOULD LIKE A WINNING LOTTERY TICKET TOO GOOD LUCK TRSDOS 1 3 passwords Fm Tony DeBari 73117 452 Does any one out there know ofa way tochange the protection on a password protected file in TRSDOS 1 3 I want to get at a program I wrote several years ago and I can t remember the update password or even the access password The program is written in Disk BASIC and has a protection level of 6 execute only Any help would be greatly appreciated Thanks Fm Michael Strait 73500 2513 Tony I don t know if anyone has helped you yet on your password problem and there may be an easier way of doing it but if you have DISKZAP or other similar disk edi tor utility find the directory track and sector where the filename is located Example entry 110300 5E00 0000 0042 4153 4943 2020 2043 4D44 4 BASIC CMD 110310 EF5C EFSC 1400 0287 FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF 0 The first 4 bytes on the line directly under the filename are the password bytes 2 bytes for each password Change these bytes to EFSC and the password w
83. a PC s XT GEN Hard Disk controller to the TRS 80 and am interested in knowing if you could supply me with some information on the controller to help me adapt it to work on a home brew 68000 system The 512 byte sector problem you mentioned for TRS 80 s would not bother me in this application and XT GEN boards are very easy to come by in this age of IBM Compatibility I would be more than happy to pay for copying costs shipping and your effort if you could supply me with the information I need Basically I just need programming info since I won t be changing the sector size and I already have the pin out diagram for the PC 8 amp 16 bit expansion ports Another thought along these lines is the QUIK40 tape drive you sell for PC s I would think that if it hooks up to a stan dard PC floppy disk controller you could hook it up to a TRS 80 and write the appropriate driver software a special backup utility I suppose so it could be used as a backup for hard disks on TRS s Have you given this idea any thought asa possible product You yourself were prais ing its usefulness as a backup device in the last issue If you have any information on QUIK40 tape drive programming I d be willing to give ita shot I d even consider designing building an add on external floppy disk controller soit wouldn taffect the normal drive cabling for those of you with three drives mounted in your Model IM IV myself
84. absolutely no programming needed Requires a Model 4 with 128K ora hard drive LB86 an MS DOS version is also available Store up to 65534 records per data base Up to 1024 characters per record Up to 64 fields per record Nine field types for flexibility Select and sort on up to 8 fields Keep multiple indexes for accessing data 10 input update screens per data base 10 printout formats per data base Extensive on line help available LB L 50 510 74 95 5S amp H MISOSYS Products Tidbits i a a as ay Hard Drive Pre assembled Kits a a RR ANA ft A e TTS TOY 25 A Se Ath Our capacity for love is limitless How about your on line storage Improve your on line storage with 5 25 half height 360K or 3 5 720K Fujitsu floppy drives or hard drive Kits pre assembled by MISOSYS Floppy Drives and Accessories 5 25 860K 1 2 height 75 4 S amp H 3 5 720K in 5 25 frame 85 3 S amp H 3 5 1 44M in 5 25 frame PC AT 99 3 S amp H Our Model 2SV5 dual half height vertical external floppy disk drive enclosure will hold two 5 25 half height disk drives or one standard height drive 2SV5 drive case PS 60 5 S amp H 8 Dual floppy extender cable 15 four foot connecting cable 10 Orders are being accepted for hard drive kits now shipping Our kits come assembled in a cabinet holding up to two half height drives 60 watt p s fan SCSI controller and host adaptor Software include
85. age BACKUP The floppy and the ramdisk should have the same name or a JCL will abort but the cylinder count may differ Don t for get to answer the question asked by BACKUP Which leads me to an undocumented restriction uncovered by John Coyle ERAMDISK Format No is supposed to be used after ERAMLD L with types 2 and 4 Type 5 is supposed to be used with a mirror image backup It was designed to be used with a standard Model 4 using 180k disquettes Well I admit that my reasons may not be everyone s To allow T 5 F N change the mask used when checking the GAT at x 33EF from 01100111B to 01000111B that s x 47 instead of x 67 I m sorry for the incon venience this restriction may have caused More TRS 80 Computer Clubs Fm Roy T Beck Dear Roy Following are several TBS 80 groups active in the Los Angeles area Letters to the Editor THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Hope this helps a little bit More TRS 80 Bulletin Boards Fm Ted Deller 75515 1456 If you re interested in BBS s that support Model 4 4P 4D software along with MS DOS Model 100 C 64 and even some model Ill stuff on occasion check out the fol lowing REMS 80 001 505 624 0811 DataServe 204 239 7103 George Lee is the author of the BBS software in use on both these boards REMS BBS and he is one of the most dedicated supporters of the Model 4 around His REMS 80 001 is
86. amdisk and attempted to do a mir ror image backup from a floppy drive The result was a GAT error at the end of the backup and an unusable ramdisk I have not yet replaced some of the 200ns RAM so I slowed the XLR8er down as slow as it would go but the result was the same I subsequently did a backup by class and it works fine I reread the man ual and did not see anything about mirror image backups are they supposed to work or not Ihave taken advantage of acouple of your recent software discounts in TMQ and The Hardware Corner 69 The Hardware Corner Volume IV 1 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i plan on continuing to do so The discount in the last TMQ is too large to pass by I hope the response justifies continuing those kind of deals Fm MISOSYS Inc Frank The differ ences in nomenclature between your 4P and the XLR8er manual are easily ex plained The manual was written for the original 4P I suspect that its text was finalized prior to the release of the gate array 4P You have a gate array GA 4P Checking over my service manual it does appear that the Z80 CPU is in socket U45 of the GA and in U47 of the non G A NGA However the service manual shows both sockets to have identical orientation They also both appear to be in identical positions on the board thus I cannot understand why you could not match up the 7 5 XLR8er cable to the orientation reflected in Figure 1 3 of th
87. ammer s Journaldownloads are now available from MISOSYS forum on Compuserve GO PCS49 Here s the FINE PRINT HartFORTH is a full 79 STANDARD Any MISOSYS software product FORTH It is a Direct Threaded Code purchased directly from MISOSYS may be returned within 30 days w HartFORTH programs can invoke other pro grams via EXEC and EXEC PROG w Functions create new files from within HartFORTH and allow the current Virtual Memory file to be changed for another and manipulated at the individual block level faster than the classical Indirect l of the invoice date for a full re Provides the recommended 79 STANDARD Threaded Code implementation Hart fund of the product purchase cost DOUBLE NUMBER STANDARD EXTENSION word set that implements 32 bit operations FORTH is designed to run under DOS j Returns must be in a like new CASE and SWITCH functions allow multi so the Virtual Memory that it accesses saleable condition and be ac for storage and retrieval purposes is a file created and controlled by the oper ys ating system Enhancements to the 79 nal invoice STANDARD have been built into the HartFORTH kernel in the form of func tions to call the DOS file handling rou tines so that other files may be created and accessed if required A library of IN standard screens is supplied with HartFORTH to provide often used ex tensions to the language such as double length and flo
88. are Inc Oownload Through The Mail Nf 1625 Beverly Place Berkeley CA 94707 PowerSoft s World Famous Utilities and Software for TRS 80 Computers with Floppies and or Hard Disks NEW POLICY You may buy and examine the manual to any PowerSoft program for only 10 plus 2 shipping If you decide to purchase the program we will allow the full 10 credit against the purchase price SUPER UTILITY PLUS The greatest utility ever written for the TRS 80 Every TRS 80 magazine has said so Five Star Excellent Reviews in 80 MICRO 80 US INFOWORLD POPULAR ELECTRONICS FAMILY COMPUTING Creative Computing amp more The King of Utilities Reads repairs and works with all the popular TRS 80 operating systems Models I Ii 4 Allows you to set up two drives for two different DOS s and copy between them easily If you use a TRS 80 with disk drives then this is a must have program that you will wonder how you did without for so long Super Utility has won numer ous awards has received many 5 Star reviews and this could be your last chance to purchase a copy at this unheard of price Super Utility does so many things you will never use its full potential but it isn t that hard to use since it is completely menu driven with the most common defaults built right in It is configurable for all the popular TRS 80 operating systems and will even allow you to set one drive for one system and another drive for a different operating system an
89. area TK SOLVER SIMULTANEOUS EQUATION SOLVER approx 72K workarea ALLWRITE wordprocessor gives 2 additional 32K work areas LeSCRIPT wordprocessor up to 1000K workarea 4 partitions 21 LITTLE BROTHER DATA BASE MANAGER 64K storage for routines DoubleDUTY discontinued parti tions into 2 64K 1 system area PROWAM WINDOW APPLICA TION MANAGER provides many help ful utilities note requires 128K minimum to oper ate So BIG DEAL I don t use those pro grams anyway Pssst Hey buddy what py O RRR ORR ae are you running on your system T MAKER is currently closing out the DELUXE EDITION paperback will still be available of their Integrated Software System for the Model 4 containing a WORDPROCESSOR SPREADSHEET SPELLING CHECKER DATA BASE MANAGER LIST PROCESSOR and BAR CHARTER just to name a few for 49 While not being able to complete the large tasks of the dedicated software package like ALLWRITE or LITTLE BROTHER there are immense capabili ties available in the 457 page 4 disk package You mean that I can get a used MODEL 4 for say 400 and a NEW OPERATING DOS Subjects Volume IV i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i SYSTEM for 40 and an integrated SOFTWARE SYSTEM for 49 THAT S ONLY 489 and I can t even WRITE a decent program 10 per hour for that price that s only 48 9 hours alittle over a week
90. as The first area is in the printer control PowerScript allows you to add printer control codes directly in the body of your text Now it is easy to add underlining bold face the different sizes of print etc Initially set up for the EPSON type dot matrix printers it is configureable to just about any printer during set up If you have more than one printer type then just set up a copy of PowerScript for each printer you have The second area of improvement is in disk and file contro PowerScript adds several neat features to SCRIPSIT including the ability to see an alphabetized directory without exiting the program seeing how much free space you have and others This has been one of our most popular programs and we have received many many complimentary letters on its performance It works on the Model I III or 4 versions of SCRIPSIT It will even make a Model I version of SCRIPSIT work on a Model III or 4 in the ITI mode Lastly PowerScript removes the limited copy feature of SCRIPSIT so that you may make as many copies as you need or copy it to your hard disk without hassle PowerDraw animated TRS 80 screen graphics Easy to use Great for kids or adults 19 95 gt Original 1986 price 39 95 by Kim Watt INFOWORLD 80 MICRO and 80 US magazines really loved this program when they reviewed it It does many things and is fun to use as well First PowerDRAW allows you to create graphics mixed with text if desired and save them to dis
91. assemble the af fected modules which boils down to writing LDOS 5 3 for the Model I to put the changes in Would you be interested in selling it if I did Of course supporting it might get to be a problem Its nice to see a TRS 80 oriented maga zine such as yours Over the past few years I ve watched the TRS 80 commu nity seem to fade away I was program ming the Model I in 1979 and while I now work on PC s and Large Mini Main frame class systems I feel the TRS 80 was and is a well designed system Thank you for your time effort and dedication to us old timer TRS 80 folks Roy Fm MISOSYS Ine Peter The program ming of the XTGEN controller is docu mented in the IBM tech manual for the DOS Subjects 23 DOS Subjects Volume IV i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i PC XT The GEN isno different from any other XT type controller You will just ignore the on board BIOS Incidentally the protocol is a subset of SCSI The QIC 40 tape drive can indeed con nect up to any floppy disk controller The interface for the QIC 40 uses only two lines commands are sent to the drive via a timed stream of step pulses status is read via the track 00 indication Given time I may explore a driver implementa tion All information on the Quarter Inch Car tridge standard is available from Freeman Associates 311 East Carrillo Street Santa Barbara CA 93101 805 963 3853 Ihave entertain
92. ate from this one Additionally MISOSYS is pro viding a keyboard filter which allows the joystick to generate five keycodes one for each of the switch positions plus one for the fire button The filter provides for dynamically changeable characterrepeat A SETS utility is also included which can be used to change the values of the generated keystrokes after the filter is installed The option includes the joys tick a cable connecting the host adaptor header socket to a 9 pin D subminiature socket and an integrated circuit Twenty megabyte drive packages will be provided with a Seagate St225 half height hard drive Forty megabyte packages will be provided with a Seagate ST251 28 millisecond 40 megabyte hard drive Drive packages will be offered as pre assembled kits Your kit will be as sembled to order and fully tested all you will need to do is plug it in and install the software Drive kits require a50 pin SCSI to 50 pin edgecard host connecting cable see price schedule The following prices are currently in ef fect and are subject to change Note shipping weight will be approxi mately 20 pounds per drive kit freight charges are additional Allow two weeks for personal checks to clear your bank The Blurb The Blurb Volume IV 1 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i The family corner A few folks noticed that I omitted this column in the last issue of TMQ
93. ating point math editing of source screens string manipulation arrays etc Are you still fussing with floppies for BACKUP Our QIC40 JUMBO tape drive from MISOSYS is your solution The Colorado Memory Systems JUMBO tape drive is one drive that fits all computers It comes ready for internal use in AT s XT s and PC s and connects to your floppy disk controller Our adaptor board can be used to connect JUMBO when all FDC connectors are in use Kits are available for XT AT or PS 2 machines which convert Jumbo to extemal use P In about 5 5 minutes JUMBO backs up 1OMB s file by file the fastest in the industry 40MB s gets backed up in about 18 to 20 minutes Uses industry standard DC2000 tape cartridges P JUMBO plugs into your floppy disk controller to save cost power and a slot Needs 5 1 4 or 3 5 with faceplate mounting slot Our tape adapter board mounts in your host computer to provide an additional tape port especially useful in 286 and 386 computers When used with our extemal JUMBO it lets you share your drive between computers Note external adaptor includes Tape Adaptor B JUMBO has custom chips high speed brushless motors automatic circuits no pots to vibrate out of calibration and fewest parts to assure long life and technical leadership for years to come DJ10 Jumbo 295 5S amp H SyS Tape Adaptor 75 3S amp H External Adaptor 110 5S amp H DC2000 tape 22 50
94. ave the juice to run all the doodads I have put in this old Mod4 XLR8er Extra Drives amp Hi Res Radio Shack board Fm Bob Haynes 73075 77 Ted my gate array 4P is doing similar things The whole screen shrinks and expands both horizon tally and vertically perhaps 1 81 4 in a very erratic tremor It only happens after the machine is WELL warmed up 2 3 hours at least Problem comes and goes and is particularly triggered by the power drain of a floppy drive access FYI Ihave no internal modem XLR8er or high res board but some time ago replaced both floppies with Tandon TM 65 1 2 height ds drives which do pull a slightly heavier surge when they start than the original Tandon TM 50 s After 3 different power supplies both Tandy and Astec and resoldering every joint on both p s and vid board and every pin connector in between and monitoring both 5 and 12 volt lines witha scope for hours and after a long dialogue with one of our resident hardware experts here Fred Oberding I m convinced I ve got ther mal breakdown in the video flyback trans former Until the transformer is replaced I m running the thing with the housing off The cooler environment makes it useable at least This probably doesn t help you much but at least you know you re not alone Fm Michael Strait 73500 2513 Ted I used to work for Radio Shack Service and serviced many model 4 4p computers with similar problems I found tha
95. awrence C Minder North Baby lon NY Dear Sirs I have some questions that I hope you would answer in order to help me make some sound buying deci sions I am a currently licensed owner of LDOS 5 3 and LS DOS 6 3 as well as many of your software packages The questions I have are as follows I own your DSMBLR III software for the Model III computer Since I am strictly using LDOS and LS DOS on my Model 4D computer and since the disk formats are the same between these two DOSes can I then use the DSMBLR III software to disassemble LS DOS Model 4 CMD files I am assuming that since both machines are Z80 machines that there really is only one way to disassemble Z80 code Am I correct on this or am I missing the boat somehow or do the two different operating systems impact this disassem bly process Is my LDOS 5 3 operating system in need of updating The serial number for my diskette is TCOA0887 The diskette has a creation date diskette date of 02 05 87 and the last entry in the README TXT file is dated 04 02 87 I know I have seen some fixes in the TMQ but I am not sure of their overall impact need If I do need to upgrade how much does this cost I am using the Model III version of the diskDISK software package on my Radio Shack 15 meg hard disk with your RSHARD hard disk driver After success fully placing a software Write protect on my diskdisk logical drive via SYSTEM DRIVE 3 WP ON I found that I
96. bank 0 or low memory So yes the DOS does utilize some of the crazy combinations of port 84H Our Model 4 Hardware Interface Kit for LDOS 5 3 makes use of the Model III mode memory arrangement with the ROMs switched out and replaced with RAM What it does is copy the ROMs contents to high memory change the mode to low RAM then copy the copied contents back to low memory This technique is essen tially the same as what is currently being done in fast 386 machines so that the ROM BIOS code is accessed from fast RAM instead of slow ROM As far as other programs which use the feature I suspect that LeScript is one Itis famous for going directly to hardware Since it goes directly to hardware for the memory management of the Alpha Tech memory board I strongly suspect that it does the same with the regular Model 4 memory Double Duty may be another program which goes directly to hardware but I can t say for sure since I have never seen the code I personally doubt that other Model 4 programs exist which tweak that port a te o As far as Michel Houde s source code all of the files were placed on Disk Notes 3 2 if you got just the XLR8er interface disk then you would have received only the object files Incidentally the XLR8er does not switch all addressing below 256K to the main board memory switching is a function of the software interface which translates bank requests to an appropriate memory
97. ce you haven t had one lately here is a MODEL I article hope you like itf I love my MODEL I I always have It is a great machine the FIRST real entrance into the MICRO COMPUTER field which offered the HARDWARE SOFTWARE TECHNICAL MANUALS which al lows the computer buff to see how it really works Many books have been written explaining the intricate details of the operations so if the desire was present no stone was left unturned I bought my first Model I on a closeout at 499 4K level I which I immediately upgraded toa 16K level II ican tremem ber how much but over 150 00 Whata joy isn tthat CASSETTE interface inter esting Especially if and when it runs FAST TOO let s see COFFEE LUNCH and hope that you don t have to reload I ll get a disk as soon as I can get the Expansion Interface and the 450 for the drive ForgetaR S drive gota TANDON DSDD 80 TRK and DOSPLUS 3 3 later upgraded to 3 4 and 3 5 operating sys tem TRS DOS already had a REAL REPUTATION for WEIRD OPERATION Since I used my machine in a REAL TIME as related to the clock on the wail ENVIRONMENT I purchased another from a co worker when he moved to his MS DOS machine Whata buy 450 for the whole system including 3 disk drives and aPERCOM Double Density Control ler BSR X 10 light controller with which I controlled lights in my house I already had a Lower Case Modification Alpha Products remember them Real Time
98. cember I received it back April 88 The XLR8er card worked great until Oct 88 when I retumed it for repair I have made two calls nothing They will not return my calls or talk to me about the card I m now sending a letter by certified mail Have you had troubles with your card or getting it repaired Fm MISOSYS Inc Dear Durward This is in response to your letter of May Sth concerning your XLR8er board purchased in October 1987 To begin with MI SOSYS does not have your board I did assume the exclusive sale of the XLR8er boards in January or so of last year however that action assumed no war ranty of boards sold by HiTech If you have not received your board back from them then either they still have it or its repair was farmed out elsewhere First you have to see about getting your board back I have found only a couple of bad boards ones which did not work at all These were returned I have had only one board fail in the field and that was a processor which went bad or was shorted out by mishandling At this stage of the business I have ac quired my last 100 boards from the origi nal board manufacturer I can make no arrangements to get boards repaired When and if I have a problem with a board I would test it for memory and processor functionality If I found a bad CPU or memory device I would swap it out otherwise I would swap the board If you get your board back I would be willing to test
99. cept files that are Hypercrossed back and forth between the two machines or are their datafile structures not that com patible Incidentally I ve been experimenting with PC Four and promptly discovered that SAID is hopeless under PC Four Luck ily my favorite workhorse Allwrite works great with PC 4 after you learn a few tricks which has made this whole 1400LT experiment work out pretty well Any way I ve been wondering if you have done any experimenting with PC 4 I m so pessimistic about LB working on it that MISOSYS Products Tidbits 60 MISOSYS Products Tidbits Volume IV 1 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i I haven t even tried it but have no real reason for such an attitude Fm MISOSYS Inc The data file struc ture of LB is IDENTICAL in both the Model 4 and MS DOS versions Any set of LB data files moved between the two environments are directly usable Make sure that you move them as BINARY files not ASCII Reason is that TRSCROSS and possibly Hypercross may convert the binary PASSWORD to something you will not be able to access I have not used PC4 I don t own it LB and FORMS Fm William Newman Sanford NC I have a church directory several pages enclosed I want a header of three lines text of fourteen lines and footer of three lines Pages one and two of directory printed okay but then pages three and four started to started to add extra blanks at t
100. chines very hard on ALLWRITE or largish data bases I have ALLWRITE Autosave set to 50 which means rela tively frequent saves to disk and in a typical year some three million words get done on it a very substantial bundle no I don t and couldn t do that lot myself I hire help The data bases are in an almost constant state of being run So its any body s guess how many saves to disk there have been perhaps it wouldn t be too far out to talk in the hundreds of thousands I have a system which in essence boils down to this Since Ihave had 4s or 4Ds in operation I check the progress of work done each day and one of my indicators is the size of files on disk Therefore each work day a directory is printed out for each and every disk that has been written to or modified Thousands of directory printouts have resulted and I scan each one at the end of each day As these things mean money to me and enable me to weed out any hired help who may be a shirker I examine these directory print outs with an eagle eye If there ever were any file with its name appearing more than once I would catch it instantly When working without an XLR8er on a ma Chine there has never been a doubled up file I m not claiming that my experience lays down any hard and fast rules all I m maintaining is that I have never had any problem running without an XLR8er I would also think that if there were any chance of doubling up withou
101. crashing when you jump out of aFOR NEXT loop Many of your loops were like that For example 4310 FOR I 1 TO 60 4320 IF MIDS TITS I 1 THEN 4340 4330 NEXT I 4340 was changed to 4310 FOR I 1 TO 60 4320 IF MIDS TITS I 1 THEN I1 I I 60 4330 NEXT I 4340 The proper construct to prematurely leave the scope of a FOR NEXT is to alter the index variable to equal or exceed the upper limit In other cases where you wanted to know the terminating index I altered the code to assign that value to another variable prior to readjusting the index variable On the other hand I fail to see why you are not using the INSTR function for all of your examinations of the type just mentioned For example I INSTRS TITS not only is the better solution but it is much faster But the real culprit of the lockup and or crash was a problem caused by a limita tion of EnhComp which you were really not aware of The currentimplementation of EnhComp does not permit multiple DIM statements There can be only one DIM I may correct that in the future Once I moved the dimension of PUBTYPE from line 1080 to line 1070 I also got the program working I then also had to re move the extraneous DIM at line 1250 MISOSYS Products Tidbits THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 note that NORD although dimensioned was never used for anything The compiled program thought it had seven string arrays but
