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11 198304 micro cornucopia

1. set form length GETNUM GETNUM PRECIS 0 gt WHILE PREMIT REPEAT 0 PREMIT Set vertical tabs 27 PREMIT 66 PREMIT BEGIN CR Enter tab lt er gt ends GETNUM PRECIS 0 gt 12 WHILE PREMIT REPEAT 0 PREMIT gt mew 18 Micro Cornucopia Number 11 April 1983 that you have a PREMIT function that passes characters to your printer in the same manner as EMIT works with the console a GETNUM routine similar to one described in an earlier column anda multi branch CASE statement The UNIFORTH CASE statement ac tually works better with random choices the Eaker CASE used by Laboratory Mi crosystems and described in FORTH Di mensions would be a better choice for this kind of menu PRECIS is a conver sion flag and is used here only to test if a number was entered You can replace it with an explicit number entry and check instead of a carriage return Next column I ve read several new FORTH books Introduction to FORTH Discover FORTH and Programming in FORTH and will review their good and bad points Hint Starting FORTH is still the best FORTH text The monthly application will show how to make your printer function as a typewriter with a memory Until then good luck and FORTH words EPSON MX 80 Review by Arne Henden Model MX 80 Manufacturer Epson America Inc 3415 Kashiwa Street Torrance CA 90505 List Price MX 80 595 MX 80 F T 695 When I
2. Indexed version of copy copy to from chat tol from int i 1 0 1 toli fron 1 to il fron 1 12 The unary works with one item opera tor takes the contents of answer to be an address and fetches the contents of that address Its opposite the unary amp fetches the address of a variable char query 20 char answer gets query answer amp query if answer Y return These lines of code fetch a string of characters from the console gets query and to a return if the first char acter is a Y We could have said if query 0 Y or even if query Y Query 0 and answer yield the same character Using the statement query 1 is called indexing while answer 1 is called using a pointer Either way works but indexing requires more computer operations See figure 1 for a copy rou tine in pointer and indexed versions In the pointer version the addresses passed to the function are used directly in the comparison while from the transfer and in in crementing This compiles to a few short lines of code BUYING A BIG BOARD Let me put it together for you The index example requires an extra variable i plus the overhead of index ad dress calculation for both the testing and transfer I compiled both versions of the copy program Aztec C generates 36 instruc tions pointer and
3. bzQ base before nil base after nil This newly created node has no branches NEW current before current would adda branch to the tree Be careful when you begin using dy namic variables NEW currant NEW currant will create two new variables of type word but one will be inaccessible Much of what we ve covered in this installment may take a while to sink in it did for me The best way to learn a lan guage is to actually write programs At the start you ll make a lot of mistakes and the results may not be what was in tended but after a while you ll find that success becomes more frequent Get a text and or a book of PASCAL application programs and use them to expand on what s been presented here Next time we ll look at loop and con trol structures EEE Micro Cornucopia Number 11 April 1983 23 KayPro Column By David Thompson The first impression you get when you look at small systems like the Kay Pro is that all systems should have the small drives I mean 8 seems large and clumsy compared with the little disks and drives However after fighting a flaky drive or disk for a few hours you learn that with the smaller drives you need to back up your work about every hour or sooner and to back up the backups The KayPro may have been more prone to drive problems than some The drives are Tandons certainly not a name to be taken lightly