102. ct opera tions was non zero the 64180 CPU would consider a port access in that range as internal to its chip I recommended some code changes to ensure that register B or A was non zero under those circumstances While writing some BASIC code to test out the joystick in the new MISOSYS hard drive host adaptor I needed to inves tigate the exact code stream used by BASIC to handle the two statements INP portnum and OUT portnum value As it turns out Model 4 Microsoft BASIC evaluates the port number and converts the result to a signed integer It then places the com plete 16 bit value into the BC register pair Thus BASIC actually accepts any port value from 32768 through 32767 2 For I 1 to 10000 OC SR ON ta ECA O I A EC E RS a ee a a a ee a a acar Weare inclusive Taking advantage of this fact it is easy to access the ports numbered from 0 through 63 from BASIC even if yourmachineis equipped with an XLR8er or other means of a 64180 processor by specifying the desired port value as portnum 256 For instance INP 256 INP 512 INP 768 etc all read input from port 0 but BASIC sets register B to 1 2 3 etc system drives Memory upgrades Fm Willi Hoffman Oak Lawn IL Gentlemen Iamenclosing acoupon order for one 5 25 360K two sided floppy renewal for TMQ and disk notes 3 4 as well as some questions I do have probably the smallest system among your readership which consists of on
103. ctions nor does it tell me you under stood what you read Could you please tell me exactly what you typed and exactly what the results were User I put the 6 2 disk into drive 0 Me But the instructions said to put the 6 3 disk into drive 0 User That s what I meant Me Okay so the 6 3 disk was in drive 0 and the 6 2 disk was in drive 1 Then what did you do User I typed the BACKUP command Me Exactly what BACKUP command did you type User I typed BACKUP 0 to 1 S I OLD Me Then what happened User Nothing Me You mean nothing happened The cursor just sat there blinking at you User No the BACKUP command started to execute Me Oh then something did happen Did the BACKUP copyright message appear on the screen Were any files copied from 0 to 1 User I don t know Me Could you please go back and follow the directions of the update documenta tion Write dowh exactly what you type and what happens on the screen Then call me back with your results For those to whom this flame is directed trouble resolution is as good as the trouble reporting When you are experiencing a problem with whatever you are doing before you even think about making a phone call or writing a letter please have all your facts at hand It is always impor tant to provide as much information as possible Even if you are not computer literate there is at least some basic infor mation which should be availab
104. cut the detec tion time in half Once I found that I introduced the patches to SYS2 SYS SYS12 SYS and BACKUP all of which have the same CK DRV code stream That normalized the timing but it didn t elimi nate the problem for gate array users That s why I say that the problem you are having has nothing to do with the XLR8er board You have the same problem with or without it So what am I doing to correct the prob lem Well first I am trying to find out exactly where the problem originates THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 That s where I really got technical in my last letter So there s no point in rehashing that issue I can t bring that down to lay terms What I can do is to advise you that there is a very specific difference in the floppy disk controllers of the gate array versus PAL based machines One differ ence is that the gate array machines use the Western Digital WD1773 Floppy Disk Controller FDC chip whereas the PAL based machines use the WD1793 FDC chip The second difference is that the additional controller circuitry which con nects the floppy disk drive signal leads specifically of interest is the INDEX HOLE status uses gate array logic chips on the gate array machines and discrete logic chips on the PAL based machines Needless to say but my testing to date recognizes the problem as stemming from a failure to see the INDEX HOLE status for some finite period of time sufficient for CKDRV to
105. d ENDBYT was supposed to be ENDMOD Oh well I think Roy guessed my intent And all general suggestions gladly ac cepted live and learn right Take a peek at Roy s filter in I iv pg 69 I m using ENDMOD much the same way as he does there using it as a starting pointer fora LDDR instruction my length value is formed by a LENGTH EQU MODULE statement exactly where you suggested one byte past the end of the module Of course that doesn t work too well under MRAS but I m using PRO CREATE In my Duane s actually program a header is needed since the module is sysgened into high memory What I want to do is slim down Duane Saylor s SmartWatch task program 303 bytes of high mem is too much Actually I d prefer 100 bytes or less in low memory but I don t think it can be done The module must switch in the Boot ROM in order to access the chip guess I need to study the details of memory mapping a bit more here Com ments welcome Stripping bit 7 to printer Fm Louis Self 74076 1273 I have a Toshiba p1340 Centronics parallel printer and want it to ignore the most significant bit MSB so I can send control codes to it with a word processor that can send char acters above CHRS 128 but not below CHR 32 If I can get the printer to ignore the MSB lIl just send a CHR 155 and the printer will see it as a CHR 27 control code 155 minus 128 I tried insulating pin number nine on the
106. d Oregon 97214 503 236 2949 Letters to the Editor Add 4 00 for ground shipment or 7 00 for 2nd day air shipment California residents add 7 sales tax With Deluxe Documentation 49 Limited quantity Set of IBM Compatible Disks as well 20 T Maker Integrated Software includes WORD PROCESSOR SPELLING CHECKER DATABASE SPREADSHEET This may be your last chance for a T Maker in BAR CHARTS UTILITITES its classic box and binder format Regularly APPLICATIONS LANGUAGE enhanced until 1985 this is the same product that sold for 450 and was referred to in sup T Maker Research Company erlative terms by major computer magazines 812 Pollard Road Suite 8 Los Gatos CA 95030 It s not just a very useful computer program its a piece of computer history the world s ae 408 866 0127 first integrated package a If you have a PC Compatible consider T Master the next generation 139 Save Money EThe File Cabinet I LOWEST PRICES EVER PUBLIC DOMAIN SOFTWARE FOR YOUR TRS 80 C MSDOS _TRS 80 P O Box 322 Van Nuys CA 91408 Electric Webster Speller 55 off 39 99 39 99 OVER THE YEARS THE FILE CABINET HAS COLLECTED SOFTWARE E W price wi TMQ Coupon only 19 93 19 99 i FROM ALL OVER THE COUNTRY AND MANY PARTS OF THE WORLD w Correcting Feature add 39 99 59 99 i THE PROGRAMS HAVE BEEN TESTED AND CATALOGED INTO WHAT eee oe E gan oe rae oper IS CONSIDERED TO BE THE LARGEST COLLE
107. d copy files easily between the two Even between Model I and III or 4 regardless of density track number number of sides or system used We have thousands of letters in our files over the years about how Super Utility has saved the user from various problems Super Utility removes or decodes passwords strips them right off a disk in one pass reformats a disk without erasing the data fixes problems backs up most protected disks etc This was the very best utility ever written for the TRS 80 and now is the time to get your own copy Super Utility has over 65 functions and features Too many to describe A fantastic buy Does not work on hard disks Our ToolBox or ToolBelt has similar features for hard drive use as well as floppy SU does not support Newdos 80 double sided disks 86 price 79 95 Super Utility Plus Mod Ili amp I Disk repair password removal plus 65 other functions with manual 34 95 Super Utility Plus 4 4P 4D same as above for TRS 80 Model 4 4P 4D Reads W rites 4 I amp I 34 95 The Model 4 version of Super Utility has all the features of the Model VMI version but more It uses the larger amount of memory for quicker operations plus utilizes the three function keys One key is even defineable by the user to go right to their favorite or most used function in Super Utility 4 Also boots right up in a Model 4P without having to first load the ModelA III rom file Many other niceities for the 4 have been implemen
108. dio Shack printer PowerDriver Plus for SuperSCRIPSIT and SCRIPSIT PRO and Epson printers 17 95 Allows EPSON or compatible printers to be fully utilized with SuperScripsit This is a replacement driver for the ones you got with SuperScripsit It fully supports the various Epson and Epson compatible printers to the limits of their capabilities Model I III or 4 is supported in the same package Easy to install Once installed works without any extra thinking Thousands of happy customers TRS 80 GAME COLLECTIONS ON DISK for Mod I IH 4 in IH mode Special All 3 Sets for 29 95 Leo Christopherson TRS 80 Animated Game Disk with sound Leo s Greatest Hits 12 95 This is one of the greatest values in games ever produced Leo Christpopherson wrote the very first animated game for the TRS 80 and the country went wild for it Android Nun To watch these life like creatures will make everyone laugh as they shake their heads up and down or side to side and blink at you stupidly as it waits for you to make a move Then Leo invented how to make the TRS 80 produce sound and added it to NIM He then followed Android Nim with the other games even getting Radio Shack to sell Dancing Demons which is a real scream It alone is well worth the price of this disk but you get ALL of Leo s programs on one disk for one great low price If you haven t yet bought this disk do it now It is a classic Each one of these games originally sold for 9 95 19 95 EA
109. ds for the drive to de select and turn off the drive motor It then repeats the sequence This bypasses the INIT se quence which I first used but I subse quently narrowed the problem to a failure of OPEN Note that during the operation of the propram the system drive is a MemDISK so that no disk access need be made to get the DOS overlays Starting from a cold machine I was gen erally able to get through one run of 300 without failure My test machine was a gate array Model 4P However I could not get through two runs If I upped the loop counter tenfold to 3000 I could never get through a single sequence Yes that is punishing the drive Okay that 4P had an XLR 8er in it with the Houde patches which adjusted the CKDRY timers to compensate for the increased speed So I decided to try an other machine this time a Model 4D obviously a gate array The behavior was identical to the 4P Running the same test program under Model III mode LDOS 5 1 4 and LDOS 5 3 I never got a failure That s why I initially suspected the DOS Both 6 3 and 6 2 failed the test program but LDOS 5 1 and LDOS 5 3 worked I subsequently used this machine for a detailed analysis I dug into all of the code that wasexecuted within CKDRV trac ing through all of the calls into the system including the floppy disk driver The CKDRYV code uses the sensing of the index hole to confirm or deny the pres ence of a rotating diskette in a
110. e 64K Model 4 26 1069A three one sided floppies and one COPAL SC 1200 printer Recently I completed the installation and testing your XLR8er and Micro Labs Grafyx Solution boards Installation was fairly easy and they work very well The DRAM chips I installed are OKI M3764A 12 120ns They seem to work well so far I had to buy 18 of them since they would not break them up I did receive your LB program I had ordered and then realized that my system was not of the right type But after a good look at the LB files I did install the LB on the Ramdisk It works fine and gives me the extra room needed on the files I have been working on a program which I wrote myself in BASIC it had 5 print formats but not enough room for cus tomer information I work with Univer sal blank forms With the Ramdisk installed sysO 5 9 and 13 removed and LB files backed up 1 0 I have 24K left I must say itis a three step procedure DO SETUP DO CFGRD and backup LB 1 0 Now for my question 1 can the double sided floppy be used as a system drive if connected to the internal floppy cable It seems to me that I read some place that the system drive must be internal on the Tandy computers 2 did any of your readers go 128K from 64K on a mode 4 26 1069A I did look at the mother board and it seems that it is jumpered as per the 4 Gate Array speci fications but some are entir
111. e and get my 20 Meg drive Fm Mark Mueller 73100 2413 Tho mas TRSDOS 1 3 uses undocumented Z80 machine language calls which the 64180 in the XLR8er cannot properly execute This is a fault of TRSDOS and causes a reboot most times a file is opened Files are opened when you run a program SO you can see what happens There is a patch in one of the download libraries to fix this problem in TRSDOS 1 3 but you may be better off in the long run to get LDOS 5 3 and use that Itis a much better operating system and is still supported by MISOSYS the people who sponsor this forum and runs almost all model 3 pro grams Scripsit will run fine I m not sure about 13 Ghosts but I will pull my copy out and see if works I know of troubles with the Monty games monopoly amp scrabble due to strange use of overlays and machine language but I have patches to overcome that too Sorry for the delay in answering your message Illinois Bell just this morning managed to clear up my phone line which for a month has had an incredible amount of line noise Fm Adam Rubin 71320 1052 Thomas Could it be the same problem that Roy described in the current Il iv TMQ 13 Ghosts uses a few IN A 0 instructions to check the joystick port Fm Adam Rubin Roy As I mentioned elsewhere I suspect the problem with 13 GHOSTS and the XLR8er is the same one you found in Tournament Chess There are three spots in 13 GHOSTS that look somethin
112. e and only one drive select jumper left intact All of the odd numbered wires carry ground returns while the even numbered wires are reserved for carrying signals Notice that the odd and even numbered wire leads are on opposite sides of the connec tor Tandy pulls all of the drive select pins except for one at each cable position as well as pin 32 which is for side select In this way they can keep all of the drive select jumpers intact at the drive the drive select depends on the position the drive is connected to at the cable But since all of the ground returns are intact inverting the cable provides a signal path for all drive selects at each edge card connector Model 4 Repair Fm Walter P Sullivan 71210 3670 I have a Model 10 103 5 inch Triggered Sweep Oscilloscope DC to 10 MHZ a VTVM a Digital Multimeter a TV Post Marker Sweep Generator and some other odds and end all of which were Heath built before I got a computer I am desir ous of putting in a Graphics board it did not have one I have the Model 4 Techni cal Reference Manual 26 2110 which is of some help but it doesn t instill confi dence in me I usually don t take the cover off anything unless I am pretty sure I know what s inside My question is where can I get some service technical or repair manuals for the Model 4 without going to Tandy Any suggestions would be help ful Fm Bob Haynes 73075 77 Hi Walter Tandy sells servic
113. e is then stripped away Removing the name allows the data to be loaded into any array of appropriate type and dimen Applications for the User 40 Applications for the User Volume IV i _ THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 sion without the worry of creating a dupli cate array An array in Model 4 Basic is slightly different from Model I and HI BASIC The first byte is the array type The sec ond and third bytes are the first two char acters in the array name The fourth byte is the number of additional characters in the array name If there are additional characters in the name they follow next with their high bits set The remaining bytes are the same as the other BASICs Two bytes for the file length one byte for the number of dimensions and two bytes each for every dimension This means that there is a minimum of nine bytes between the beginning of the array and the first element The program as written loads into high memory then resets HIGH to protect itself Type INOUT to load the program and move it to HIGH memory The start ing address is displayed on the screen as well as stored at 0O2FE FFH A sample BASIC program allows the routine to be evaluated as well as compare execution times between loading and saving files The program as written will only accept singly dimensioned arrays but it may be changed as required Cataloging the disk will also show the disk space saved Understanding The Program T
114. e manual I have an XLR8er in a gate array 4P The equivalent NGA U117 74LS245 chip in the GA board would be at U118 If that was soldered into your board then you cannot easily change it As far as the RAMDISK and GAT error are concerned you will have to provide more information There are two software RAMDISK drivers provided ERAMDISK CMD and RAMDISK DCT Which were you using And how did you establish a 40 track RAMDISK since both deal with banks not tracks When you are report ing an error complete details are usually necessary The default configuration of both RAMDISK drivers is not the crea tion of a 40 track DDEN floppy disk emulation Each creates 16 sector tracks Mirror image backups are fine only when both source and destination are exact configurations XLR amp 8 amp er Installation Procedure for Type 2 Motherboards gate array 26 1069A amp 26 1070 Model 4 e w hires graphics General Because the location of the hires graphics board installation interferes with the nor mal location of the XLR8er connected with a 6 ribbon cable and vice versa the XLR8er manual provides a revised method of mounting the XLR8er behind the motherboard and connected via a 7 5 ribbon cable draped over the top of the motherboard My experience is that some gate array machines will not work prop erly when the XLR8er is connected with a 7 5 cable but will when connected with a 6 cable thus some other
115. e manuals for just about everything they make including all of their computer products The trick is to bypass the local stores and order direct from R S National Parts in Texas Get the exact model from your unit and call them at 1 817 870 5662 with plastic in hand I ve found them quite responsive I have manuals for my 4P 1200HD and 15M hard disk which are quite extensive with schematics theory part s the whole deal They averaged about 35 each I think Multiple hard drives Fm Dennis Earl Copeland 74406 554 What are the connection changes and taps that need to be made to the controller card on a TM502 to make it serve as a secon dary hard drive with my TM503 primary hard drive I have RS s own host adapter card and cables cabinet the two drives and 2 power supplies and a Model 4 Tandy is no help at all and won t even let me see the manuals for such citing pro prietary info I bought the equipment There should be no such thing as pro prietary especially in view of their re fusal of knowledgeable assistance Any help that you can provide will be DEEPLY appreciated I m an electronics service technician and have been hacking my own stuff for a number of years The Color Amber Fm Robin Repas 76407 3336 Does anyone know where I can get an amber replacement CRT for my Model 4 white screen ata reasonable price Langley St Clair is still asking 99 00 for their re placement CRT That
116. e many heaps In any event I tracked is the problem with search in the new ZCAT The bug was a little more elaborate than what you suspected It involved file specifications which were greater than nine characters long considering the name and extension Also the date of the file s had to be past 1987 Filespecs of 11 characters were impacted if their dates were 1988 through 1995 filespecs of 10 characters were impacted if their dates were 1996 through 1999 I was a little sneaky in coding the ex tended date support in this version of ZCAT Since I wanted to be totally back ward compatible with ZCAT 1 0 catalog files I could not extend the data structure in fact I really didn t want to since that would havereduced the available number of files in the list when read into memory So I used bit 7 of the last two file specifi cation character bytes to hold the fourth and fifth bits of the extended year All display routines were corrected to strip those bits however I overlooked correct ing the search routine which has to match one string against another Enclosed is a small patch which corrects the bug Sorry for the delay but this business has insufficient profit to provide the level of personnel which can immedi ately jump onto every input I get It may take a little time but I get around to most things LB LB data to LB 86 Fm Pete Betz I have a question about LB Will LB 86 and Model 4 LB readily ac
117. ed in the design of TRSDOS 6 QUESTION Does TRSDOS6 LDOS or LS DOS use any of these crazy combina tions Do you know of anyone who sold program s making use of the feature Isall of Mr Houde s XLR8er source code available I ordered and received the special diskette mentioned in either II ii or IJ iii but it contains only the HITACHI ASM source The remaining files are CMD JCL or FIX but no more source While I don t yet have an XLR8er the first at tempt to install one flopped andon a Rev Cboard to boot One of these days Ill be THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 trying again In my case I want to use the full 512k power of the chip which means I dneed to extend Michel s code some as well as making hardware mods to accom modate 256k chips on the motherboard The XLR8ercan handle this as it switches all addressing below 256k to the main board My big hinge is the true need for that PAL chip which will hopefully be determined by your knowledge of the Model 4 and any insight you can provide From all the talk in TMQ it appears that no one uses the bank swapping not switch ing feature provided by the PAL chip and maybe some regular gates would gt suffice Is the unused low mem address range for the likes of Michel s code memdisk driv ers and other things between OFF4 h and 12FF h correct Whatis the address range of high memory for the remaining drivers et al
118. ed the question of a Model I 5 3 LDOS I am not interested in doing it selling it supporting it or providing it I am one person trying to do what I can to support the maximum number of folks given my finite time availability Any thing associated with the upgrading of LDOS 5 1 to 5 3 for the Model I does not mesh with my priorities However I do still continue to support LDOS 5 1 4 for the Model I Accounting software Fm Howard Riel 72677 706 I have a model 4 pc that I use for a small business I would like to obtain an accounting spread sheetprogram Where can these be found I don t have a lot of money to spend on this so think cheap Thanks Fm MISOSYS Inc 70140 310 Check T Maker Research They still have some copies of T Maker at a real cheap price 49 S amp H That hasa spreadsheet in it Their phone number is 408 866 0127 8080 versus 280 compatibility Fm Adam Rubin 71320 1052 Anyone remember about the only popular 8080 program that wouldn t run on the Z80 Fm Pete Granzeau 72375 11 As I re member from reading not experience Altair BASIC the early Microsoft BA SICS didn t run on a Z80 without being patched because of an obscure incompati bility in the parity flag between the 8080 and Z80 chips i Fm Adam Rubin Congratulations You win one bootleg copy of Altair BASIC on paper tape as soon as I find one Yep that s the program I was thinking of also from reading not exper
119. eek function of VDCTL and displays the result of each character read Current DOS Updates Fm Dick Burwell Gorham NH Dear LSI I do believe I am a little late in sending in this registration card When it was purchased February of 87 I guess I neglected it Between then and now I haven t had the chance to do much of any computing Now that I ve begun again I discovered the registration in the manual Last week as I was rereading CN80 I came across a mention of 6 3 updates in July 1988 pg5 It stated that the current was Level L with file dates of July 7 1987 My disk is labeled LSDOS63J with files dated 10 February 1987 Is it pos sible for me to get my disk updated and if so how do I go about it I would like to close with a compliment on 6 3 In the past having learned with TRSDOS 1 3 I stayed with it and barely even looked at TRSDOS 6 x And seeing what to me appeared to be complex up dates I stayed away The few times I did use it the Edit procedures made changes less than easy when compared to a screen text editor I was used to in TRSDOS 1 3 However in the past week that I have started using your 6 3 TED is a welcome utility as is DISKCOPY Fm MISOSYS Inc Dear Dick in re sponse to your letter of May 2nd to LSI MISOSYS took over LS DOS 6 3 in July of 1988 Youcan get your 6 3 master disk updated to Level L for a fee of 10 2 S amp H Send it to us at the address noted in the let
120. efore the first elements address This array takes up over 33280 bytes more than would available after basic and the utility routine are loaded After the array is located it is checked to see if it is a string String arrays will not work as only the address pointers are stored in the array not the actual data The airay name is stripped away leaving the index register pointing to the array length Now the file name and data file are checked For the SAVE routine an existing file is purged from the disk For the LOAD routine the file must exist else the pro gram aborts Errors created by the pro grammer i e using a string array or load ing a non existing file result in an error message and the filename being nulled Control returns to the calling program If all is well then either data is saved onto the disk or loaded from it The SAVE routine saves a file beginning with the array length The array type and name are not saved The type is not needed as only one type of array can match an array length dimension combination The name is not saved to allow loading the same data into arrays of different names The LOAD routine first checks to see if the array size and dimensions for the file and program are identical If they don t match then an error is returned The error type is returned using to the variable used for the LOAD SAVE pointer It is assumed that it is an integer The following errors are returned 0 No e
121. el ITI with the tapes Boot in the Model ITI mode and load up the BASIC programs from tape then save them to disk The CMD files are tougher you need a tape to disk utility LDOS has aCMDFILE utility that will load cassette CMD files so that they will execute from the Model III disk sys tem Otherwise since cassette CMD files load at 4300H and the DOS loads from there to 51FFH disk CMD files load at 5200H you can t run cassette CMD files directly from disk To convert short utilities I would recom mend disassembling relocating and converting the system calls to DOS calls for the Model III mode or SVC s for the Model 4 mode Fm Adam Rubin According to the Radio Shack Computer Catalog the 4D has a cassette jack It s round about 1 2 across and is probably next to the AC cord Your friend with the cassette Model III should be happy to show you what the cassette jack looks like and the cable that con nects it to the cassette recorder You said all the programs were in BASIC soif you can borrow his cassette recorder cable and the cassette with the programs half an hour or an hour at the 4D should do it Oh and the diskettes I mentioned last time If you can bring your friend along that might help too Tape loading gets tricky sometimes So the 4D ought to do it HD Controllers QIC40 tapes etc Fm Peter Hufnagel Danbury CT Dear Roy I have been reading your notes in TMQ about adapting
122. elp on this forum I will sure try Fm Jim Beard Robin Try us first when you are getting ready to do something The head load on motor on jumper setting is well known here Fm Robin Repas Jim the jumper I changed is not the same thing as the head The Hardware Corner THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 load on motor on jumper that I think you are referring to Drives like some of the Teac s need to load the head before ac cess This is different from the motor activate line itself The Chinon drives that I am using do not pull the heads away from the diskette media the way Teac and some other drives do I actually had to change where the motor turn on signal comes from The drive was set up to get its motor turn on signal from the drive select lines My modification changed it so that the drive gets its motor turn on signal from the motor activate signal on the floppy bus cable pin 16 To make this modification on these particular Chinon drives I had to unsolder a small surface mount device from one location and re solder it into another location Do you know how much fun it is to work with SM devices PII give you a hint Don t sneeze lt grin gt Thanks again for your reply Fujitsu 360K floppy drives Fm David G Stern 71555 370 I have a Model III and a 4P Are the double sided drives mentioned for 75 S amp H directly replaceable What other changes are required to let the system know they are
123. ely in differ ent locations Does it need some chip replacement Can anyone shed a little light on the subject I did talk to Radio Shack people and they want 90 00 plus labor which is not bad but they want my model4 to keep 2 weeks in the shop that I donot like They do not sell the kit since it must be installed by them so they say I am sure you have more pressing prob lems but any help will be appreciated Fm MISOSYS Inc Any floppy or disk drive can be the system drive be it internal or external however you can only boot from the floppy addressed as internal drive zero BOOTing is controlled via the ROM and in a gate array desktop Model 4 that ROM only will read drive 0 Once booted you can switch the sys tem to any other disk drive via the SYSTEM SYSTEM d library com mand E As far as the RAM upgrade goes that was coveredin THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY issue Liii page 107 I ll repeat it for your benefit and others DOS Subjects DOS Subjects Volume I V 1 Model 4 RAM upgrade Fm John G Gelesh I just installed 4164 RAM Chips in my 64K Model 4 26 1069A green screen redesigned keyboard How do I access the extra memory Every time I try to use Memdisk I get a cannot install Memdisk requested bank in use error message What did I do wrong Fm David Huelsmann If you have a non gate array CPU you have to remove the 4 position shunt from socket U72 and install the PAL
124. enjoy owning this set of programs by one of the early pioneer programmers for the TRS 80 Lance Micklus Special All 3 Game Disk Sets for only 29 95 Five disks crammed full of games that you and your aay will really enjoy If ordering the single density Model I version of game set the price is 34 95 2 Orc 4951 Airport Parkway Suite 700 Dallas TX 75248 214 458 1197 Please add 3 s h 5 for 2 day Blue Label COD adds 4 to total Foreign adds 12 Texas residents must add 8 sales tax Prepaid or COD orders only No P O s allowed Visa MC is OK 24 hour shipping LeSCTL The Worlid Class Word Processing System p BRAND New RELEASE O Drivers for HP LaserJet II and other compatible laser printers Supporting proportional printing hundreds of type faces point sizes symbol sets bold medium light underline portrait and landscape boxes rules dotted lines borders and shaded backgrounds O Works at LIGHTNING speed Most editing functions are now as much as 400 faster than before O Powerful Line Drawing functions that work with any printer that supports the PC character set 148 Key Macros Special Characters that you can program to combine many functions on one key O Instant pop up Help Screens sorted by topic with menu selection to get you quickly to the help you need Can also be customized by the user add delete or create your Own set O Instant pop up display screen for Key Mac
125. er monitors such as TASMON so you can write assemble debug and run Z80 machine code programs on your PC To use it you must transier your old files to MSDOS disks first For this we reconimend PCXZ or Hypercreoss see below for details Runs on PCs PS 2s compatibles and laptops with at least 384K of memory ONLY emulates Model 4 mode of Medel 4 Prices Order PC4 79 95 alone PC4H 104 95 with Hypercross SX3PCM4 PC4Z 119 95 with PCXZ Send 3 for PC4 PCX Z demo disk refundable on order Available on 3 5 disk format on request PCXZ reads TRS80 disks on your PC PC Cross Zap PCXZ is a utility that runs on your PC or PC compatible Withit you can copy files toor from FRS 80 disks at will Suitable for all types of files BASIC ASCII and Binary Converts BASIC and text files automatically as you copy You can also format a disk copy disks explore read and write sector data repair bad directories and much more Long after your TRS 80 is gone you will still be able to read your old disks Formats Supported Model I double density DOS 3 4 DoubleDOS LDOS SOLE MultiDOS NEWDOS 80 V2 FRSDOS 2 7 8 Model I III Double Density DOS 3 5 LDOS 5 x Model III DOS 3 4 MultiDOS NewDOS 80 TRSDOS 1 3 Model 4 4P MultiDOS DOS 4 TRSDOS 6 LSDOS 6 3 Max 80 LDOS 5 1 PCXZ supports single or double sided 35 40 and 80 track formats Requires PC XT AT or compatible Tandy 1000 1000EX needs DMA 1200 3000 You must
126. escript was at fault and called Peter Ray of Anitek He took me on a tour of the diskDISK created floppies I learned that they are not strictly images of the floppy For one thing the directory is on track 1 The second item is more interesting The last two sectors of the directory track do not contain directory information as far as I can tell DiskDISK appears not to zero any of the previous information on the hard drive when creating a pseudo floppy except for the first 34 sectors of the direc tory Lescript attempts to read the entire directory track and crashes when it en counters the last two sectors Peter Ray tells me that Lescript looks for sector 3 byte 0205H to see how large the directory is Zapping several diskDISK DIR SYS files shows 24H at that location That translates to 36 decimal Decreasing the MISOSYS Products Tidbits THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 e Ea TAN byte by two to 22H solved the problem I have the following questions 1 Does it in fact solve my problem or am I setting myself up for worse trouble 2 Is this a bug in diskDISK s DDFORM module or is Lescript not playing by the rules 3 Is there a quick patch to DDFORM to zero the rest of the directory track or decrement the byte mentioned above 4 Why does the DOS have no problem with the diskDISK pseudo floppies Setting up the hard drive with diskDISK 57 Volume IV i was a remarkably easy job
127. ess ing I don t believe in constantly reading the clock on an interrupt basis as that slows the processor down If the hard drive is turned off then the host adaptor is not powered and the computer will be unable to access the clock how ever if the hard drive is powered up upon booting the accurate date and time will be loaded Updating the time will then be performed by the DOS until the hardware clock again becomes available The clock itself will continue to run for years the internal battery is good for a minimum of 10 years The software for drive installation will be similar to other hard drive software we have generated you will be able to parti tion the drive for more than one DOS Fm M E Easey United Kingdom Dear Sir I am interested in purchasing a MI SOSYS Hard Disk system for my Tandy Model 4P computer My computer has been modified according the January 1986 issue of 80 Micro to accommodate two extra drives I have fitted two external Canon 210 DS drives Will you please advise me if you can supply a hard drive to run on the UK electricity system that will work with my current drive configuration The U K electricity supply is 220 240 Volts at 50 Hz My local Tandy Storecan supply a 50 watt converter transformer Tandy ref 273 1401 as an alternative to a UK power supply unit will the Tandy converter serve as a Suitable power source Can you also let me know the length of the c
128. even fun I realize that there are advantages to con figuring a diskDISK pseudo floppy ex actly like a real one but I like the few extra k I get this way I hope that whatever solution evolves that I will get to keep them Fm MISOSYS Inc Peter I researched your suspected problem and came up with a solution DiskDISK does indeed estab lish the ending record number ERN of the DIR SYS entry as equal to the number of sectors per cylinder But in the case of a 2 sided double density image that comes out to being two records larger MISOSYS Products Tidbits Volume IV 1 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i than whatis actually in effect Neither the DOS nor most programs have any prob lem with that the DOS generally accesses the directory first via the hash index table HIT for which there is a corresponding directory record for each HIT entry Other utilities which access the directory per se calculate what has to be read DiskDISK does correctly calculate the length of the directory but uses that figure only to determine hoe many directory sectors to zero out I am enclosing two patches to correct this minor bug the DDFORMSA FIX is for the Model II version while the DDFORM6B FIX is for the Model 4 version Incidentally zapping the 24H to a 22H did solve your problem and set you up for no further problem 22H is the correct value which indicates a maximum sized directory EnhComp
129. ey CA 94707 415 528 7000 GRL Software Suite 209 1051 KLO Rd Kelowna BC V1Y 4X6 CAN ADA Hypersoft PO Box 51155 Raleigh NC 27609 919 847 4779 M A D Software P O Box 331323 Fort Worth TX 76163 Microdex Corp 1212 N Sawtelle Tucson AZ 85716 602 326 3502 MISOSYS Inc PO Box 239 Ster ling VA 22170 703 450 4181 Orders to 800 MISOSYS Pacific Computer Exchange 1031 SE Mill Suite B Portland OR 97214 503 236 2949 Powersoft 4951 Airport Parkway Suite 700 Dallas TX 75248 214 458 1197 The File Cabinet PO Box 322 Van Nuys CA 91408 RANTECH Computer Systems PO Box 1101 Clackamus OR 97015 503 771 0390 Storage Power 10391 Oakhaven Dr Stanton CA 90680 714 952 2700 Tandy National Parts Hardware 817 870 5600 T Maker Research Company 812 Pollard Road Suite 8 Los Gatos R oe is s Se RADIO SHACK j TANDY OWNERS Find the computer equipment that TANDY no longer sells PACIFIC COMPUTER EXCHANGE buys and sells used TANDY TRSDOS XENIX MSDOS COMPUTERS amp PERIPHERALS We sell everything from Model 3 s to Tandy 6000 s and all the printers and hard disks to go with them If we don t have it in stock we will do our best to find it for you We have the largest data base of used Radio Shack equipment to draw from All equipment comes with warranty PACIFIC COMPUTER EXCHANGE The One Source For Used Tandy Computers 1031 S E Mill Suite B Portlan
130. faults file AL DEF with the command BK JKEY SAVE AL DEF EN This would be done on a system disk specifi cally assigned to this job to avoid upset ting the regular AL DEF file used for normal word processing Furthermore I would suggest you give this file a differ ent name to avoid it being called auto matically when ALLWRITE starts up as AL DEF is Any slipup with that might Cause youto accidentally use the changed AL DEF in error on a WP text file where global changes or deletions might ruin valuable text I prefer calling it something else like CAT DEF which requires from the editor the command BK KEY LOAD CAT DEF EN to configure the soft keys to the special coding slightly more effort but much safer As soon as you have coded the soft keys be sure to save them to your DEF disk file before you leave the ALLWRITE editor AL CMD otherwise they will be lost File undating FUNDATE In THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Volume I issue iv Luis Garcia Barro presented a program called UNDATE which was written for LDOS 5 3 That program converted an entire disk from the 5 3 format back to the 5 1 format it did this by reversing the operation of the DATE CONV command If you wanted to move a single file for whatever reason you had you had to make a backup of a disk then UNDATE the backup Applications for the User 52 Applications for the User Volume IV i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i
131. fering REL and IRL library searching zero disk space for DEFS in DSEGs and COMMONs generation of program overlays special link items 0 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 With its built in Z80 assembler you can easily create hybrid programs of BASIC statements and in line assembly code which completely eliminate contorted string packing and DATA statement high memory module techniques for your BASIC program to access a machine code module This package includes the language translator a batch file to automate compilation a language Reference Manual an Installation Manual application programs in source code on disk and our LED text editor for source code preparation REL Disassembler UNREL T80 M 30 054 CPM M 32 054 Includes MLIB our REL module librarian and our SAID advanced full screen text editor which can be used to generate your assembler source code C language source code or edit any type of ASCII file Z80 Assembler EDAS DOS 6 M 21 082 LDOS 5 x M 20 082 You ll have to edit existing BASIC programs but the power and completeness of EnhComp make that an easy task Z80 Disassembler DSMBLR DOS 6M 31 053 LDOS 5 x M 30 053 Provides direct disassembly from CMD disk files automatic partitioning of output disk files data screening for non code regions and full label generation It even generates the ORGs and END statement the complete ball of wax You will find
132. for fun I sat down this afternoon and knocked together that filter I spoke of earlier Works fine I m sending you a copy via EMAIL binary Just download it with your usual protocol software naming it LOWPASS FLT Normally you would install it using the DOS SET command but you can just type LOWPASS FLT lt enter gt SET command w o the at the LS DOS Ready prompt to get the explicit instructions imbedded therein Hope this helps you Fm LDOS Support 76703 437 Discon nect the wire at the computer end of things then tie the disconnected wire that now goes to the printer to ground instead A pull up resistor in the printer is forcing the disconnected line to be seen as always high DOS Subjects 25 DOS Subjects Volume IV i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i Fm John D Williams 70441 1247 I recently got a double sided drive for my Model 4 original model After installing it everything seems to work OK in for matting amp using SINGLE sided disks but I can t get FORMAT to format a disk asa double sided one After FORMAT re ports formatting all 40 cylinders it re turns bad cylinder messages for EVERY track Is there a patch needed to get LS DOS 6 3 to view the drive as a double sided one or is the problem that the floppy controller is unable to handle double sided drives If the latter is the case is there anything that can be done to up grade the controller Fim
133. for only 15 00 Pick up the phone and call today 407 259 9397 VISA and MasterCard accepted Anitek Software Products PO Box 361136 Melbourne FL 32936 Lil Version 2 00 ee a i a a et Run TRS 80 Software on your PC Run Model III programs on a PC with PC Three Now you can run your favorite TRS 80 Model III Operating System and programs on your PC with PC Three When you run this program on your PC XT AT or compatible it emulates a TRS 80 Model III with its Z80 microprocessor floppy disk controller and 48K of memory It also supports the printer serial port and cassette output for sound How does it work You copy your Model III disks onto PC formatted disks using a special version of PC Cross Zap included Each FRS 80 diskis now in the form of a file which represents the entire contents exactly Then you run PC Three and you have a TFRS 80 Model III on your screen PC Three works with the following operating systems TRSDOS 1 3 LDOS 5 1 4 LDOS 5 3 DOS 3 4 3 5 NewDOS 80 V2 and MultiDOS You have the equivalent of 4 floppy disk drives 3 of which support disks up to 1 8 Mbytes for LDOS NEWDOS DOS amp MultiDOS PC Three has been tested and found to run many popular Model III packages It is not guaranteed to run everything however we are working on filling the gaps At present it will not run programs on non standard or protected disks Examples of programs that run on PC III AIDS ALLWRITE B
134. fted or unshifted numerical keys X Y and Z may also be used which work after the style of DOS KSM and issue commands to ALLWRITE when pressed with or after the CLEAR key ALLWRITE users will find further de tails in the manual chapter 4 under Soft Keys Applications for the User Volume IV i Applications for the User Volume IV i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Abbreviations for ALLWRITE model 4 soft key coding Press key shown but do not type which are for readability only F1 Press function key F1 BK Press Break key SP Type one space EN Press Enter key RA Press right arrow key LA Press left arrow key Soft key coding entered at the ALLWRITE define key prompts Notes If you re puzzled by RIVE and LA in key 1 they re explained later C and in these codes are names of keys shifted 8 and 9 respectively not syntactical parentheses and should be typed in as shown Spaces have been included in these codes solely for readability but should not be typed in The only time the space bar should be pressed is when SP is shown Notes on soft key coding Unshifted keys 1 and 2 are the only ones normally used by the operator The rest are shifted to reduce the possibility of one being pressed in error which could disturb the normal sequence of operation Soft key coding is initiated from
135. g like LD A 38xxH j read the keyboard LD B A save it for a moment IN A 0 read the joystick and if no keys were pressed it s IN A 0 with A 0 reading the 64180 s internal ports instead of the joystick I don t have an XLR8er though so I can t test my hypothesis Fm MISOSYS Inc That will probably fail for the same reason as I had docu mented in TMQ If you examine the code stream preceding the LD A 38xxH check Out the state of the accumulator prior to it Then see if the order of kbd and j s could be reversed Another satisfied XLR8er owner Fm M E Thow Rosny Tasmania AUS TRALIA Dear Roy Further to my let ters dated December of last year I wish to report that the XLR8er Board has been installed and all my Model 4 systems converted to LSDOS 6 3 The result is fantastic I have a number of big projects on which I have been working on a vol untary basis for organizations in which I am interested I did expect some increase in speed but I must admit it is far beyond what I expected I have experienced the same problems as others with RAPIDOS Chess and Model III programs This is of no real concern to me but it is upsetting my grandchildren It is probable that some of their programs have undocumented Z80 instructions However I must find out Will you please send me 1 The patch for RAPIDOS Chess 2 The patches for TRSDOS 1 3 3 The LDOS interface disk These a
136. g time since I played with this topic Fm Jim Beard Kerry The default envi ronment space size is 128 bytes Fm LDOS Support Roy Shell in CONFIG SYS doesn t cost you a second copy of COMMAND COM but you do lose a memory block for the old envi ronment size not too bad at 128 bytes It is possible to patch COMMAND COM directly to alter the default environment size and this was quite common before SHELL and E parameter came in be came documented with the 3 x DOS versions COMMAND COM owns the master environmentasa hold over from DOS 1 x and 2 x as in those versions the program loader for both COM and EXE was contained in the command interpreter DOS 3 x moved at least some of the necessary support code to the kernel but I would imagine that it is far too late I remember reading somewhere that IBM had a spec on the maximum size of the system kernel for the original versions of DOS and Microsoft couldn t make it with the system loader resident Had to support those 64K IBM machines Fm Jim Beard Joe My experiments with shell command com e 256 pis that the environment size doesn t change That is a CHKDSK shows the same amount of user memory I use 3 2 Fm LDOS Support Jim The action of the environment size change is DOS ver sion dependent If your version of DOS expects the argument in paragraphs it may decide that 256 16is too big and not change your environment at all For ex
137. g to you for some help Can you direct me to any useful material on these functions On another note can you explain why the BASIC commands PEEK and POKE have been abandoned by LSI in reference to the keyboard and video I realize that these functions are now performed by some SVC s ButI don t understand why POKE and PEEK can t be used also You know the best of both worlds I ve done some tests like displaying some data on screen and then checking the video buffer to see if it s there I couldn t find any of the data I sent to the screen Why Fm MISOSYS Inc Attached to this let ter is an illustration of two examples in one program The examples illustrate 1 reading the contents of the entire video screen into 24 elements of a string array and 2 reading the contents of one row of the video screen using a character at a time Study the two examples they work If you are confused by any of the coding then you will probably have to do more studying of one of the two references cited Don t forget that the direct use of DOS SVC s is not documented in the TRSDOS 6 User manual that informa tion is considered technical in nature and is documented in technical manuals avail able at additional cost You cannot peek or poke directly into the video or keyboard memory simply be Cause video RAM and keyboard imaging are not in the 64K Z80 address space That s a function of the hardware In a Model III
138. h by the way was derived from TED APP TED APP gives you a 32K editing buffer any time you can pop up PRO W AM you do need one free memory bank to get to TED APP On Software Development The following is excerpted from the ar ticle Experts expect DoD to get tough on software suppliers which appeared in the June 29th issue of Electronic Design News The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency s Software Engineering Institute Says it has trained groups within all three services in a tough new evaluation method for the trial source selection of military software suppliers The training is part of SEI s Contractor Software Engineering Capability Assess ment CSECA project but experts ex _ pect the DoD to quietly implement the method as a qualification screen within two years The problem Most software shops still employ chaotic program ming practices Although the DoD would not commenton whether it intends to exercise the trained groups sources in side the Software Re search Center at Wright Patterson Air Force Base OH confirm that the DoD is considering additional requirements to MIL STD 1803 a software development THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 integrity program approved last Decem ber a The evaluation method developed by the SEI at the request of the US Air Force ranks companies on five levels e Ad hoc chaotic ERER EREE ment e Intuitive development based on ex
139. hat are accessed on the GT 180 simply by sending the correct bytes OUT the GT 180 base address Base address plus one provides access to the 63484 status register The 63484 manual de scribes these registers in great detail The 38 graphics and control commands have many parameters that modify their be havior once the function of these regis ters are understood it shouldn t be too hard to writean LS DOS driver that passes the correct commands out the I O ports The 63484 also eases the burden on the programmer by accepting logical x y coordinates they are transparently con verted to physical frame buffer memory addresses There are dozens of other para meters that once set are handled auto matically for the programmer And now for the performance figures The GT 180 can display 16 colors out of a palette of 4096 with a resolution of 640 horizontal pixels by 480 vertical pixels Note that the palette colors can be changed at the end ofany scan line allowing many more than 16 screen colors Palette col ors are passed to the GT 180 via base address plus two and three The 512K frame buffer is large enough accommo date multiple screens of graphics data The GT 180 can draw two million pixels per second In comparison the highly acclaimed Commodore Amiga is rated at only one million pixels per second Soon I hope to have some presentable software for LS DOS that will put all this graphics power to use XLR8er TRSDOS 1
140. he top of the page I have installed FORMS using SET FF FORMS FILTER PR FF as recommended Fm MISOSYS Inc William This is in response to your letter of May 2nd con ceming the printing problem with LB This is the print of Form 3 in which you had generated four records of 14 lines each per page To be honest I see nothing wrong with your print screen definition on the surface The Printed lines per page in the print parameters is the number of lines you want printed before page ejecting A line in which the data is blank still counts as a line With your 3 line header and footer four 14 line records should fit exactly at 62 printed lines At page eject LB would send a FORM FEED character since the Physical Lines per Page and Printed Lines per page are not equal see LB manual page 24 para 3 Since the FORMS filter is installed and FFHARD is not specified the FORMS filter will translate a form feed character to repeated line feeds as many as are necessary to com plete the page according to its settings With FORMS set to 66 and 66 it should translate the form feed to four returns assuming that its internal line counter was set to zero prior to the start of the printing If your DMP130A printer supports form feed then you should set FFHARD with the FORMS command of the DOS Of course if the FORMS counter was the culprit I would expect page two to be off in addition to succeed
141. he CALL routine is defined on page 2 81 of the Model 4 Disk System Owner s Manual The first element of the array is pointed to by the HL register pair and the filename descriptor is pointed to by the DE register pair The LOAD SAVE flag is pointed to be the BC pair The routine first verifies the array type The first byte of the array must be either 2 3 4 or 8 The index register IX is decremented until a byte is found which matches the type character Assuming that this is the first byte of the array succeeding bytes are checked to see if they meet the speci fications for the header record Byte 1 must be an uppercase letter byte 3 must be between 0 and 38 and if byte 3 is not zero then byte 4 must have its high bit set Any of these tests which fails decrements the index register and returns to the TYPE Applications for the User Volume IV i Applications for the User Volume IV i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 routine You probably have already noticed that I have skipped over a lot of data and there fore might falsely define the stating point of the array I thought so too until I tried to create an array which would not work This array needs a minimum of five di mensions since the routine starts check ing nine bytes before then first element The minimum integer array which m ets these requirements has these dimensions A 0 0 0 0 64 511 which gives a bytepatternof00 02 41 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 b
142. hing else Any suggestions about where to look Fm Jim Beard 71675 566 Mark PCZ ARC is still in the twilight zone of the SYSOP bit bin Joe hasn t checked in lately which is pretty unusual He travels on his day job and may have a problem there although he usually takes along his Compaq TAPCIS and maintains the SIG on the road have absolutely no idea why Joe is ipse dixit right now I ll let you know if you reply to this message so I have a hook when I log on tomorrow or Thursday The PC Z isn t an IBM PClone at all it just goes in the same box and uses the expansion cards It s a 10 MHz Z80 machine with Z system a CP M port in ROM instant boot From there the ROM also supports loading another DOS into shadow ram and transferring control which is the hook for a patched LS DOS A general rule of thumb is that software that runs under Model II LS DOS should run under any patched LS DOS Memory cards won t work until the Z280 card comes out and a PC type power supply 12 5 12 is necessary to power Volume IV i the expansion slots for most cards The PC Z itself runs from 12 unregulated a 1958 Volkswagen lighter outlet for ex ample Some RCA video setups can be tweaked pretty well my original one was good that way Some can t like my present one Focus is a function of the tube the yoke the focus magnets ion trap deGaussing and the video board For best results change the top cover and e
143. his LSDOS 6 3 responds to the ID command with nothing but a car riage return and a Lsdos ready To get your MEMDISK LSDOS 6 3 patches I send this letter to you enclosed with a minidisk two address labels and 10 US of money for your expenses to ship everything back to me Please tell me in case I have to pay for anything of the desired materials additional amounts of money Did you introduce a new SVC EXMEM There are unresolved diffi culties to get running this SVC presented by Mr H Brothers in 80 MICRO Do you still support the model 4 computer Is the LSDOS QUARTERLY publication still available How much will it be with ship ping to Europe Many thanks for your kindly help at this time I m looking forward to hear from you as soon as possible with best regards Fm MISOSYS Inc Sorry but the AT patches were strictly for the Alpha Tech nology memory board no others We also discontinued that offer a few years ago The patches are now on DISK NOTES 6 I copied that to your disk With investiga tion you may be able to revise them to your needs A copy of THE SOURCE would probably help By the way the patches may not work with your LS DOS 6 3G Also check out Volume IV 1 a subscription to THE MISOSYS QUAR TERLY the old LDOS QUARTERLY what you referred to as LSDOS QUAR TERLY has not been published since April 1984 CMD formats diskDISK amp Write Protect Fm L
144. i lower RAM chips This should keep the XLR8er in place 12 Insert the motherboard back into its enclosure the left hand screw support may temporarily block the XLR8er s free motion Gently guide the XLR8er board behind the support Reinstall the nine screws inserting the upper left one first as itis quite close to the XLR8er connecting cable 13 Re install the floppy connecting cable 14 Re install the keyboard connecting cable and then re fasten the keyboard cable shield with the two screws previ ously removed 15 Install the graphics board 16 Re install the upper right video con nector the ground lead and the cassette cable 17 Re install the motherboard shield using the six screws previously removed 18 Install the top middle power connec tor B Continue with steps 13 15 of the XLR8er Operator Manual Curtis Clip on 4P Fm Adam Rubin 71320 1052 I decided to make a big hardware splurge and bought a Curtis Clip for my 4P Then I discov ered the top of the 4P s case is only 10 above the desktop which means the bot tom of my 11 oroccasionally 14 pages will be lying on the desk instead of hang ing neatly I really don t want to have to fold each page and flip it over halfway through Any suggestions on a more ele gant solution would be appreciated very much Thanks Fm MISOSYS Inc Why did you buy a The Hardware Corner THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Curt
145. ience On Intel s 8080 bit 2 of the flag register is only used to indicate parity The Z80 however uses this bit to indicate parity for logical operations and overflow for arithmetic operations I recently ran across a CP M program that used LD A 7FH ADD A A to determine the processor being used This will leave the P flag reset on an 8080 OFEH has odd parity but the P V flag set on a Z80 127 127 lt gt 2 Ah the wonders of history LS DOS Tasker Help Fm Bob Haynes 73075 77 Roy I have a couple of questions on proper implemen tation of a background task see below Assuming the task code is in module form installed and protected in high memory would this generally be correct Since the Task Processor links through the vector found at MYTCB anyway this is probably a dumb question but where should the JR at MODULE branch to or does it ever matter Should the word imbedded by the install code at MODTCB be a relocated version of MODULE MYTCB or MYTASK I think MODULE but I m really not sure In attempting to learn whether the pro grammer or the system is responsible for preserving registers I scanned through the tasker code in SYSRES and found that all the main registers ARE saved except IY was there a special reason for that Thanks in advance for your counsel and patience Roy Responses from anybody else are welcome too Fm MISOSYS Inc The code looks rea sonable on the surface
146. if you have them In terms of actually running Profile 3 Plus there are three things to keep in mind 1 If you have the KI driver installed all references to the lt clear gt key in the Pro file documentation should be changed to lt shift gt lt clear gt If you are using math fields do not use type ahead as Profile does not seem to calculate properly if lt shift gt lt clear gt is struck before the calcu lation is complete 2 Profile checks the printer status by looking directly at the hardware This means that if you are using the spooler the printing rate will not really improve much This can be corrected by searching through all the EFC programs and RM CM for the byte sequence 3A E8 37 and replace it with 3E 30 00 This is a good excuse to learn how to use FED included with the LDOS 5 1 4 and 5 3 releases Making these changes will disable the check of printer status Since the system printer driver which contains its own Printer BUSY test is used to actually output the data there will be no conflicts Also you will be able to route printed reports to a disk file without having a printer ready and on line 3 Lastly contrary to what the manual says Profile will not work wlth DO files under LDOS This is because of the way keyboard input is requested by Pro file This difficulty is neatly fixed by using the TYPEIN utility from the Utility Disk 1 Order L 32 070 19 95 S amp H di
147. ill be deleted hope this can help NOTE Be sure not to change anything else if you don t know the results of the changes it could cause some nasty problems Cassette to disk Fm Tom Rich 74656 260 Many years ago I used your helpful group and I hope I can do so again How can I get a Basic Model III Cassette over to My 4P My friend is a Programer and has done Lots of Games on a Model III and I would like to get them to My 4P Is it Possible Fm Adam Rubin 71320 1052 Hi Tom Yes it IS possible to run Model III cas sette BASIC programs on your Model 4P I was in the same situation a few years back You ll need to run them in your 4P s Model IIT mode so you ll need a Model III DOS TRSDOS 1 3 Model III LDOS or any of several others You ll also need to find someone with a Model III or Model 4 not 4P disk sys tem and a cassette recorder Bring the tape a backup of your Model HI DOS and afew blank disks formatted by which ever Model III DOS you re using over to this Model ITI or 4 disk system When you get there boot up your Model III DOS set the cassette baud rate if necessary and Start up disk BASIC Then just CLOAD each program from the tape and SAVE it to disk Repeat the CLOAD and SAVE for each program on the tape Once you get home just boot up your Model ITI DOS start up disk BASIC and LOAD whichever pro gram you want Fm Tom Rich Thanks for the ideas but what the trouble is my friend onl
148. imately and are satisfied with the functionality it provides Group A will never switch because that would mean abandoning old habits and having to learn new ones Group B is probably P rvii m T Swed iz il v P en ax involved with more than one kind of system anyway and has made an intelligent choice to remain where they are As new opportunities are limited my suggestion here is to keep tight control on how much time you invest in this area The software industry is dominated by big business big egos and big lawyers They have pretty much taken over all the high end stuff There is very little room for a small business to make a profit in this environment Those who have no need of profit for whatever reason have 7 Volume IV 1 taken over the lower end of the MS DOS world Other operating environments suffer from either a lack of market penetration or a litigious and jealous parent My only observation is that OS 2 is pretty much virgin territory Large full featured applications are available some in vapor form but what about the rest of us I believe that the price of hardware will fall enough to put platforms capable of mak ing good use of 0S 2 within reach of most people in a year or two Even now you can buy a fairly decent 0S 2 system for about what a 48K Model 3 cost 6 years ago As an aside have you considered the potential within the world of OS 9 To thine own self
149. in a way that is strictly incompatible with new BANK handler Please don t tell me that you ve been using it for weeks without any problems as it only means you did not yet meet them The main purpose of the patches is to allow the use of extended memory via standard SVC DOS calls On the other hand I strongly advise against patching programs that are not well behaved I am sorry to say that the patches to LeScript TMQ II iii 51 are worthless and dan gerous The program uses BANK to check the availability of banks 1 and 2 in that order but everything else is hard coded Which means that even if you replace the values in the initial test as the patches do and those banks appear to be free the program will always use banks 1 and 2 via direct hardware access I won der what the expressions these patches work fine or this patch has been tested really mean There are two ways to boot an ERAM DISK The faster is to use ERAMLD then ERAMDISK F N It should be noted that it is possible to Dump and Load only those banks that actually con tain data that s why the directory is re Letters to the Editor 12 Letters to the Editor Volume IV i stricted to cylinder 1 The other method is to format a single sided floppy disk with the little known parameter D 1 which means put Directory on cylin der 1 Then after installing ERAMDISK Type 5 do a mirror im
150. ing pages In order to be able to understand what is happening in your case I would need to see a copy of your associated data base files so that I can run the report here I would have to direct the printout to a disk file and examine exactly what is being sent from LB Depending on your skill at interpreting disk dumps you could try that first Here s how Before entering LB issue the command ROUTE PR FORM3 DAT Target a hard drive parti tion which has plenty of free space I don t know how big your report is Then enter LB and print the report Then exit back to DOS and RESET PR Examine the resulting FORM3 DAT file at the demarcation between page 2 and 3 That s what I would do LB and mail merge Fm MISOSYS Inc 70140 310 to Jim Beard 71675 566 Jim Can you confirm the mail merge structure for SuperScrip sit ScripsitPRO From PROFILE docu mentation it appears that the merge file is LRL 1 contains the code words sur rounded by AT signs then has the code variables following in the same sequence as the code words with each variable also surrounded by s Each group separated by one blank line and the merge file terminated with two blank lines The Model II SCRIPSIT mail merge for mat is identical except that uses braces amp surrounding code names and variables I m considering adding the merge file creation capability in LB2 x release Fm Gary Phillips 72425 354 R
151. ing screen displays e All screens are saved to pic files e All pic files are compatible with basic e Create windows for Menus Messages or Elect e Print what you see on the screen Screen lit will provide the location off all defined data input areas Screen it teams up with Demo for making automated examples of your screens or software DON T BE LATE Time is running out Send for Screen It with Demo the natural combination Only 39 95 Free shipping and handling with prepayment RANTECH SOFTWARE P O Box 1101 Clackamas OR 97015 1 503 771 0390 56 Applications for the User Volume IV i diskDISK s DIR SYS size Fm Peter Besenbruch Ft Leonard Wood MO Dear Roy I have recently converted to a used Tandy 15 meg hard drive I use your RS Hard drivers and diskDISK to organize it I setup the DSK files as pseudo 360k floppies I specified 2 sides and went with the rest of the defaults when using DDFORM I soon discovered that DDFORM did not make a total replica of a floppy disk on my hard drive I had several k more to play with Doing a mirror image backup from diskDISK to the floppy gave me the extra k on the floppy too I have received a trial version of Lescript II It shows promise but crashes when reading these enhanced disks particu larly trying to take a directory from within the program Allwrite Shell a PD DOS shell and the DOS had no problem I assumed L
152. is Clip Didn t you know that I was giving them away with the last TMQ coupon Of course you needed to have an order forat least 50 worth of stuff lt grin gt I do have a few boxes left of them One solution for the 4P s low profile on the desk is to stack it on top of a hard drive That s how I have mine lt grin gt A phone book could suffice Or only use the clip on short notes Fm Bill Brandon 76701 256 Adam Assuming you can get the clip off the case I d make an extender out of 1 8 Plexiglas TM Re stick the clip to one end On the other end put a patch of Velcro TM At a convenient spot on the 4P case put a patch of the other kind of hook n loop tape Press the extender to the case and type away You might have to experiment with the amount of Velcro TM tape I d guess that two dots or three in a triangle would give you a more stableattachment than one big block of the stuff I use a lot of hook n loop tape for stuff like this you can buy it cheaper at a sewing supply or fabric store than at Radio Shack by the way and in more sizes and colors too Fm Adam Rubin Thanks Bill How come I couldn t think of that That should solve the problem nicely I was waiting to attach the clip until I d found an answer to this but getting it off the case is no problem it s held to the top of the moni tor with guess what Velcro R brand fastener a 1 by 3 strip That stuff is indeed handy
153. isk controller and or a speedup kit 7 My biggest problem is that the wire from Pad A was disconnected and I don t know where it should go Does anyone have any documentation installation info or description of such a board or know where the Pad A wire should go Any info would be appreciated Send copies to Frank Gottschalk 785 Maya Court Fremont CA 94539 or call Col lect to 415 651 2313 Response on XLR8er patches Fm Michel Houd Compiegne France Pd like to answer a few questions about Michel s patches for the XLR8er Firstlet me tell everyone that I was aware of all the methods that would increase the theo retical speed of a HD64180 Model 4 4P We all have the same reference book nen een eee SS PSPs hp Letters to the Editor ll Letters to the Editor Volume IV 1 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i If someone was to design a new computer built around the HD64180 microproces sor running at 6 144 MHz things would be easy Unfortunately we have to deal with Model 4 4P s built around the Z80 running at 4 055 MHz It is a sad fact of life that we may have to choose between speed and reliability What strikes me when I read the discus sionsin TMQIII 1i1 is that very few people relate experimental facts and theoretical assumptions Everyone is trying to push the limits by setting or resetting this bit into that port claiming a theoretical percentage of
154. it here but understand I have no responsibility to repair or replace it with out charge If you do send it to me it would be wise to send your cable as well so that could be tested As an aside the XLR8er should work equally in your 4P or your gate array desktop 1069A The desktop installa tion uses a 6 cable XLR8er docs on 4P installation Fm Frank E Mitchell Jr Omaha NE Dear Roy I received the LDOS 5 3 soft ware and RAM for my XLR8er and am running fine in the model III mode There are acouple of things I ran across during the installation that I thought might be helpful to pass along Could be I just missed something but maybe this could be of benefit to someone else First the socket numbers on my model4P did not match the manual The Z80 was in socket U 45 vs U 47 Also the orienta tion was such that I couldn t match pin one of the plug with pin one of the socket and match the cable arrangement in Fig ure 1 3 The 74LS245N in U 118 near the RAM was soldered in rather than in a socket U 70 and U 86 had 74LS245N chips in sockets but they were both near the Z 80 rather than near the RAM also the instructions said to replace that chip if necessary butI couldn t find any explana tion of the replacement criteria I pre sumed that if I don t have any keyboard problems I don t need to replace the chip Second I made a bit of a false start in using the ramdisk I first formatted a 40 track r
155. ith the DOS ATTRIB command and the NAME parameter 2 From DOS enter the command ROUTE ee PR filename ext dr where filename cca ext is the name of the catalog file then pies CAT dr 1 S P which will list the disk cae contents to the file Omit I and or S if 25 ee invisible and or system files aren t wanted a ee in the catalog Avoid error situations such es Zoe as Omitting to place the disk in the drive leaving the drive unlatched etc which would display an error code that would si also get into the catalog file needing tobe as weeded out later by deleting 3 A number ae 2 sine a E of disks can be cataloged in sequence by ee z pict changing the disk and repeating the CAT ae command on the model 4 with CTRL R POP a aE ae a aL Lr a a ae ae ad art a a ea DE De eh he a aa Be ht Bh hh a 4 When all disks have been read issue 33 Raar we E ee RESET PR THIS IS IMPORTANT as ee iaae a aa Ge cee treet renee eeceaater ae nrateretanetan das aseseser tasaeneyeerarprararanerelaeocoseeratengs Dartas sia DA R ela alie a aes om the omission of it would leave you with an incomplete and unclosed catalog file 5 However accidents do happen some 5 H ee times and if a file were to be left un closed you would have to use the Applications for the User 44 Applications for the User down which will create a repetitive pressed file as unneeded material and Volume IV i THE
156. iver that will let me use it The Tandy tech support people tell me there was only one program released that had drivers included for it and that was called LUMINA now out of stock HELP BTW Pm wanting to use this on a ge neric XT clone generic as in no two components in it are from the same com pany Fm Frank Slinkman 72411 650 Kent Micro Labs sells an interface 99 95 at last look which they claim will work for joysticks and graphics tablets Perhaps you should give them a call 214 235 0915 and see if their interface will work with this particular tablet THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Video and PCZ Fm Mark P Fishman 73127 617 Jim Two things totally unrelated to each other 1 I was wondering what the latest word was on the whereabouts of PCZ ARC or TXT or whatever I m still very inter ested in that hardware software I d rather keep running LSDOS on an IBM PClone bus than be stuck with MSDOS ware 2 Since you have an erector set Model 4 I was wondering if you knew the rela tive merits of the RCA video board in Model IIIs vs whatever was in Model 4s I have a Model III with less than satisfac tory focus and it has the RCA video I have tweaked it and it does go through focus all over the screen but at best it s a bit fuzzier than I d like Is it possible just to drop in a Model 4 video board and would that get me better focus Or would I have to work on somet
157. k It also allows you to create up to 33 frames of animation and play them like a movie It also allows you to save the graphics in several modes including BASIC listings CMD file format and others These can then be merged into your own programs etc either in BASIC or machine language Many of PowerSoft s opening screens were created with PowerDraw In fact it even creates animated opening screens like we use in Super Utility PowerTool etc to really pep up the program It also allows you to print the screens on Epson type and several other types of printers Lastly PowerDraw has the ability to load in many types of TRS 80 graphic s and convert them to BASIC listings like a BASIC program generator PowerDOT 2 0 for printers Mix text with graphics no problem Build new fonts 19 95 gt Original 1986 price 49 95 This program is similar to PowerDraw but quite different It allows you to create hi res type screen graphics combined with text and allows you to create drawings much larger than your screen The screen is a window to a much larger drawing arrow and you use the arrow keys to move about the drawing In a way it is similar to Macpaint for the Macintosh computer It also allows you to create custom fonts for ads etc Many of our early ads were created with PowerDot It creates the hi res effect due to each TRS 80 block pixel being printed as a single dot Please specify if EPSON Okidata ProWriter or Ra
158. k Model 4 Tech nical Reference Manual or The Program mer s Guide to TRSDOS Version 6 is required to understand the USR11 func tion requests Line 100 declares the integer array J 5 used to pass Z80 register contents to from the system SVC The string array 24 is declared and will be used to store the 24 lines read from the screen Line 110 declares a string constant and initializes it so that it is 80 characters long In order to use the line at a time video transfer function of VDCTL the user s buffer must be below X F400 the address space of memory swapped out to perform video and keyboard access Us ing a string constant guarantees that this 80 byte region will be sufficiently low in memory to avoid any address complica tions Lines 200 and 210 obtain the address of the string constant s DCB and adjust it to Volume IV i a positive value as required Line 220 obtains the actual address of the string constant as stored in memory the low and high order address bytes are pre served so that they may be transferred to the integer array of data passed to the SVC Too bad BASIC has no WPEEK function Line 250 clears the video screen and dis plays 23 lines of data so that we know exactly whatis on the screen Thisis done here for illustration purposes only Lines 300 370 form the loop to issue the VDCTL SVC 24 times each time a single screen line will be transferred Line 310 initializes the SV
159. key Incidentally don t be surprised at the unusual characters which may appear on screen as you code akey which are quite normal for the coding system If you were changing an existing file of coded keys and found you wanted to simply eliminate a key and leave it uncoded you can do so by entering F1 Q at the define key prompt A search is instituted by BK SE SP and the search string followed by EN SE search The command BK C this that EN where C change and everywhere changes this to that at every occur rence after the cursor global search and replace as in key which changes two consecutive spaces to one wherever found oneach pass If there is nothing instead of that in the command second and third slashes together then this gets wiped out i e Changed to nothing as in keys 2 and amp F1 T puts the cursor at the beginning of the file asin keys 1 and 2 as searches and search replace occur after the cursor Applications for the User A 49 Applications for the User Volume IV i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i Characters such as the asterisks in keys 1 P and not covered by any specific command simply print on screen as if entered from the keyboard over printing anything in their path What the keys do The key 1 chain changes headings generated by the DOS CAT com
160. ld get a 5 speed increase I m not sure it would be a good idea It is important to note that the times for standard Model 4 and 4P 108 0_s and 124 6_s are exactly within 0 5_s the times predicted by theory 107 6_s with no wait state and 124 1_s with one wait state 4 055 MHz If you make your Z80 run at 6 144_MHz and no wait state you should find 71 0_s If we follow the reference book and use the new duration of each instruction we find that Rubin s test with DI O_ws 80T or 40T should give 56 7_s or 58 7_s With 1_ws 80T or 40T we should find 68 0_s or 70 5_s Who can tell me why my stop watch gives 68 3_s 71 1_s 71 2_s 74 0_s respec tively I can accept a 5 difference between theoretical and measured times 1_ws 71 2 68 0 or 74 0 70 5 but who can explain the 20 difference with 0 wait state Everybody should be able to reproduce these values For comparison purpose please note that these values are obtained with Michel s patches installed No FIXBANK nor HIBANK nor FIXALL SETX CMD is used not SET180 CMD Rubin s test is run interrupts disabled Any other configuration settings may be used Your numbers may differ slightly from mine but the ratios should be the same Now let s be serious The patches as pro vided give a 46 increase in speed compared to a zero wait state Model 4 or a 68 increase compared to an older 1 wait state Model 4 These are real num
161. le It is very important to be able to relate exactly what you typed and what the response was even if it takes many sheets of paper to write down the information Reports such as I followed the directions serve no purpose whatsoever such areport only points out that reporter is really not inter ested in what he or she is doing Many times it is important to submit a detailed written report with a disk or disks containing files which can allow the complete re creation of the problem In fact submitting an example of the problem on disk actually saves you the time to print out a letter you can just submit the letter on disk AS A PLAIN TEXT file If my readers think this is an isolated incident you are mistaken Day in and day out MISOSYS receives reports such as the above I sometimes wonder how well an automobile would be serviced ifit was taken in to the repair shop with the complaint my car won t work Ques tion What s wrong with it Answer it won t work But I doubt that such a dialogue happens Perhaps the repair shop may get a confusing report such as my car is making a funny noise Question what kind of noise Answer it sounds like someone wheezing Well that is actually useful information Maybe I m all wet in this regard but I think a little caring would help I m not asking everyone to become computer lit erate What I m asking is that folks take some
162. ler HartFORTH pos 6 w 21 071 00s 5 M 20 071 Output to DISK produces a file suitable for MRAS EDAS and is automatically segmented into manageable file sizes Product Prices HartFORTH is a full FORTH that conforms to the 79 STANDARD The Model I III version is an indirect threaded version the DOS 6 version is a direct threaded implemen If you are looking for a full C compiler look no further If you are looking for a well stocked UNIX System V standard library look no further MC reviewed in the January 1987 Product Price S amp H tation providing greater execution speed of 10 40 issue of 80 MICROCOMPUTING is a complete C compiler DSMBLR 24 95 2 depending on the details of the actual program The kernal which adheres to the standards established by Kernighan EDAS 44 95 4 contains some additional useful words and utilities which and Ritchie The library of functions is extensive and EnhComp 59 95 4 turn HartFORTH into a full fledged development system System V compatible The compiler generates Z80 relo HartFORTH 49 95 3 catable macro assembler code M80 or our MRAS The MC 79 95 5 HartFORTH is designed to run under an operating system libraries are files of relocatable object modules MC is a full MRAS 59 95 4 which is totally transparent to the programmer or user The featured compiler for the discriminating programmer RATFOR 59 95 5 virtual Memory that it accesses for storage
163. mand eliminating disk data and leaving only the disk name highlighted on both sides by asterisks It does this by overprinting text and spaces with asterisks at the beginning of the line skipping over the disk name with the eight right arrows adding more asterisks blanking out the rest of the line with F1 L line delete and adding EN to replace the one lost by line deletion to prevent lines running together _ Key 1 searches for RIVE We want to search for DRIVE to locate the heading created by DOS CAT but ALLWRITE only searches after the cursor and as there is one case of DRIVE at the very begin ning of the file it wouldn t be found as the cursor would be on the D However RIVE is after the cursor so we can search for it which puts the cursor on the R and then backspace with the left arrow in key 1 to get back to the D There 1s no danger of RIVE being found as part of a cataloged file name as a space and a colon are included in the search string The operation of key 1 and its chained keys and will become clearer if you simply cali for CAT of a disk from DOS and observe the first screen line Originally I planned to make the key 1 chain self repeating by having the last key call key 1 making the opera tion entirely automatic however self repeating keys in ALLWRITE are al lowed a finite number of repetitions and a
164. may consider implementing such a driver However if I were you I would not make a decision based on the specula tion that we would at some time in the future have a CP M driver available I am enclosing an excerpt from THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY issue 3 4 where pricing was noted Assuming the shipping weight is 20 pounds that would equate to approximately 90 100 at air parcel post rates I have not decided yet how we will be shipping foreign orders perhaps Postal Union mailing is not the way to go As an alternative you may wish to pur chase less than a complete system The drive is heavy 5 pounds and various ST506 type drives should be available locally to you That would cut down on the weight the shipping charges and of course the VAT Pricing for individual components will be announced soon We accept both VISA and Mastercard One program copy Multiple machines Fm Lenox C Smith Dear sir Please refer to invoice 89 11147 Thank you for your prompt service in sending the prod ucts to me However I feel that I must return all the products for a refund be cause of the following reasons When I wrote you requesting informa tion I explained my system consisted of more than one model iv No mention was made that your software would run on only one machine nor was this indicated in any of the descriptions A prime direc tive when using computer software is make backups The same applies to com
165. me IV 1 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i unit and oh yes the muffen fan that I discovered that I needed for reliable op eration at 5 1MHZ due to the heat I didn t mind that I had spent over 3000 total for all this stuff After all 1t was sure cheaper than a new car or a Sailboat It seemed that I was spending money faster than the National Debt but after all it costs something to be on the CUTTING EDGE right It didn t bother me that everyone thought that I was a little weird after all what do these peopleknow Most of them have MS DOS systems now I was in my own little world I could live with a 64 by 16 screen display Did I mention that I had replaced my CRT with aLANGLEY SINCLAIR amber screen So what that it took the better part of 4 hours to move the system from one room to another and set it up to run again you don t move it that often and it is MY COMPUTER MY BABY WATCH YOUR MOUTH It s alright every thing is just FINE Then one night Jenny my wife calls from the living room HONEY THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH CHAN NEL 4 I ll be right there Sure enough little bitty squares in the picture Still easily viewable but kinda looked like a digital picture Must be having trouble at the station I hope Back to the computer for more work Time Passes and I finish and SHUT HER DOWN for the night Catch a little TV before shut eye and I see that CHANNEL 4 is OK now I w
166. member to enter commands in UPPER CASE ONLY and enclose parameters in braces I imagine it will also take some getting used to hav ing to use the shift key to enter colons in BASIC programs But then I suppose that as Confucius is alleged to have said A man can get used to anything if he puts up with it long enough Browsing through Volume IIl ii of TMQ I note the item Fix for Allwrite and PRO WAM I was very interested to read of Brad Stiles experience with the corrup tion of the DCBs by unnecessary use of the system stack I have once or twice experienced this on seemingly random occasions while using ALLWRITE but had not realized that ALLWRITE was the culprit My version is 1 12 and the ad dresses concerned are different but I in tend to patch it to conform to your sugges tion I have one small query brought about by my limited experience with real life assembly language programs I can fol low the reasoning behind loading the stack pointer with 26BBH so that ALLWRITE will use the memory below that address for its stack However I cannot grasp the intention behind the original instruction to save the contents of SP when entering the application program unless it was to ensure that if for any reason the stack became unbalanced if that is an appro priate term before control was passed back to the DOS then the saved value could be loaded back into the SP prior to returning Then things could carry
167. mming rules F2 gets me a table of characters 0 255 with conversion to hex or decimal values Shift Fl gives me a programming calculator Shift F2 a RPN calculator F3 gets me any other applica tion I need Shift F3 gives DOS lib func tions My my You couldn t use any of that And that s only a glimpse Gotta tell you trying to disassemble and analyze a program w o WAM on line is like going on safari without an elephant gun and machete PRO WAM WHAMMY Fm Gary Phillips 72425 354 Roy re ceived PRO WAM yesterday Thank you for your usual efficient service I can see that I was remiss in taking so long before picking this one up You really outdid yourself and S K K that other product when you put this one together If Pd had this sooner I might not have 63 broken down and spent a couple of grand for genuine multitasking Not to fear I will still be using the 4P s as I love the beasts too much to retire em till they die of old age I notice that the documentation mentions a programmer s toolbox for writing PRO WAM applications though I don t recall ever seeing you advertise anything but PRO WAM and Mr ED At a guess I d say that any program that can use an svc interface can invoke PRO WAM window management by calling svc 124 right But true PRO WAM APP s must be in a special format and have to load in the 2400 3000H region of memory no Not that I can think of any APP I need
168. mpting to install Memdisk as single density and 2 have never tried the spooler utility Finally many thanks for your effort and renew my TMQ TM subscription And oh yes My rebuttal to Jane Layman is withdrawn Help for Tandy 2000 Users Reprinted from PC Computing April 1989 Fm David R Westport Connecticut Your December message of hope to or phaned computers Gone But Not For gotten threw the magnificent mongrel Tandy 2000 into the category gone and forgotten But the biggest user group for any one computer the Tandy 2000 Orphans is handling the questions and problems of almost 1 000 members providing out of print documents and disks and publish ing its magazine The Wimper Our members have leamed to boost memory to a megabyte and hard drives to 142MB We ve adapted 3 5 inch drives and 20MB snap in hard drives that cost 60 And we maintain a list of more than 500 commer cial programs that run on our snobbish machine The Tandy 2000 Orphans can be reached by mail at 387 Main St Westport CT 06880 Help Needed Fm Frank Gottschalk Gentlemen I recently bought an old Model III Mother board as a backup and or parts It had another board piggybacked on it that I need information for It is numbered SP1 3 Rev A and was made by Process Control Technology in Stockton CA in 1981 1983 Ihave been unable to make contact with them Old ads in 80 Micro indicate it might be a versatile d
169. n t have a lot of papers on my desk any more Card app do this better but I can t use card0 dat in my program bas 29100 Sample one 50 55 29400 Batch two 150 10 29500 Car 250 2 29550 Item 25 15000 5 last line of DATA1 TAB push BREAK to end 55801 Sample of DATA2 tab 55901 could contain anything 55902 even Help line for progr 16029 this one is use to 16030 introduce an explaination 26319 of the number in front 26318 85601 Code for paiements 85701 Code for S amp H 46023 46024 46027 and many more 46030 Water 61110 Power 61111 Cloths 61112 Bank account 61113 Loan or could be translation MERCI thank for help HOUSE maison 61200 End of DATA2 TAB Hit BREAK to end Using Profile 3 Plus under LDOS by Joseph Kyle DiPietropaolo reprinted from LSI Journal April 1984 Profile 3 Plus and LDOS are a very pow erful combination There are however several things that can cause trouble if you are not careful Let s take them one at a time Applications for the User Volume IV i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 First what version should you have Well the only version that willrun under LDOS is the Hard Disk version Don t let that phrase scare you as it works quite well on floppy disk also At least two drives are required and if you are going to do any fancy sorting three would be better Double sided and or eighty cylinder drives can be used
170. n C Getting into computer math part I TMQ Volume I index Hii Getting into computer math Part2 Writing interactive RATFOR FORTRAN programs PRO EnhComp a review Desktop pub lishing and the Model 4 A better TERM APP adding floppy drives and a new XLR8er interface HLii The CRC program PG a page display program Locating high memory routines 3 Jumbo tape backup for PC clones New style for TMQ using Pagemaker and an Index to Volume II Livy Checking for a file from Model 4 BASIC Surviving the Hard Disk crash An interview with Niklaus Wirth Keep your printer clean and oiled On line HELP with PRO WAM MISOSYS announces availa bility of Hard Drives Logic in the C language New Product News AB 25 and AB 36 Switchboxes I have a small handful of the DB25 type switch boxes in stock these can be used to switch your serial port between two de vices The box terminates in female DB 25 connectors I also have AB36 boxes to switch two Centronics parallel printers 25 4 50 S amp H gets you either one XLR8er Update Don t forget the new lower price of the XLR8er boards Pricing of the XLR8er board is as follows XLR8er with OK RAM is 150 S amp H XLR8er with 256K RAM is 200 S amp H DED 86 Update For you MS DOS users make note of the new lower price for DED 86 See our ad in this issue The Blurb ae e The Blurb Volume IV i MISOSYS Hard Drive MISOSYS is no
171. n operation might stop in the middle of a cycle when the repetitions are exhausted creating some confusion So I chose a non repetitive cycle which however can do its job by being forced to restart by holding down CLEAR and 1 through out the procedure without any endless loop in the key itself ys Applications for the User 50 Applications for the User mmn RE A IIM Volume IV i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Key 2 and its chain will stop after each change and prompt for EN you may if you wish hold down EN during the whole procedure These keys delete the mod flags and a number of attribute abbreviations that the CAT command generates namely IP key 2 SIP key P key P key and S key amp Except for 1 and P these might be found in a file or disk name which would be mutilated to prevent this the search string includes SP on each side which must not be omitted I have assumed no one will use filenames like IP SIP P etc without slash or extension If they did my arrangement may require changes and the filenames could become confused with file attributes The deletions performed by keys 2 through amp are the ones I found neces sary if you need any other deletions you can change the chain at the end of key amp to call one or more unused key s instead of including it them in the chain and ending with a call to
172. n reaching a dedi cated TRS 80 audience consider THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY If you have a TRS 80 Model III or 4 related product to sell you can reach these buyers by plac ing your advertisement in our publica tion TMQ is read world wide Our sub scribers are predominantly in the United States however we do have a significant number in Canada Europe and Austra lia Current space rates are as follows Full page 125 Half page 75 Quarter page 50 Ninth page 20 Note the ninth page ad layout designated The Marketplace which is the last page of this issue I compose this so you have no artwork charge Just submit your text We accept only black amp white ads how ever 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 MI SOSYS QUARTERLY give me a call Subscribers please mention TMQ when you Call or write to these advertisers they deserve your support PD Software Librarian Vic McClung has volunteered to be the librarian for the collection of TRS 80 public domain diskettes Henceforth all requests and contributions be directed directly to him at Note that if you upload a public domain file to our Compuserve forum PCS 49 and want it to receive general distribu tion please also mail a copy on disk to Vic There is no legal provision
173. nal call to OPEN in case the file is already in existence The OPEN function checks for the availabil ity of the disk first by calling CKDRV If CKDRV succeeds OPEN looks for the file on that disk drive so checked It then reports success or failure back to INIT If OPEN can open the file then the INIT request is satisfied If OPEN fails to open the file INIT then at tempts to create a new file To do that it has to find an available diskette which may in fact be a single drive if the file specification included a drive spec If CKDRV succeeds then INIT creates the file Assume for amoment what would happen if the first CKDRV called from OPEN fails to detect that a specific drive tar _geted by the drive spec did not contain a diskette even though a diskette was loaded CKDRYV reports the failure back to OPEN which reports the failure back to INIT INIT then proceeds to create a new file Further suppose that the second call to CKDRV by INIT succeeds in detect ing the loaded diskette INIT creates a second instance of the file specification in the directory a multiple file is created The above scenario is not fiction it is exactly what is happening in these cases of multiple files Okay in order to confirm that operation I ran the following BASIC program With the TESTFILE DAT previously created all the program does is attempt to open the file close it then wait for about six secon
174. ng to distribute them to anyone who wou send me a SASE if you would want that done I would rather help a Letters to the Editor 8 Letters to the Editor Volume IV i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i find a good home for them Fm MISOSYS Inc If you want to pay for the shipping I can send you all you want I tried to give them away and got few takers Anybody wantan LDOS 5 1 4 quick reference card Yours for a SASE a 10 envelope with postage for two ounces 0 45 currently in US Want a hundred lH box them up and send them Want a thousand You got it ANITEK PC Set Problem Fm Mark Mueller Just a warning I ordered PC Set from Anitek and in stalled it on my non gate array 4P ac cording to the directions It didn t work according to their test program Upon investigation I found that they had me tie the TRS 80 IBM character switching to port EC bit 6 which is the FAST SLOW switch In order to get TRS80 charac ters the machine has to be in 2 MHz mode It wouldn t even work with the LeScript 2 0 demo I got at the same time After a few hours of head scratching I decided they wanted to be on the unused bit 5 so I moved the chip select wire to that pin and guess what It works fine Lescript works but the test program out puts the wrong values to port EC I haven t had time to call them about it yet but I will before the week is out Just thought
175. nner There is nothing wrong with your disk it is a perfect replica of the master The 6 3 disk formats without problem on my machines There was achange in the formatter effec tive with the release of 6 2 1 however you said that 6 2 1 works for you Thus I fail to understand the cause of your prob lem unless you were really reverting to 6 2 0 release The formatted disk which you sent me does indeed have errors It appears that at least one sector on each track is in error I suspect that either the drive is rotating much too slow or thereisa problem in the floppy disk controller What I have done is to diskcopy using your copy your master to the extra disk you supplied I then have patched the FORMAT command to use the old format pattern which was in effect with TRSDOS 6 2 0 See if this patched version works If it does then it confirms a problem with your controller Perhaps you reverted to your old 6 2 0 and not 6 21 as you stated In case others have this problem the patches to FORMAT and DISKCOPY of LS DOS 6 3 to revert to the old format pattern are as follows I aaaeaaaaeaeaeaeaeaeaeaealaatltlila DOS Subjects 38 DOS Subjects Volume IV i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV 1 MSDOS and Environment space Fm Jim Beard 71675 566 I know that this question has been treated before so a pointer to a DL file or whatever would suffice if you know of one My problem
176. ode X 1F directly into a TYPEIN keystroke file This character is needed to terminate extended mode functions If you must use BUILD and you need to get a lt shift gt lt clear gt keystroke into the TYPEIN file do the following Make sure that KI DVR is installed when doing the BUILD When you get to the point at which you need to insert the lt shift gt lt clear gt keystroke actually put a lt clear gt lt shift gt lt enter gt character there That character is produced by pressing the lt clear gt key and while still holding is down press the lt shift gt key and while still holding both of them press the lt enter gt key and then release them all A Plus Minus symbol will appear on the screen Now continue with the remainder of the key data When ever you need to execute this kind of a TYPEIN procedure use the format TYPEIN SELECT KYS X1 X 7F1F Each lt clear gt lt shift gt lt enter gt will now be translated to the required lt shift gt lt clear gt when executing This TYPEIN command can of course be placed in a user menu Applications for the User SCREEN IT with DEMO Screen it puts you in the director s seat You create impressive screen designs on your model 3 or 4 for use in your custom software or just for fun using Demo for automated displays With Screen it There is no need for a graphics board Use Screen it on any model 3 or 4 Create outstand
177. of his crib yet He ll be getting his 15 month checkup next month My the time does fly He s very interac tive Stefanie starts kindergarten next week and is going to a brand new school which was just completed in our subdivision She and Benjamin getalong great they re always playing together When they get older I m sure that the two of them will be good pals Stacey starts first grade next week at the same school as Stefanie She s already reached 50 pounds and is almost four feet high Over the summer she has certainly become a reader Stacey has always had a large speaking vocabulary but I am sur prised at how many words she is able to recognize now while reading The Blurb 6 The Blurb Volume IV i A reader s goodbye Fm Bill Gee Dear Roy I recently re ceived the latest issue of The MISOSYS Quarterly and noticed that my subscrip tion expires with this issue I thought long and hard about getting a renewal and have finally decided not to The main reason for this is that I no longer use my old Model 4 It has lived a long and productive life and is now relegated to a retirement on the shelf of my garage The course of my career as a System Engineer with Radio Shack required that I keep up to date knowledge concerning the Model 4 and its software Now that I have transferred to the GRiD side of Tandy I find that I will probably never again have to tell someone why they cann
178. of the disc Here again I think you said to reverse the connection between the FDC and the drive Thanks again for your help and your patience I appreciate having someone I can call on for help Fm MISOSYS Inc Dear Ron The Tandy cable which you have that has five con nectors on it is a standard Model I floppy cable It doesn t support four external drives on the Model III or 4 the hardware only supports a maximum of two external drives But you can still use that cable As I previously noted to use that cable with 2 sided drives you have to invert the cable from its normal installation proce dure If you look int to center part of any one of the edge card connectors you will see a thin plastic tab located between pin pairs 3 4 and 516 This orientation tab restricts the connector so that it can be The Hardware Corner Volume IV 1 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i plugged in to a card edge in only one position as the tab correlates to a slot cut into the card edge This tab is removable just pull it out with a pair of needle nose pliers If you so desire re insert the tab between pin pairs 29130 and 3 1132 If you look closely at the connector you will see that th tab slides snugly into very thin slots on either side of the connector Do this for all connectors on the cable Then use the cable it will function properly But remember that each drive you plug the cable into must have on
179. oint that usually V mn HARDWARE TO ENHANCE THE OPERATION OF YOUR MODEL 4 Hard Drive components helps Another tact is to stick a few pieces of electrical tape over the contact and the surrounding PC board to dampen the vibrations A few folks recommend a dab of GE RTY silicone compound again on the outside to dampen vibrations not on the contact area but you ve got to get the right kind Many silicone compounds emit acetic acid when curing you don t want that kind Fm David Mandeville Joe Thanks for the hints Since I found out what the noise is it doesn t seem to do it as much Either I did something to while I was poking around in there or it just doesn t worry me any more XLR8er Memory expansion amp Speedup Tum your Model 4 4D 4P into a speed demon By plugging in our XLR8er card with its Hitachi64180 processor and 256K of expanded memory you get a much faster Model 4 with 8 more banks of memory Get a 320K RAM disk Or in stall PRO WAM install a big RAM disk and still have memory banks available for editing buffers The XLR8er extends the life of your computer and speeds your throughput Improved speed up to 8 MHz Z80 equivalent Expanded RAM 256KB memory optional Expanded I O Ciarcia bus optional Software utilities LS DOS 6 x LDOS 5 x or CP M one provided each additional 10 Simple plug in installation One year warranty New low price XLR8er OK Ram R MB
180. omputers on your TRS 80 I III 4 4Por Max 80 You can FORMAT alien disks read their directories copy files to and from them copy directly from one alien disk to another Converts tokenized TRS80 BASIC to MSDOS or CP M as it copies 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 including all popular TRS80 CP M formats such as Holmes Montezuma and Omikron Also supports CoCo format Tried and Tested in 1000s of installations world wide by Industry Universities Government Institutions Includes 40 page manual HyperCross 3 0 PC reads writes MSDOS 1 1 3 x formats only Order SX3PCM1 SX3PCM3 or SX3PCM4 HyperCross XT 3 0 reads 90 different CP M and PC formats Order SX3XTM1 SX3XTM3 or SX3XTM4 HyperCross XT 3 0 Plus Reads over 220 formats inc CoCo Order SX3XTM1 SX3XTM3 or SX3XTM4 Specify FRS 80 Model I needs doubler III 4 4P or MAX 80 Dual model versions e g Mod 3 4 on one disk add 10 extra HYPERSOFT PO Box 51155 Raleigh NC 27609 Orders Only 919 847 4779 8am 6pm Orders Tech Support 919 846 1637 6 11pm EST We Accept MasterCard Visa COD cash add 2 20 Checks POs Shipping 3 5 2nd day Many of the product names mentioned above are Registered or Copyrighted by Alcor IBM Misosys Pro soft Tandy and others too numerous to mention T nm a a ute eel Volume IV i The Model I Corner Dear Roy Sin
181. on der what it was Couldn t be my com puter I mean let s see 5 MHZ I know that Ican get the audio for CHANNEL 6 around 88 MHZ on my FM receiver and since CHANNEL 7 doesn t appear before I get to 108 MHZ maybe Oh well a little interference I can live with that Don t watch Channel 4 while I m on the com puter HA HA HA THAT S A JOKE DEAR Well you can t expect the best any EMI RFI shielding ona MODEL I Remember when the car radios used to buzz THEN ONE DARK AND STORMY NIGHT the neighbor my father calls and asks if I see anything weird on channel 4 NOT ME but let me check Not only do I have interference but whoops it is leaving the house That is real bad news DOS Subjects My world is crumbling RFI from my computer New programs requiring 80 x 24 display screens Old programs becom ing VAPOR WARE before my eyes AND NOW SPORADIC RE BOOTS ICAN T TAKE IT ANY MORE It is after all a piece of history One was given to the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D C Maybe that should bea clue Now I can buy a used Model 4 for 400 or LESS DON T HIGH PRES SURE ME I wouldn t just turn it down without inves tigating it so let s see So the hardware is a little better what software uses the extra memory for any thing besidesa SPOOLER or RAMDISK what s the benefit of a Model 4 ENHANCED VISICALC SPREAD SHEET 128K gives approx 90K work
182. one who can help me with a hardware upgrade to my TRS 80 Model 4 I have the older non gate array model I am attempting to install double sided disk drives in it The drive I am using is a Chinon It is from an IBM XT clone I understand that it is necessary to replace the connector on the ribbon cable so that all of the drive select lines and the head select line pin 32 is made available to thedrive Noproblem all wentwell there But when I try to use TRSDOS 6 2 1 to access the drive it comes back with No Disk asif there isn ta floppy in the drive Is there some type of patch or command used to tell TRSDOS 6 that it is a double sided drive I also use Montezuma Micro CP M I booted CP M went into CON FIG told CP M it was a double sided drive andall worked well I could format read amp write double sided diskettes But notin TRSDOS Can anyone help please Fm Jim Beard 71675 566 Robin TRSDOS 6 and LS DOS will recognize double sided disks and drives You use FORMAT SIDES 2 to format in a double sided drive If you are getting no disk try formatting a disk in the drive and see what happens If FORMAT doesn t rec The Hardware Corner 12 The Hardware Corner Volume IV i ognize that you have a working drive with the door closed etc then there is another problem CP M may notcheck the drive doorswitch or other signals It is sometimes possible to check a drive by simply setting mot
183. only six were dimensioned The GOSUB 10030 in line 11040 was the first encounter of string substitution where the string storage area needed to be moved EnhComp has a routine to adjust the pointers of all strings below the move point When it started to check the seventh nonexistent string array it was examining garbage That s because the compiler counter seven string vari ables but only six were DIM d That s really a bug in the compiler which should have trapped your multiple DIM state ments as being an error in the current implementation So keep from branching out of FOR NEXT loops and use only one DIM state ment for the time being The revised program was placed back on your disk under the name TEMP1 BAS 10 CLEAR 1000 30 ALLOCATE 1 31 AS GETARGS 40 PRINT PROGRAM BODY 50 CLEAR 2000 ALLOCATE 1 90 FOR X 1 TO 1000 Z80 MODE LD amp X HL HIGH MODE ys 0 X REPEAT REPEAT INC Y IF YS wu oN REPEAT _ UNTIL YS lt gt ENDIF IF Y lt gt CHR 13 REPEAT X X YS ENDIF UNTIL Y CHRS 13 59 PRINT PROGRAM START PRINT AS DIM AS 100 80 PRINT ARRAY SPACE ALLOCATED NEXT FUNCTION GETARGS X Y X YS END LD HL BCSV Get BC gt beginning of COM line Load w start of COM line Y CHRS PEEK X Y UNTIL Y OR YS CHR 13 YS CHR PEEK
184. onnecting cable between the Model 4P bus and the hard drive casing I believe I Letters to the Editor 9 Letters to the Editor Volume IV i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV 1 have a late version of the model 4P it has a clustered arrow set I am interested in the 20 megabyte drive with LDOS 5 3 Montezuma 2 2 CP M and LS DOS 6 3 drivers that you are developing Please let me know the price shipping charges and if you accept MasterCard Fm MISOSYS Inc Dear M E Thisisin response to your letter of July 3rd con cerning the MISOSYS hard drive soon to be available The power supply in our external hard drive case does have a jumper plug to Switch to 230V thus you will need no converter to deal with it On the other hand the only power cable we will pro vide terminates in a standard American 3 prong plug The case has a standard NEMA socket for the AC power cord I would suspect plug adaptors are available lo Cally moreso than in the States The host interface cable we are providing will be four feet long This connects from the rear of the drive case to the rear of your 4P It has a 50 pin edgecard connec tor on one end of the ribbon cable and a 50 pin SCSI connector on the other a SCSI connector looks like what you know as a Centrincs parallel printer con nector but the SCSI is 50 pins At this time we are not planning on CP M drivers If we receive sufficient requests then we
185. ontrol The board includes a four position DIP switch of which one position is used to differentiate between the two types of controllers being provided One position of the switch is read by the software to automatically adapt to either controller Remaining positions as well as a spare one position jumper plug are currently reserved for future use Software pro vided with the host adaptor supporting the 1420 and 4000A controllers includes 1 A low level formatter which formats the drive s based on the drive s charac teristics input by the user All complete THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 drive packages provided by MISOSYS will be low level formatted This process writes the drive s characteristics to the drive so that the installation program can read the parameters from the drive thereby eliminating the need to re enter that data during installation time 2 An installation utility a and driver used to connect the drive to the operating sys tem and partition it into segments 3 A high level formatter used to add operating system directory information after first verifying the high level reada bility of each data sector 4 A sub disk partitioning utility used to create floppy sized storage areas on the drive partitions which are used to emulate additional drives and expand the number of files which may be stored 5 A utility to archive the hard disk files onto floppy diskettes 6 Autility
186. or on and looking at the read head Fm Robin Repas Jim Thanks for the reply I discovered what the problem was last night As you probably realize when the Model 4 pulls the motor activate line low all of the drive motors turn on simul taneously TRSDOS pauses fora duration when it first accesses any drive This gives the drive time to come up to speed before TRSDOS attempts a read or write The drive that I installed was not set up to activate its motor via the motor activate line Instead it used the drive select line to trigger the motor So when I typed DIR 1 TRSDOS first went to the system on drive zero and then to drive one to read the directory TRSDOS paused to allow drive zero to come up to speed but since drive one doesn t turn on until it is selected for aread or write it drive one was not up to speed by the time TRSDOS attempted the directory read TRSDOS probably checks the index hole sensor to see if it is pulsing meaning there is a disk rotating in the drive Since the drive was not yet spin ning the index sensor was not pulsing and TRSDOS thought that there wasn ta disk in the drive Hence the No Disk error To make a long story short whew I changed a jumper on the drive so that the motor now activates on the motor activate signal and not on the drive select signal All works great now Thanks again for the help though I don t call Compuserve all that much but if I can ever be of any h
187. ot enter a date after 1987 Rather I have to tell them why their favorite pro gram will not run in the Compatibility Box better known as the Com patibility Coffin I have always enjoyed the format of TMQ The family updates lend a just folks atmosphere to a publication that can too easily become bound up in flights of technical fancy The reprint ing of your correspondence helps to share the knowledge and experience of many and varied users to all your read ers I particularly enjoyed the volumes written about hard drives in this issue The technical discussions are as clear and understandable as is possible in so complicated a field In the past few issues I have noticed what looks to me to be some notes of frustration in your Blurbs Much of this seems to stem from the lack ofa 30 hour day More appears to be caused by frustration over having to do Radio Shack s job for them and for free yet and uncertainty about Letters to the ditor THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 what the future holds for you and your company Please allow me the luxury of suggesting cadence to one who employs his own drummer The days of the Models 3 and 4 are num bered and with low numbers at that The remaining users will fall into two catego ries A Those who have memorized the keystrokes necessary to produce a result without really knowing why it works and B Those who know the machine and software int
188. oy I use mail merge in Superscripsit regularly It doesn t care what the LRL is usually I use LRL 256 because the merge docu ment is created with SAID in my case and the bracketing characters surround ing each variable can be anything that does not occur in the text Note however that you must use the same bracketing character both at the beginning and the end Thus is OK or used both before and after but not before and after Why not just let the user select a bracketing character as an option If that isn t feasible I d suggest either or as brackets unlikely to appear in the actual text Fm MISOSYS Inc I have no problem with the user setting the bracketing char acter Since I don t use SS and have not seen the manual the only documentation I have on the mail merge capability was a Model II SCRIPSIT manual and the PROFILE manual Thanks for the input Fm Jim Beard Roy The merge file can be either ASCII or written in the word processor format either Super Scripsit or Scripsit Pro You select a character and use it as the marker in both the main text and the merge text Here is a simple example FORM LETTER Dear NAME You PRODUCTY has arrived Come and get it before we ACTION Signed US MISOSYS Products Tidbits 61 MISOSYS Products Tidbits Volume V i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume V i MERGE FILE NA
189. ped Works on floppies or hard disk under all popular TRS 80 operating systems Allows importing of data from several other once popular mailing systems to avoid re typing Written in machine language by the author of Super Utility this program is FAST and sorts up to 10 levels very quickly If you keep track of names and addresses along with associated data for any situation this is the one to use Many churches organizations and businesses use PowerMail for all the different kinds of lists they need to pull from Each record has 24 user defineable flags to allow total customization for your exact needs Text Merge Form Letter Module Create customized form letters and labels with PowerMAIL 15 00 This optional module for PowerMail allows you to create customized form letters or custom labels lists etc with PowerMail Plus and any word processor that saves text in ASCII format Very easy to use and really gets the effect you want Allows completely defineable report generating from your PowerMail data PowerSCRIPT A Major Enhancement for SCRIPSIT 4 III and I not SuperScripsit 24 95 gt Original 1986 price 39 95 One of our very best sellers this modification for Radio Shack s SCRIPSIT program turns it into a POWERHOUSE Our program merges with your copy of SCRIPSIT to create a new program that outperforms most other TRS 80 word processors without relearning a new program PowerScript adds new features in two important are
190. puters Don t try to do any serious work without a second or third computer as a backup Of the three I have one is work ing the other two are in the repair shop One has a blown memory chip The other has a broken drive The turn around time is about two weeks The software you sent looks like it would be very useful How ever I am afraid to use it From the docurnentation it is indicated that the software will run on only one computer Italso indicates the data gener ated will not be portable either It s a pain in the neck keeping track of what is on which disk Keeping track of which disk runs on which computer is more than I am willing toendure cannot justify the time it would take to learn test and implement your software if the data and programs generated will run on only one computer The extra 60 for the site user license package for LS DOS 6 3 is reasonable however the documentation does not say how much the cost will be for the other software on the invoice to be able to run on more than one computer The docu mentation which came with LDOS 5 3 doesn t say that it will run on only one computer but it will not run on more than one computer The same with the rest of the software listed on the invoice The one software package I was most interested in was quizmaster It works on only one computer also I can t justify the many hours it will take to write multiple choice questions and have them run on
191. r and or schematics for the floppy drives I have looked at com puter shows but have never seen anything to do with Hard disks or double density controllers for the model I The Hardware Corner 74 The Hardware Corner Volume IV i Fm MISOSYS Inc 70140 310 Chuck Aerocomp has about the only double density controller around for the Model I E I Try them at 800 527 0347 Their ad AD P1 in CN80 shows the controller at 99 4 S amp H On the other hand before I would spend 99 for a DDEN controller for a Model I I would look around for a used model HI or 4 You could probably find a working model IH for just a little more than the 100 In the case of the hard drive I ll be shipping drive packages for the Model IH and 4 But since the Model I uses a different bus interface I m not supporting that If you can get ahold of Tandy s Model I HD interface cable that would probably do the trick But again youare having to spend more just to get to some point If you can find a used dden controller then that may be cost justified Our hd host adaptor supports the Adaptec 4000 and 4000A controllers as well as Xebec 1420 or 1410A and equivalent such as the Konan DJ10 Graphics tablet Fm Kent Fasick 73137 3251 I need in formation on the GT 2000 Tandy graph ics tablet Specifically is it compatible with any of the graphics tablets currently on the market Now that I ve bought one I need to find a dr
192. r of index hole checks in the same time period are performed by Model II CKDRV over Model 4 CKDRV The CKDRV code was changed by LSI start ing in the 6 2 release from an interrupt driven timer loop to a countdown timer loop I also tried 6 0 and 6 1 both of which also failed but not necessarily as severely as 6 2 and 6 3 releases Never theless the code showing up in 6 2 and 6 3 should work something was going wrong I attempted to dig deeper into the prob lem The only resources currently at my disposal are observations of the result of variations in the software I tried keeping interrupts off while CKDRV was check ing the index pulse I still got failures I upped the timer values and still got fail ures I trapped the failure event and con firmed that each time a failure occurred it was caused by a failure of the index pulse I could not determine why Under 6 3 CKDRYV has to detect the three state se quence of no index followed by index DOS Subjects THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 followed by no index in order to confirm that the drive under test has a diskette in with the door closed and that the disk is rotating Each state has a specific maxi mum time period for the test In order to expand my testing I moved the test program over to another machine this time a non gate array 26 1069 Quite oddly I experienced no failure I ran the test program twice with the loop counter set to 3000 running it
193. rd the results to me so as to produce additional empirical data All that is needed is to run the test BASIC program pro posed after first creating a file of the name provided Responsesshould include model number and serial number Fm Charles A Ainsworth Woodbr ee pt RY A DOS Subjects 26 DOS Subjects feds Pree fore pane Baie te easy Gu cee ease Gee See iy eee Sa Volume IV i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i idge VA Dear Roy During last year we had a rather abundant correspondence on the troubles I was having with the XLR8er board In summary out of three 4D s of 1987 1988 vintage one didn t work cor rectly and two did Subsequently another went on the blink leaving only one with the XLR8er I continued working that one One of the problems I had last year was doubling up of the same file on the same disk with the same name and this was covered in TMQ IILi page 67 The patches you provided for SYS2 SYS12 and BACKUP were duly applied by me and included in Michel Houde s patches together with a system configuration that includes DELAY I am attaching several printouts A direc tory of a disk with a repeated file a printout from DEVICE B showing de lay turned on and three printouts from FED2 showing your patches applied I am forced to put this computer with XLR8er on ice pending any possible solu tion to file doubling up Fm Charles A Ainsworth A
194. re the items written up on Page 42 of Volume II ivofthe MISOSYS Quarterly You will note that I am now reading your publication as I promised in my previous correspondence Fm MISOSYS Inc Perhaps it s time to reprint those TRSDOS 1 3 patches so anyone not seeing them in issue I i of THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY may have a current look Here s a reprint of that por tion of Gary Phillips article on the XLR8er and the 4P Fm Gary Lee Phillips Now what you may ask about TRSDOS 1 3 hope none of our readers are still dependent on this very weak DOS for their model 3 mode operations However TRSDOS 1 3 does have one or two useful features In par ticular I have used it when I had to get files from a model 1 diskette without destroying that diskette remember ifyou use the REPAIR command of LDOS or LS DOS the model 1 can t read the disk ette any more You can do a two step conversion moving the files first to TRSDOS 1 3 and then to LDOS or LS DOS and the original diskette will re main unchanged However TRSDOS 1 3 has some definite problems with the XLR8er TRSDOS 1 3 contains instructions that will not execute correctly on the HD64180 CPU causing the system to reboot when you try to The Hardware Corner 68 The Hardware Corner Volume V 1 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i execute a program or use the BACKUP command These instructions are of the type that split the index regis
195. rect from MISOSYS When creating a file of commands to be used with TYPEIN and a Profile user menu put the entire command sequence in the data file This includes the EFC line Build the file by putting in the exact keystrokes you would type if performing the procedure by hand Then invoke the Applications for the User Volume IV 1 Applications for the User Volume IV i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i procedure with TYPEIN Do not attempt to pass the name of a DO file to the EFC module by placing it in parenthesis as stated in the Profile manual it will not work For example let s say that we want to be able to expand our existing data file by 100 records by pushing one key First create auser menu that has an entry called Expand the MAIL file by 100 Records Set up the user menu so that this entry is executed by pushing E When E is pushed it should execute the command TYPEIN EXPAND KYS The TYPEIN data file you would have to build with the name EXPAND SYS is given below Note that lt enter gt means the depression of the key marked ENTER Contents of the file EXPAND KYS EFC7 lt enter gt MAIL lt enter gt 100 lt enter gt LED the LDOS text EDitor L 30 020 19 95 S amp H is an excellent tool for generating and maintaining these key stroke files for TYPEIN LED also has a special HEX mode that will allow you to insert the lt shift gt lt clear gt c
196. rganizers PRO WAM is accessed with a single keystroke its export and import functions allow you to move data across windows between programs Address CARDS LABELS and new HEADINGS for display and export Improved BRINGUP tickler file new PRINTING and sorting Improved CALENDAR flags BRINGUP items visually on screen Ten 3 x 5 CARD files with FORMS and FIELDS using reverse video New virtual PHRASE access for export New TODO list manager with who does it Plus many other vital applications PRO WAM M 51 025 74 95 5S amp H MISOSYS Products Tidbits APPLICATION SOFTWARE TO STR ETCH YOUR TRS 80 MODEL MISOSYS has been supplying the TRS 80 community with profes sional quality software since 1978 that s over nine years of experi ence captured in a host of other software products ranging from language compilers and assem blers fine crafted utilities other application software and operat ing systems We also publish a magazine THE MISOSYS QUAR TERLY which is available on a subscription basis for just 25 per year in the U S Call or write us for a catalog of our complete product line Now activate PRO WAM from newly compiled LB beta release hardware restrictions apply M C and VISA accepted a S amp H 5 6 Canada 15 Other 64 4 LB Data Manager A flexible data manager LB is easily used by anyone for managing their data It s menu driven for ease of use
197. ro definitions See how your key macros and special characters are programmed without leaving what you are working on O Four Text Editing Windows Work on four separate documents at the same time Reference one file while working on another Move or copy blocks of text from one window to another O Automatic display of the Page and Line number that your cursor is on You don t have to guess what page you are working on or how far to the next page LeScript tells you automatically O Print to Disk Route print output to a disk file instead of to the printer Great for sending preformatted text to bulletin boards or for checking how LeScript is decoding your commands O Built in warning system alerting you if you try to exit LeScript before saving your text LeScript 2 00 also includes built in 70 000 word spelling checker automatic footnoting for term papers multiple columns for newsletters key word search disk file directory for quickly finding files when you don t know their names proportional space printing on over 250 different printers and more LeScript 2 00 is only 199 95 for IBM PC compatible computers and only 129 95 for the TRS 80 models 1 3 4 4D 4P Updates to version 2 00 are available to current registered LeScript owners for only 40 from version 1 8 60 from version 1 7 70 from version 1 6 and 80 from version 1 5 and earlier Updates come with free instruction addendums or you can purchase a new LeScript manual
198. rresponding window on the MISOSYS Products Tidbits Volume IVi THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 screen allow you to move it around via the ARROW keys and then acknowledge the new position Never wrote that appli cation Why not do it yourself It s just a little facility Great for a TMQ article Fm Gary Phillips Thanks for the tips on PRO WAM APPs I ll take a look and see if I can t come up with something like that utility possibly for TMQ Perhaps the utility should be an APP itself huh Fm MISOSYS Inc Incidentally there are limitless ither PRO WAM Applica tions that could be written Most probably fall into the area of vertical integration For instance how about a pop up valence chart or periodic table of the elements chemistry I can envision a pop up peri odic table where you could position the cursor to any element then hit a button that pops up a screen of details about that element There are tons of card type applications for pop up data retrieval PRO WAM Application Pack Mister ED is loaded with editor applica tions All are full screen which make your editing jobs easy Best of all these are all PRO WAM applications so they can pop up even when you are using other pro grams and applications DED edits disk sectors FED edits file records and MED edits memory pages even alternate banks All use a similar display screen and strikingly similar com mands to enable yo
199. rror occurred 1 Operator tried to save a string Applications for the User Volume IV i Applications for the User re TRL IIa hE HENRI 8 Volume IV i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV 1 array 2 The array being loaded does not make the one defined in basic 3 The filename used is not acceptable to DOS 4 A DOS error has occurred For known applications this routine could be shortened to save some of the high memory used or it could be loaded in the overlay region if this area is not going to be used This routine was originally written by me for an inventory type program onan APPLE II computer It resulted in a significant time savings since the arrays used were either 6 x 250 or 1200 elements in length It also saved on the wear and tear of the diskettes and disk drive CATALOGING FLOPPY DISK FILES WITH A WORD PROCESSOR Sooner or later floppy disk users may accumulate a quantity of disks and find it necessary to locate exactly on which disk s a certain file is for patching changing superseding etc At such times a disk catalog can come in very handy The method presented here is applicable to the model 4 with some adaptation it could probably be used on other comput ers It requires a word processor with programmable command keys and global search and replace but no other software I show how to useit with ALLWRITE and am adding details of key coding which may allo
200. rs dotted here and there on the screen I even rewrote the whole listing directly into the S CMD part of the compiler and the program wouldn t even compile although I checked the TEMP BAS ver sion with previous ones entered from ASCII from modified interactive programs I have written other similar programs one being amail list program where there is absolutely no problem with Yes or No decision prompts I have even used fresh copies from the master disk you sent to no avail I need help I have enclosed three listings one the original interactive listing after being edited the other being the listing from EnhComp s supervisor I have also included the list ing from the Mail list programs which works beautifully The EnhComp disk ette is also enclosed While I have had strange unaccounted for hangups at times with other programs I found that I could get around these by modifying the program slightly Unfortu nately in this case Yes NO decisions are fundamental programming structures I would appreciate any assistance you can give eee A A A E MISOSYS Products Tidbits 58 MISOSYS Products Tidbits Volume IV 1 Fm MISOSYS Inc John I did manage to fix up the problems you were having compiling the program you supplied Here s what I found Although I m not sure that all of your FOR NEXT constructs would have worked properly I did alter most of them Com pilers have a funny habit of
201. s 3 94 87 L 9 F Volume IV i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i The Blurb 2 Advertising Rates 4 PD Software Librarian 4 MISOSYS Hard Drive now shipping 5 The family corner 6 Letters to the Editor l 5 Resource Bulletin Boards 13 Resource Computer Clubs 14 Resource Companies sy 14 DOS Subjects 20 The Model I Corner by Ken Strickler 20 Model III Topics 22 Model 4 amp LSDOS Topics 24 Doubling of files revisited 26 Accessing the video screen from BASIC 31 MSDOS Topics 39 Applications for the user 40 Array load routine by Robert C Stone 40 Cataloging files with a word processor by C A Ainsworth 43 File undating FUNDATE by Roy Soltoff 52 Page display PRO WAM application by J Verhelst 53 Using Profile 3 plus under LDOS by Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo 54 MISOSYS Products Tidbits 57 diskDISK s DIR SYS size 57 GO CMD s ZCAT fixed 60 LB and mail merge 61 The Hardware Corner 66 XLR8er and GT 180 by Jeff Joseph 66 XLR8er installation in gate array with hires graphics 70 The Blurb List of Advertisors Anitek Software Products 18 Computer News 80 IRC Comucopia Software Inc 15 Frank Slinkman MP Hypersoft 19 Microdex Corporation 65 MISOSYS Inc 64 65 77 78 79 Pacific Computer Exchange 14 Powersoft 16 17 Practical Programs MP RANTECH Software 56 T Maker Research Company 15 The File Cabinet o 15 TRSTimes magazine MP 1 The Blurb Volume V i THE MISOSYS Q
202. s driver formatter archive restore and sub partitioning all for one DOS Give us a call to discuss building one for you 20 Megabyte kit M3 or M4 495 S amp H 20 Megabyte kit MAX 80 450 S amp H 40 Megabyte kit M3 or M4 645 S amp H 40 Megabyte kit MAX 80 600 S amp H Hardware clock option 30 Joystick option with joystick 20 Host interface cable 20 Additional software interface 30 includes 50 bytes non volatile RAM Note S amp H prices are UPS ground to continental U S Professional results with TRS 80 Fully supported products for Models Ill and 4 4p 4D PC XT AT Tandy and 100 compatibles MSDOS EFi ACOUSTIC CEIL A SEs y teh E E al i aouar JOISTS UNDER A C WINCOY JN EMO OFFICES OMY D ie M OEO a aE TEES aR 8x12 R S GEAN O00 CEILING RECEPTION AREA RESTROOM HYNOD _ WINYL TILE FLOOR UN A e eas Tr xT CAD PROFESSIONAL by Microdex Computer Aided Drafting software for technical production and education Create edit modify precise drawings details Features include overlays grids cursor snap zoom pan block copy enlarge reduce rotate mirror clip merge text labels more Requires hi res screen and RS 232 interface Output to pen plotters Input from keyboard or optional digitizer or mouse Friendly competent Support since 1984 Software is backup free Was 345 in 1986 catalog Model Ill or 4 4p 4d or MSDOS 145 00 xT CAD BILL of Materials by Microdex Soft
203. s entered which required a system overlay that had been purged from the system disk The DO command which handles Job Control Language JCL command compilation is stored in S YS6 SYS JCL execution is processed by SYS11 SYS If either of those system overlay modules have been purged then the error 07 message would be displayed When you applied the patches one at a time perhaps you made a typing error Perhaps if you go back and LIST the patched file in hexadecimal you can correlate the patched area with the SSFIX listing and confirm that the file s were correctly patched Idon t use SuperScrip sit never had and probably never will Thus I would not have encountered any problem I simply reported what had been provided as input I am enclosing the most recent flyer list ing our products for the Model II 4 computer I don t have SS printer drivers Doubling of files revisited Fm MISOSYS Inc The following dia logue is provided to bring my readers up to date concerning a problem reported some time ago The problem appears as two or more instances of a file with the same nameon a floppy diskette Notwith standing the comments of Mr Ainsworth my opinion is that the problem is experi enced solely on a gate array Model 4 and has nothing to do with CPU speedup modifications or CPU replacements it is a hardware bug I would suggest that anyone wishing to duplicate my experiments would kindly forwa
204. s just the tube You can buy a whole IBM compatible mono chrome monitor for less than that That brings to mind another idea Is it pos sible to substitute an amber tube from an IBM style monochrome monitor If so has anybody done it Help needed for 2110 printer Fm Doug Mayfield 74106 761 HELP I am trying to locate any PD shareware or otherwise low cost downloadable fonts for my Radio Shack 2110 printer This will use the same fonts as the Radio Shack 2100P printer Both are made by Toshiba and use the same fonts as the Toshiba printers I have heard that Toshiba retail ers sometimes give away fonts with the purchase of their printers however I have been unable to get any help from my local dealers One service person at a local dealer did imply that there were a few BBS s that had fonts on them but he was either unwilling or unable to supply any information about their names or num bers If anyone has had any luck getting any fonts for these printers please get in contact with me I am really desperate to get these HD DbI Density Fm Chuck Thomas 70015 103 I just took my old TRS 80 model I out of the Closet I currently have an XT compat ible and would like to adda hard drive to it Ihave a version of LDOS that supports hard drives but am looking for a control ler or a way to interface say an IBM or Adaptec controller to work for it Can anyone help Also am on the lookout for a double density controlle
205. s quiet I did check the fan and it s quiet What s going on in there I m thinking about installing a 10 20 meg drive in there if this one is on it s way out and I would appreciate any information on how what brand to use where to get one Fm MISOSYS Inc Sounds like the bearings starting to go Too bad they are not oilable Fim Daniel L Srebnick 72216 520 David That is your drive telling you it is about to fail The best suggestion would be to buy one of the Seagate ST 225 20 meggers that MISOSYS is selling at a reasonable price They printed the instructions for MISOSYS Hard drive noise problems making the conversion in the most recent quarterly They may be reached at pe MISOSYS Fm David Mandeville Roy I found out what makes that noise in the drive It turns Out to be a graphite contact that rides on the bottom of the drive I spoke to one of our local electronics wizards and he said that if you file that sucker flat that it will stop making the noise until it wears an other indentation I left it alone having found out what it was was enough for me The piece is soldered in place and I didn t really want a lot of conductive dust float ing around in there Fm MISOSYS Inc Thanks for the info Although sometimes a noise described as you did does indeed turn out to be bear ings Fm LDOS Support 76703 437 David You can also bend the contact a bit to change the contact p
206. s stated therein my letter of March 23 explained that one of my 4D machines the last one with an XLR8er had gone on the blink and had been doubling up files on floppy You replied on a return copy of my letter of April 12 It s really a DOS problem I m looking into it I also stated that the machine with the XLR 8er had been put on ice and that I had to borrow a machine to keep going but that s a situation I can t maintain for long Now it s over three months since I ad vised you of the problem To date I have no solution I can t keep the borrowed computer any longer So which way do I go from here Seems the only answer will be to yank and dump the only remaining XLR8er as I did with the other two I had Fm MISOSYS Inc Dear Charles This is in response to your letter of June 26th concerning my previous note relative to your multiple identical file names on one diskette problem In my previous note I may have been a little hasty in claiming a DOS problem but then my initial evi dence suggested that Let me bring you up to date on my findings Your problem as well as that reported by a few other folks seems to occur when a particular file is opened for writing a large number of times Programs which open a file for output typically use the DOS INIT service call In order to understand the nature of the problem let me first provide a brief dissertation on INIT This SVC first issues an inter
207. sk or file sectors on a full screen basis IFC updated with new features for teractively copying moving renaming deleting and invoking files ZCAT for cata oging 6 3 diskettes All documentation has peen revised and is printed in a convenient 5 5 by 8 5 format Order M 33 300 for 659 95 5 S amp H US SEE WHAT YOU VE BEEN MISSING GIF4MOD4 Model 4 users can at last view the tens of 1000s of public domain GIF graphics images with GIF4MOD4 TRSlink magazine says This program joins Demo 120 and Mel Patrick s Hires4 as some of the best graphics tools GIF4MOD4 decodes GIF images up to 640x480 Graphics are almost photographic quality GIF encoder which converts HR HRG and CHR files into GIF format included 37 95 VIDPOKR4 is a 100 accurate video poker machine simulation Winning system included 128K reqd 19 95 SLOTMOD4 is a 100 accurate fully ani mated machine simulation with sound 14 95 Hi res graphics board required for all programs Add 2 S amp H to total order Frank Slinkman 4108C Fairlake Lane Glen Allen VA 23060 Rent this space 20 The GO MTC product is a collection of pro grams designed to provide maintenance sup port services for your computer operation The programs in this group have been rewrit ten 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
208. t an XLR8er surely the perhaps half a million 4 4D users out there would have experienced it and computer users being a rather vocal group one would have read of it in TMQ THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 80 Micro or wherever Anyhow to boil things down to the es sence I m still stuck with one 4D that I can t use so here s hoping some solution will be soon forthcoming Thanks again for your valuable help Fm MISOSYS Inc Dear Charles Ap parently I did go way over your head when I tried to explain in a detailed tech nical manner the results of my analysis concerning the multiple file phenome non Please forgive me but due to the extreme detail and analysis Contained in some of your letters to me I just assumed that I would not be too deep Let me try again in very simple terms because its important that you and other readers understand what I have discovered Let s look at how two or more files of the same name can get on a single disk drive The DOS has two system calls S VC s for initiating access to a disk file These two are denoted OPEN and INIT The difference between the two is that OPEN will only provide access to an existing file whereas INIT will create the file if it is not found to exist Now remem ber your little technique in BASIC for Checking from Model 4 BASIC for the existence of a floppy disk file You used the BASIC statement OPEN T 7 1 MYFILE
209. t numeric files of a constant length Currently the only way to trans port data from one program to another is 1 use data statements which must be appended to a program 2 save the data to disk as a text file Both of these take time and waste disk space Why not just dump the array to the disk then it could be loaded whenever needed TRSDOS has the ability to DUMP data from memory to disk however it won t allow you to load it back in if you want to load itin a location different from that which it was saved The advantages of dumping an array to disk are that the file size is smaller and disk access time therefore is shortened Plus it saves the work of having to code the disk input routines into your program Using a single precision array as an ex ample BASIC reserves six bytes per number A typical single precision num ber would be saved to disk in a text file as eight or more characters Already you could save 25 in file space if you would have dumped the array The assembly language program I have written allows you to load or save array data files in their compressed format It also provides error checking so that you can t load an integer array of 100 ele ments into a single precision array of 20 elements and cause basic to lock up The routine uses the CALL function to pass the location of the first array variable and the filename The actual starting point of the array is then calculated and the array nam
210. t operations 7 ALLWRITE has an Autosave fea ture which saves to disk after a preset number of lines andlor changes have been entered I keep it at a low value 50 for normal word processing as it is important I lose as little text as possible in case of power failure However when using this system you may find that too low a setting causes frequent interruptions in processing for saving to disk and you may decide to set it somewhat high For this method from the editor I set Autosave at 1000 Applications for the User 45 Applications for the User Volume IV i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 with the command BREAK AUTO 1000 ENTER for temporary use or it can be entered as a parameter from ALINSTAL CMD when the ALLWRITE system disk is set up for permanent use from that specific disk 8 Probably the most frequent application of disk catalog files is to find on which disk s a particular file is located ALLWRITE s search is fast and it does it very well To use the file catalog go to ALLWRITE cali up the catalog file and enter the search command for the file name you want to locate which you will find under the appropriate disk name s the latter highlighted with asterisks To repeat the search for other locations of the same file press CLEAR F The special soft keys are not required for this search and any ALLWRITE setup will serve 9 To delete a file name use the ALLWRITE search command and CLE
211. t the usual cause to the problem was with the Tandy power supply Radio Shack had nearly a dozen modifications released for this supply I had poor results with these modifications and found the best fix to be to replace the Tandy supply with an Aztec supply This cured the problem in all of my cases My own model 4 is running an internal hard disk and controller 2 80 tk thinline floppies and an internal modem all on an Aztec 35 W and an Aztec 65 W power supply the only problem I ve had with this is the connector to the video supply was going bad I solved this by soldering the video supply wires directly to the power supply board I haven t had any problems since still going after 3 years Fm Ted Haigh Bob If you look in the Mod4 Tech Svc Man there are a few minor modifications you can make to the Power supply to get a bit more out of it I have replaced the part labelled VR3 Voltage Regulator 3 originally a A79M12 with a A7912 this will dissipate slightly more power if you heat sink it well the 79M 12 will dissipate about4W where the 7912 with a big sink dissipates about 6W I replaced the part and the screen behaves a bit better not as much lt lt lt shaking gt gt gt as the computer draws This might help some folks with a similar problem but again check the voltages V1 5 05VDC V2 12VDC CRT V3 12VDC DISK V4 12VDC The current draws should be as follow ModIII use all listed Min Max Current V1 1 35A
212. table pixel graphics keyed array sort multi lined functions user commands REPEAT UNTIL line labels and more Z80 RELocatable Assembler MRAS DOS 6 x M 21 083 LDOS 5 x M20 083 An advanced Z80 assembly package for the programmer who wants a powerful and flexible development system It includes a macro assembler which generates either relo catable object code modules or CMD files directly a linker a librarian a full screen text editor a utility for converting to from line numbered files and a cross reference tool for directly generated CMD files RATFOR is an excellent language for general purpose use but it is vastly superior to FORTRAN when working with a large number of modules without documentation as is necessary when producing very large programs 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 A supervisor program automates the edit compile test phases inherent when using compilers this makes using EnhComp almost as easy to use as your BASIC interpreter Extensions supported include the arith macro to perform binary arithmetic operations read and print macros for short form READ and PRINT and support of any valid FORTRAN expression for switch and case operands MLINK supports virtual memory bit stream buf
213. ted in this version of Super Utility Extra Super Utility manuals disks or unprotected disks Need an extra manual for your SUPER UTILITY Pick up an extra manual 3 hole punched for only 10 Need an extra disk Send 10 if registered for an extra copy Want the unprotected CMD file version Send 20 and your serial number if registered and we ll send you the unprotected CMD file version LDOS ToolBox Hard Disk Check Repair Modify much more Like a SU for hard disk 24 95 gt Original 1986 price 49 95 by Kim Watt author of Super Utillty PowerMail and many more great programs If you own a hard disk and use LDOS this is the perfect insurance policy for your data The LDOS TOOLBOX is like a Super Utility for hard disks Features Disk Check and Disk Repair Sector Modification plus many many other useful utilities that makes using a hard drive even easier Each program contains a built in Help command so many times you don t even need to look things up in the manual just press lt Enter gt for help A very wise buy for hard disk users Model 4 ToolBelt same for Model 4 TRSDOS 6 use OK for 6 3 Like a SU for hard disk 24 95 gt Original 1986 price 49 95 by Kim Watt author of Super Utility PowerMail and many more great programs This is similar to The LDOS TOOLBOX except it is for the Model 4 TRSDOS 6 operating system all versions gt gt gt gt BOTH LDOS TOOL BOX AND MODEL 4 TOOLBELT FOR ONLY 44
214. ter Florida about February 1983 In addition the deal included TK Solver Assembly Language Tutor the TRSDOS 6 Training Course and a couple of tape programs for about 60 TK solver had been touted as the greatest math advancement after the discovery of fingers and priced at 395 or more A real bonanza right Wrong That thing would set mathematics back five centu ries The training course wasn t much better but I did get some reusable disks What prevented the same ending for Visi calc is one of life s little mysteries The assembly tutor and Hardin Brothers series in 80 Micro constitute the sum total of my formal training in assembly lan guage After purchasing Pro Create from you in August 1987 I finally made the first faltering moves early this year I soon learned some things I didn t think I had to learn One of the early programs gave the right answers but also decorated the screen and was stubborn about repeat ing as it was supposed to Somewhere was a note about an OD terminator to flush the type ahead buffer This may not be THE solution but it works Ah ha maybe Visicalc too Well it did change the trash filling to a solid freeze up Although The Source is largely a deep mystery I am having a heck of lot of fun with it If you have any commercial deci phering publications available would appreciate knowing about it Now for two questions in your letter 1 No I was not atte
215. ter IX or IY loading the two halves separately They are not standard Z80 instructions but they do work on every Z80 chip I ve ever tried them on Tandy apparently used them in TRSDOS 1 3 as a security measure to make it harder to disassemble I am aware of two places in TRSDOS 1 3 that contain these instructions The fol lowing patch commands will eliminate them note that this is a TRSDOS 1 3 patch and NOT an LDOS patch so please execute it under model 3 TRSDOS The patch to SYS7 by the way also eliminates the limited backup feature of TRSDOS 1 3 Once these patches have been applied TRSDOS 1 3 appears to execute normally on a 4P equipped with XLR8er If you find other places where a patch is required please let us all know Repair of old XLR8er boards Fm Durward Boyles Brent AL Greet ings Roy I have a problem can you help My XLR amp 8er board with 256K Ram has been in repair more than it has worked in my computer Hi Tech has sent it some where for repair Do you have it If I can get it returned to me can you repair it or exchange it I wanted to use it in my 4p 26 1080A Serial 010869 where I have had it but do you believe it would work better in my Model 4 26 1069A Serial 008482 Greetings to all who has or is considering buying an XLR8er board I ordered mine from H I Tech Houston Texas in Oct 1987 I could not get the memory banks to work I returned it for repair in De
216. terhead Roundoff FOR NEXT loops Fm James E Bieker Defiance IA Dear Roy I would like first of all to say thanks for your fine support of TRS 80 s I truly admire your craft and guile concerning assembly language programming It is in that vein which I am ordering EDAS Enclosed are a couple of things I have been meaning to send to you The first is an algorithm I use in Model III basic In the billing software we currently use I found it necessary to do rounding up and truncating beyond a penny when calculat ing a bill especially sales tax Perhaps there is an easier way but I haven t dis covered it The second item refers to the difference I ve found among basics concerning for next loops and leaving off the variable in the next statement Any comment 1 Round amp Truncate to 0 00 CA a INT X 005 100 100 DOS Subjects 33 DOS Subjects Volume IV i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i TIE RIGHTS TIMES 1 lt gt O THEN 1 2 PRINT TIMES 3 FOR I 1 TO 10000 4 NEXT I 5 PRINT TIMES Port access from BASIC Fm MISOSYS Inc In the previous issue of THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY I pre sented the solution to the computer lock ups while trying to run certain high reso lution graphics games on a machine equipped with an XLR amp er The problem was due to aconflict in accessing a portin the range 0 63 Unless register B for port indirect or register A for port dire
217. that anyone contemplating this mod on a non gate 4P should know that the instructions are wrong More hard drive questions Fm Henry A Blumenthal Dear Mr Soltoff Despite setbacks and modifica tions on your development of a hard drive for the Model 4 I continue to be inter ested primarily because it will include an optional clock and calendar module But questions remain My wife and I do a lot of work that requires accurate time stamps in the di rectory and we appreciate the conven ience cf booting up without having to answer the date and time prompts by using Alpha Products Newclock 80 board in the I O connector Correspondence from various vendors has convinced us a Y adaptor would pose problems were we to opt for a hard drive while continuing to use the board That brings us to your hard drive But here are my questions What will your policy be on service Will the parts and interfacing be standard to allow the machine to be repaired locally after its warranty expires Will its time module he similar to Alpha Products board or will I have to patch SYSO SYS with different lines of code Do I assume that even if the hard drive is turned off its clock will continue to serve the Model 4 in floppy mode using both LS DOS and LDOS as is the case now with the Alpha board Finally do I assume that the hard drive can be partitioned to put LDOS files in their own default logical drive yet allow data to
218. that he recently moved His new mailing address is On the other hand anyone with an input concerning the MAX 80 consider direct ing that input to THE MISOSYS QUAR TERLY Here san interesting item which appeared in the June 1989 issue of Seagate s RE SELLER REPORT The question con cerning itself with hard drive usage was Which wears the spindle bearings more continuous spinning or powering up and down every day The answer was There is no difference with regard to spindle bearing wear between continuous spin ning and powering up and down every day However the power surge caused by turning a computer on and off is harder on the drive and computer electronics than if the computer remained powered on But the next question may be the answer to what has been on everyone s mind Does data add weight to a disc drive And the answer is Data bits on a disc drive are changes in the polarization of the magnetic flux on the platter These changes in magnetization cause no weight change in the drive As a post script this issue initiates the fourth year of publishing effort I con Volume IV i tinue to make changes to the look and feel of TMQ I am getting quite pleased with its appearance Hopefully its con tent is of benefit to my readers Too bad the number of subscribers has not been a success For all of the time and effort I put into this magazine I certainly expect
219. that the use of this disassembler even by a beginning assembly language programmer will be paying handsome rewards with the ease of its use and clarity of the documentation It s a professional tool for your use Decodes an M80 type relocatable object module and outputs an MRAS M80 assembler source file We bundle in SPLITLIB to split a library into separate modules and DECODREL to display the bit stream of a REL file This powerful combined disk based line editor and Z80 macro assembler assembles from nested source files or memory buffer nested conditionals with ten pseudo ops nested MACROs with parameters both positional and by keyword cross reference listings and a separate full screen text editor UNREL assumes anything in a code segment is code and anything in a data segment is data It supports special link items 0 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 If you are writing system software support software applications big or small EDAS will provide the power to make your job easier faster and more worthwhile Full C Compiler MC DOS 6 x M 21 064 LDOS 5 x M 20 064 The disassembler allows you to build a screening data file telling what segments of the program are to be interpreted as data regions You enter the addresses of the segments after analyzing the target program s disassembly UNREL should be the perfect professional assembler s tool for your bag of tricks FORTH Compi
220. the presence of a diskette 4 INIT then attempted to create the file but this time CKDRV detected the disk ette 5 A new directory entry was created for the new file resulting in a file duplicate in name to an existing file Once you recognize this as the scenario which generates the multiple files you then should realize that the result mul tiple files is caused by a failure of DOS OPEN to reliably detect the presence of a diskette in a drive Testing can therefore be restricted to OPEN and testing of INIT can be dispensed with That s why my test program was tailored to stop on a failure of OPEN T The test program is a large loop each iteration of which attempts to access the known to be available file The loop has a delay time subsequent to the CLOSE of the file to give the drive an adequate time to deselect and for the drive motor to turn off This normalizes the state of the drive The loop repeats a large number of times Theoretically the program should run forever with a non terminating loop there should be no failure of the software or hardware to properly open the file unless there is either a software or hard ware failure If the program terminates DOS Subjects 29 DOS Subjects Volume IV i prematurely then something has failed to behave in the expected manner Given that I can cause the loop to prematurely terminate every time I run the program
221. the 6 cable extends to the right 7 Carefully remove the Z80A CPU chip from socket U1 A letter opener is a good tool to use for this Slide the opener down from the top between the chip and its socket Slight rocking of the opener will pry out the Z80A chip 8 At this time remove the 74LS245 in the socket at U77 and replace with the 7T4HCT245 provided with the XLR8er note the supplied chip may be marked 74 C245 If youarereplacing the 200nsRAM chips on the motherboard with 150 ns RAM chips do so at this time 9 Plug the free end of the XLR8er cable into socket U1 where the Z80A was removed so that the cable exits to the left of the motherboard 10 Wrap the cable with the XLR8er attached around to the rear of the moth erboard Place the motherboard compo nent side down onto the flat surface 11 Flip the XLR8er over so that the component side is towards the rear of the motherboard and the headers are to the left The cable is between the XLR8er and motherboard This creates a 90 degree bend downward in the connecting cable about 1 5 8 in from the right Tape a small piece of cardboard about 1 by 4 5 to the rear of the motherboard at the area where the header connectors will press This keeps the XLR8er from short ing out Now use 2 sided foam tape to tape the cable to the rear of the mother board Also use a piece attached to the The Hardware Corner 70 The Hardware Corner Volume IV
222. the connect time used to download files The solution lay with the original uploader All he or she need do is to Simultaneously submit a copy to Vic McClung As long as there is an official copy placed in distribution via DOS Subjects 35 DOS Subjects Volume V i other than Compuserve then that other distribution channel can legitimately dis tribute copies as provided for by the origi nator Incidentally Ralf Folkerts of Ganderhessee West Germany accesses our Compus erve forum regularly I m not sure of how he accomplishes his access perhaps he will provide an input Thanks for the input on foreign charac ters Since my laser printer fonts cannot duplicate all of the characters you pro vided in your letter I decided to scan them as graphics and merge the picture with this text What uses port 84H Fm Richard R King Raleigh NC Enclosed is the PRO MC library diskette which TMQ IILiv 70 tells me you are willing to update at no charge I ve en closed 1 00 to cover the cost of postage asmall price to pay for the service you are providing Now I know you re busy but could I hit you with a couple of questions The Mod 4 PAL chip used to direct data between DRAM sets 1 amp 2 1st amp 2nd 64k sets has some crazy switching schemes based on bits 6 5 amp 4 of port 84 h I m sure you ve seen them in the tech ref manual especially since yousay you were involv
223. the edi tor BK is pressed and at the CMD prompt one enters for example to code key 1 the instruction KEY 1 EN The screen clears and prompts for the key definition to be typed in Model 4 ALLWRITE uses either CLEAR or F1 as control key for the editor but when setting up softkeys F1 only mustbe used Applications for the User Volume IV i Applications for the User ay ee aa Volume I V i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume I V i Some keys don t have enough space to code a given task due to the ALLWRITE limitation that no more than 22 characters can be used for one key so keys are chained together whenever necessary to continue with Fl and the name of the next key For example key 1 calls key which in turn calls key to accom modate the necessary characters When the code for a key is typed in one quits the define key mode at the end of a definition either automatically by en tering the total allocated 22 characters as in key 1 or by entering F1 Q for quit as inkeys 2 amp and which merely tells the system that coding for that key is complete but has no effect when the coded key is used later When coding soft keys typing errors cannot be corrected If any error occurs there is only one thing to do Type spaces or anything to get to the end of the definition and out of the define key mode and redo the same
224. ther this will really work or not I will also be obtaining an external 3 5 drive for con nection to my Model 4D computer so as to be able to create the system and soft ware diskettes needed for the Model IMI computer as well as to expand my disk storage capabilities Will the Model III computer and LDOS 5 3 boot from a 3 5 internal drive Are there any other pitfalls I should watch out for The 3 5 drives will be 720K drives I am enclosing a stamped and self ad dressed envelope to facilitate your reply Fm MISOSYS Inc Lawrence the Model HI DSMBLR can be used to disassemble both Model III and Model 4 CMD programs there is absolutely no differ ence in the file record format of the two files Only the programming interface to DOS is different It s true that there is a one to one correspondence between Z80 object code and its source code although there are many different techniques of achieving the reversing process All fixes for LDOS 5 3 have appeared in THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY You have them they can be easily applied If you want you can return your diskette for a refresh The charge is 10 2 S amp H Whether your write protect experience with diskDISK is a bug or a act of design not documented I can t discern Cer tainly the behavior of diskDISK is ex actly as you describe Looking at the source code I can see a clear design action to return the write protect status of the host dri
225. thern VA book TWO yellow pages A K and L Z and then the Lou doun Book In addition Southern Bell is trying to hawk a single yellow pages for the metropolitan area I have to have a bookshelf just for the phone books One of these days they ll be releasing them on CD ROM Give me back The Bell Sys tem Fm Adam Rubin Well Gary Your sug gestion about the best height for the key board and the monitor gave me an idea The 4P is indeed on top of the desk which is about 31 above the floor Ordinary desk not a computer desk The desk is only 17 deep not enough to pull the keyboard out all the way so the far end of the keyboard is stuck into the 4P and I can t tilt the monitor the way things are now Also either the chair 1s about 4 too low or the keyboard is too high So why don t I solve everything at once Build a platform to support the keyboard below the front of the desk that means I have the whole desk for the 4P which I can then tilt up I never thought about it be fore but you are right and tilting the monitor should solve the Clip problem Some plywood and a few scraps of lum ber ought to do it Hey I think I found a solution for everything all at once Hope Twasn trambling too much here Thanks very much for the suggestion that in spired all this Fm Adam Rubin Bill I think I figured out how to solve a few problems at the same time details are in m
226. three children I also had planned to paint Stacey s bedroom a job which I tackled and just about finished We were visiting with Pa and Grand mother over the 4th of July holiday at least it s g a holiday for us Ameri cans Although he was F iit Very good spirits and everyone enjoyed the visit I think we all knew he was going to be with us but a short time We were all saddened that Pa passed away on Au gust 15th At least at 85 years of age hedidlivea long and productive life He will be missed by us all Brenda was away for over two weeks which left me with my hands full trying to keep three youngsters Pe occupied as well as fin ish painting and trying ie 4 to get some office work ia done Needless to say TMQ fell behind soft ware and documentation efforts for the hard drive fell behind and I don t think I was able to answer but a few pieces of correspondence I really got to appreciate the hardships ofa single parent My neigh bor said I bet youate outa lot To which I replied that it would take more effort getting three kids ready to go more en ergy to keep them under control than it would to make meals at home Actually I m a pretty good cook Benjamin is growing like a weed All four of his molars are through He eats just about everything he is given And he seems to be able to get into everything he shouldn t be getting into Luckily he s not climbing out
227. time to precisely identify what they are typing and whatresponses if any are being generated Use your Common sense I have from time to time been asked the question Any chance of ordering a sub scription to DISK NOTES I have con sidered that issue and I have determined that it would not be practical to do The Blurb 2 The Blurb Volume IV i For one thing publishing THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY is not a profitable venture I do it for three reasons One I feel I must provide some vehicle for written support of MISOSYS products Two it providesa vehicle to present information and news four times a year And three it providesa means of advertising products which generates sales From an economic stand point I can justify the expense in time and money for publishing TMQ only if I can capture enough product sales as a direct result of that effort The coupon provided with TMQ helps with that effort Most folks don t send in the coupon and order just DISK NOTES Another reason is that doing one more thing special about distribution would take up more time Another flag to keep and maintain another sort to do another label run to prepare There is just not enough folks interested to justify that effort Another few readers have asked Why don t these renewal invoices ever fit in the return envelope Hey that s a good question How about an answer The statement I use for invoicing TMQ rene
228. to write since you ve provided so many powerful and flexible ones but I was wondering how hard it might be to change the spot the standard applications choose to locate their windows on the screen Seems like a judicious little patch should be able to do it Are the window locations in a standard header or some such Or do they appear wherever the code gets around to invoking svc 124 to open the window In any case thanks as always for another very fine product Note PRO WAM s CAL and BRINGUP applications work better than the desk accessory CALEN DAR I have on my Mac II at work The Mac program sometimes forgets ap pointments for no reason that I can deter mine Fm MISOSYS Inc The PRO WAM Programmer s Toolkit was noted in THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY when the toolkit was released It is also covered in the blue flyer which accompanied your order You are right with all of your assumptions I believe it s the second line of the header record which has four pointers to the APP The objects of the pointers are the origi nating coordinates NW corner of the window The four pointers are used to designate these coordinates for up to four windows in the APP It s an easy matter to FED in the change That structure was in the first design of PRO WAM 1 0 in anticipation of a util ity which would allow you to dynami cally relocate the window in real time i e the utility would examine the APP place a co
229. u to edit anything Get comfortable with one and you will know how to use all three of these editors VED lets you edit the video screen with CARD type editing You get cut amp paste with this you can easily use it as the clipboard facility sud S on more expen sive systems TED is just like the editor you get with LS DOS 6 3 but ours works from PRO WAM while you are using other pro Volume IV i grams It s friendly fast and great for writing notes when you are right in the middle of a program you can t interrupt Mister ED M 51 028 The Programmers Toolkit provides all youneed to know in order to write programs for the PRO WAM environment The pack age includes revised documentation which is in a convenient 5 5 by 8 5 format the same as PRO WAM release 2 The in cluded WINLINK device driver supports programmed invocation of applications from any programming language environment which supports device I O Also included is a WINDOW CCC function library for MC and an assembler source code file for the PHRASE application to better illustrate how to write a PRO WAM application Programmers Toolkit M 51 225 MISOSYS PRO WAM Version 2 Window amp Application Manager Our applications turn your 128K Model 4 into a sophisticated business or personal machine rivaling the best of them Because easily installed PRO WAM comes with many useful and powerful menu driven time savers and work o
230. umenta tion as they work identically to the TRSHD6 DCT driver and TRSFORM6 CMD formatter Price for the two files is 19 95 S amp H It is unfortunate that the Model II key board has the colon character as an upper case of the semi colon On the other hand that is the standard layout of a typewriter and is universal on MS DOS PC key boards Perhaps you need to write a filter which can switch the two around As far as the ALLWRITE stack fix you understood perfectly well the reason why a program would save the stack pointer upon its initial execution But the old stack pointer was not saved in the new stack it was saved to a particular word address in memory Itis correct program ming procedure for a program to save the SP register contents if it is going to alter them then restore the SP to its original value when the program terminates Accessing the video screen from BASIC Fm Wayne Myers Georgetown PEI Canada I m having some troubl with some DOS SVC functions for the new user interface to SVC s BASIC com mand For example I can t get functions GET or VDCTL to return a character in register A which is ARRAY 0 All I get is an ambiguous number Please note that many of these functions are working fine So with that in mind I do feel that I m getting the entry parameters set cor rectly In general I find these SVC func tions a little difficult to understand So I m writin
231. ur specific questions the following may be beneficial The mem ory resident module of PRO WAM has the capabilities for supporting windows from any language including BASIC however we have separated out the tech nical aspects of programming to the PRO WAM interface into a separate package called the PRO WAM Programmer s Toolkit It s available for 29 95 S amp H Itrequires the use of PRO WAM to begin with PRO WAM is not a shell language you cannot use it to create a Menuing system Actually the standard Job Control Lan guage JCL of the DOS can be used in that manner to some extent However you can pop up PRO WAM applications while running other behaved programs such as Visicalc Scripsit BASIC and MISOSYS Products Tidbits any other application which uses the DOS keyboard driver PRO WAM currently comes with the following applications ADDRESS AFPCALC BRINGUP CALENDAR CARD CARDX CARDXF CHARSET DIALER DOLOAD DOSAVE HEAD PHRASE RPNCALC TERM TODO and TYPER Applications are stored in a library to minimize directory space The product includes a data file sort facility and a help module PRO WAM uses for the programmer Fm Bob Haynes 73075 77 I find PROWAM very useful especially while working in assembly Say I m in SAID editing a source file Two quick taps on F1 gets me a windowed searchable li brary of all the LSDOS SVCs WAM programming functions and various pro gra
232. ve and no coding whatso ever to deal with software write protect of the diskDISK drive I may contemplate an alteration to the current behavior as I would expect the ability to software write protect a diskDISK should be one of its capabilities Finally the 3 5 720K drives look exactly like 5 25 80 track 2 sided drives as far as the software interface Therefore they will connect exactly like the 5 25 drives they will format as 80 track 2 sided drives There are no pitfalls to watch out for other than the portability of media from one machine to another If FORMAT doesn t work Fm Rey C R Conner Pulaski VA Dear Sir Enclosed are my original LS Dos 6 3 disk Along with it I have in cluded a disk that I formatted using the LS Dos format command I have tried several times to format and use the diskcopy command with little success on the format command and no success on the diskcopy command I reverted to my old TRS Dos 6 21 and it works perfectly on the format command and I use the backup command to copy As per our conversation I do not regularly use my Model 4 except for word process ing and some spreadsheet work recently had my computer upgraded to 128K and had a new disk drive put in I am sure that my machine is working properly and I have had no other problems with it until now Thank You for looking into this and if there is any charge please send me the bill Fm MISOSYS Inc Rev Co
233. verything that goes inside it Any old green screen Model 4 will do even a cassette version they all have the same top cover Fm Mark P Fishman Jim I meant of course running inside a PClone Thanks for the brief description I m going to play with the video some more Unfortunately adjusting focus is best lt grin gt done with the high voltage live Fm Jim Beard Mark Adjusting the focus is done ONLY with the high voltage live unless you go with the polaroid warmup cycle Itisn tasafety issue with the Model 4 because the HV lead is totally insu lated at least until someone outside Tandy takes it off the tube and doesn t paint it when it is put back Don t forget to move the yoke and ion trap magnets rotate the magnets and move the magnets and the yoke back and forth within their available movement Combine these adjustments with the board focus adjustment to get best focus across the screen Fm Mark P Fishman Jim I was going to hope that it was safe to move the yoke with power live because I will be very careful one hand in pocket and do it that way I used to work on televisions but there were focus magnets as well as centering magnets and focus adjustments on those ll just see what each piece does The Hardware Corner 75 The Hardware Corner Volume IV i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume Vii Fm Jim Beard Mark You have exactly the right idea the right attitudes
234. w it to be used on other machines or WP programs with similar capabilities Applications for the User Applications for the User Volume IV i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i SO ne ae by suitable changes once the principles e z of operation are understood EN J 4 aera ata a aa a a nta atate he a i Sea In brief this method creates a disk catalog file from DOS with the ROUTE com jl F PDSAVE mand to send the printer output to the file R than uses the DOS CAT command with the P parameter to get a listing of cata BE loged disk contents into the file Once that has been done on as many disks as need cataloging subject to any space limita tions imposed by the WP software the file is closed with RESET PR the WP program is called and subsequent opera tions take place there eliminating un DAE wanted spaces and characters and high lighting disk names for easy reading When one wishes to search for all occur rences of a specific file the catalog file is AGE PCO VEE iON EE called up from the WP program and the search commands are used which show the desired file under the heading of the 22255 ENE NE disk name New disks can be added to the BES catalog by repeating the procedure RECORT Details are as follows 1 To use this system or any other catalog system obviously disks must be given meaningful and distinctive names avoid ing repetition Disknames can be changed w
235. w shipping its long awaited hard drive package Details on this pack age and its various options follow The drive case is 7 wide by 5 25 high by 15 5 deep it is beige colored The drive case holds two half height drives power supply and fan controller and host adap tor The 60 watt power supply has an internal jumper plug to switch between 115 volt and 230 volt AC input The front of the case has an LED indicator for power on The rear of the case has a NEMA connector for the AC power cord fuse holder for the AC power switch and a 50 pin SCSI female connector for the host interface MISOSYS is shipping complete tive packages currently with a Xebec 1420 or an Adaptec 4000A hard disk controller These two controllers are essentially equivalent in operation with minor vari ations between them concerning the for matting commands Both of those con trollers use a subset of Small Computer Systems Interface SCSI The Adaptec 4000 was used by Lobo Systems for the WIN series of hard drives associated with the MAX 80 Orders specifically for the MAX 80 will be provided a drive pack age uSing that controller A small 3 6 by 6 3 host adaptor circuit board interfaces the 50 pin expansion port of the TRS 80 host to the 50 pin SCSI port of the hard disk controller The Host adaptor is designed and manufactured by MISOSYS or its contractors uses a state of the art Programmable Logic Device PLD for address decoding and c
236. wals is a standard NEBS X9060 1 form This form is 6 5 wide by 7 long with the perforations removed The stan dard size return envelope available from NEBS is 3 7 8 by 6 1 4 The standard double window envelope used to mail the statement is 3 5 8 by 6 7 8 The stan dard double window envelope used to mail the statement is 3 5 8 by 6 7 8 There is a long return envelope at 3 7 8 by 8 7 8 which would fit into a double window envelope at 4 1 8 by 9 Costs of the larger size are more but not signifi cantly more On the other hand if you put a narrow statement in a long envelope there is a tendency for the statement to slide inside the envelope If that occurs the addressee field could shift out of view that would either delay receipt or result in non delivery Typically the wider enve lopes would be used for wider invoices Does it really take that much effort to fold up the statement and mail it back Or do some folks just have nothing else to complain about THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 How about just taking a good look at your TMQ address label for the expiration date and send in your renewal without a state ment That will save me afew scheckels Bryan Headley forwarded word to me that the MAX 80 newsletter has finally died This may impact but a few of my readers but the newsletter was published by MAXIMUL the MAX 80 user group Those still with an interest in the MAX 80 may contact Bryan directly note
237. ware utilizes text labels from xT CAD drawings to automatically generate invoices parts requests shipping lists etc Includes a mini editor for customizing line printer output Model 4 4p 4d or MSDOS 45 00 CASH PROFESSIONAL by Microdex Bookkeeping software with automatic double entry ledger distribution in user definable accounts Reports by period account project etc Ideal for small business professional or personal accounts Model 4 4p 4d or MSDOS 45 00 S XT software by Microdex Enables disk directory review and special character printing from within standard Scripsit Model Ill or 4 4p 4d 15 00 GRAFYX Solutlon by Micro Labs Easy to install board provides hi res similar to Radio Shack boards Inciudes popular GBASIC software and manual Supports xT CAD and other graphic programs Model 4 4p 4d 640x240 pixels 125 00 4 5 00 MOUSE interface by Micro Labs connects to 50 pin i O port and allows the use of Tandy Color Mouse 26 3025 or 26 3125 not included with xT CAD and other programs Model III 4 4p 4d 95 00 5 00 602 326 3502 lt y Write or call for details Microdex Corporatlon 1212 N Sawtelle Tucson AZ 85716 Volume IV i XLR8 and GT 180 PART 1 This spring my tax refund afforded me an opportunity to finally latch onto one of those exotic toys I ve never been crazy enough to get before the fabled GT 180 graphics board from The Micromint Inc The GT 180 is an add on intelligent graph
238. was able to KILL a file within this diskkDISK drive and I was able to update files with DOS Subjects 37 DOS Subjects Volume IV i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i my Superscripsit software package files that were already resident on the diskDISK logical drive Am I misunderstanding the use of the software write protect function or does it not apply to diskDIS K drives If you feel I have encountered a bug please let me know what other documentation you would need to look into this problem My diskDISK software came on a disk ette with serial number 200208 and dis plays version 1 0 1 on the screen when DDFORM or DD are executed These files were dated 11 15 83 the same date of the diskette Additionally I applied the patch DDFORMS3 FIX from TMQ IL page 102 in order to change diskDISK to use the new LDOS 5 3 date time stamp ing mechanism My RSHARD software came on a diskette with serial number 00141 and a date of 02 11 87 The last entry in the README TXT file is dated 10 20 87 Besides a Model 4D computer I also own a cassette based Model III computer I have been saving to upgrade the Model III to a disk based machine I already have the expanded memory 48K installed as well as an RS 232C board as I had exten sively used this machine prior to purchas ing the Model 4D I would like to try adding internal 3 5 drives 2 to the Model III computer but am concerned as to whe
239. y has a Model IH cassette machine And I only have the 4P or can use the 4D Is there a way of wiring the Modcl III to the 4P using the 5Opin Bus Or any other way Or is there a cassette Jack on the 4D I have a friend that has one but says there isn t one But he doesn t know much about hardware Thanks again for the other ideas Ido have a lot of Utilities to make the conversion once I get it over to disk DOS Subjects 22 DOS Subjects Volume IV i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume V i Fm Jim Beard 71675 566 The cassette jack is a 9 pin DIN connector identical to those used in some stereo systems This is a circular connector with the pins inside The simplest thing to do is to buy a cassette cable which has the DIN con nector on one end and three phono jacks for the tape unit on the other Then go behind the computer tip it up and look for the jack to plug in the cable On most regular Model 4 s it s on the left rear of the machine facing toward the rear near the line cord The 4P doesn t have a cassette jack j The simplest way to wire a cassette Model MI to a Model 4 is through the RS 232 using a null modem cable With cassette VIDTEX on one end and LCOMM on the other you could do some things If the Model III doesn t have RS 232 you are out of luck I m convinced that the way to gois to use the cassette input for the Model 4 Bring the cable and tape unit from the Mod
240. y previous clip xxx Velcro R xxx front of monitor message and I may not need to build an extender after all In any case the Curtis Clip attaches to the monitor like that shown above It s an inverted L bracket attached at the top of the monitor and extending down the side The second piece fits in like those mechanical wall mounted can open ers so it can swivel easily In this draw ing it would swivel toward you until all you saw was its end or away from you so the entire second part would be alongside the monitor There s a plastic spring clip to hold the paper to be typed The mirror image of this drawing i e mounted on left side of monitor is also possible Does that clarify how it attaches to the monitor Again thanks for your sugges tions on this Without all the suggestions I d still be stumped Fm Gary Phillips Adam You re most welcome Thanks for sharing so many of your own ideas from time to time My desk is an L shaped secretary desk with a lowered wing for the computer and typewriter and works fine with the 4P on that wing However the A2000 is 18 deep plus keyboard AND mouse Now I ve got a problem finding space for all that too The typewriter wing where the 4P stands now is only 18 deep total and I m not planning to give up the 4P yet anyway NOT TO SCALE Double Sided Dilemma Fm Robin Repas 76407 3336 I am look ing for some
241. yboard connector there should be no problem That s fortunate because it would be wise to test the GT 180 for proper operation first with the included software The other The Hardware Corner 66 The Hardware Corner Volume IV 1 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Fall 1989 Volume IV i two base addresses will clobber the Model 4 s RS 232 and printer port assignments The documentation consists of a 27 page folder that adequately describes the GT 180 hardware installation schematics and theory of operation The manual for the GT 180 s Hitachi HD63484 graphics processor is included The discussion in the manual is necessarily detailed and it s aimed at the engineer but is the only source of information for the programmer as the Micromint documentation doesn t go into programming the board Prior experience with complicated display sys tems is helpful to understanding the Hitachi documentation The GT 180 comes with a demonstration disk and can be ordered with a version of Borland s Turbo Modula 2 and Graphix Toolbox specially configured for use on the 64180 CPU and GT 180 Being in tended for use with the SB 180 this soft ware functions under CP M and so should work under Montezuma CP M on the Model 4 The Graphix Toolbox is a set of Modula 2 procedures used to program the GT 180 There is no support for program ming the board from other languages or assembler As anaside Borland s manual claims

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