4. show 03H in all attribute positions which is the default attribute of standard ASCII TNT The easiest way to change the at tributes of the screen is to return to bank 1 main memory and do the following Boot up CP M and type ESC G attr The table below lists the attribute in AS CII that will be assigned with the attr character chosen For example ESC G1 will produce underlined ASCII for every letter typed The attribute byte will re main in effect until terminated even across lines and must be reset by typing ASCII Character Function Normal Underlined Blinking Underlined Blinking Rev Rev Underlined Rev Blinking Rev Blinking Under Normal Graph Underlined Graph Blinking Graph Under Blinking Graph Rev Graphics Rev Underlined Graph Rev Blinking Graph Rev Blink Under Graph Another way of thinking of this is to consider the least significant four bits of the attribute byte see Figure 1 Figure 1 II Attribute Bits o i Reverse Graphies 0 If Attribute mode8 through F is select ed graphics are displayed according to the current Graphics Mode selected To select the Graphics Mode input ESC M mode gt This is done the same as the at tribute setting describ d above There are four modes in the Graphics Mode listed below Graphics Modes 0 Block Graphics Mode 1 Bar Graphics Mode 1 2 Bar Graphics Mode 2 3 ASC
5. COMPRESS 0N B 5 2 COMPRESS OFF 6 3 DSTRIKE ON 3 T d DSTRIKE OFF 3 8 5 s EMPHASIZE 0N MEM 9 6 EMPHASIZE 0FF 10 7 FORMLENGTH ii 11 8 HTABS 12 9 VTABS 33 13 10 VSPACE pe 14 CASEND REPEAT 15 58 Micro Cornucopia Number 11 April 1983 7415 Leahy Road New Carrollton Md 20784 One of the highlights of the MX 80 is its manual For once a Japanese firm had the foresight to contract with an Ameri can consulting company to write its Eng lish language manual David Lien Compusoft Inc San Diego has writ ten an excellent manual that covers all of the commands without assuming that you are an Epson service representative It is 200 872 x 11 spiral bound pages in length and reminds me of Starting FORTH when reading it Brodie and Lien write like they are brothers The MX 80 will print at 5 8 5 10 and 17 cpi in standard italic and sub su perscript G modes Each mode is sup ported in single double and quadruple strike Graphics resolution is 80 dots in with very good registration To enter the graphics mode the user issues the graphics command plus the number of horizontal dots to print The printer then accepts that many bytes of data before switching back to character mode Each byte controls 8 wires of the print head meaning that you print 8 lines of hor izontal dots at once If you don t pur chase the Graftrax G option 64 block graphic characte
6. cussed the method of storage with a rec ommendation for pure string represen tation But to the user data needs to be presented as alphanumeric numeric date and tabular to name just a few b Edit checks Each data type must be able to have restrictions added so that patently illegal data is rejected Edit checks cannot idiot proof a data file but it can reject the dumb errors c Physical data storage Will the file fit in RAM or on disc This opens up a whole Pandora s box can we afford the volatility of RAM storage of a data file in order to gain speed Or should we ac cept a speed loss to put the file on disc Can a Z80 with 64K RAM with a disc drive or two with say a meg of storage manage a respectable data base at all If I get the demand hint write me or the editor maybe I ll try this subject as the next article Micro Cornucopia Number 11 April 1983 15 WHAT S NEW The thirteenth letter of the Greek alphabet is NU The SCULL TEK H19MK101 TERMINAL LOGIC BOARD is NEW 5 100 OR STAND ALONE MODELS A 4 MHZ MICRO PROCESSOR BASED CONTROL SYSTEM USING STATE OF THE ART COMPONENTS This board measures x 10 and uses less than 1 amp of 5 volts and around 30 milliamps of 12 volts 4 MHZ Z 80 based system 25th line setup programming Supports up to 8 KB s of program storage EIA RS 232 C compatible terminal interface Allows display of 24 lines of 80 characters Programmable bau
7. 265 Wroe Ave Dayton OH 45406 Editor s note Anyone wanting to contribute to the Pas cal column should get in contact with John _Jones John is a really neat person who s worth contacting even if you are just interest ed in Pascal Ls Your other offers Rob are very exciting They are great projects See this issue for Trevor Marshall s versions of these same things Dear Editor Horrors Murphy has struck The arti cle I wrote on putting a LST in your BIOS issue 10 page 4 hasa problem It appears that SYSGEN ignores inputs from a SUBMIT program so that the SUB file I included with the article does not work The easy fix is to remove the XSUB from the SUBMIT You will have to do more input during the BIOS incorpora tion because you have to enter data from the keyboard rather than having it passed by SUBMIT Otherwise the proc ess is the same I hope no one was unduly inconve nienced Richard Barnett 604 Robinson St West Lafayette IN 47906 Editor s note Someone should try the original SUB file under SUPERSUB That might work better than SUBMIT Anyway thanks for the up date and thanks again for the super article Dear Editor Keep up the good work Don t let any one try to make you into a Byte etc I am renewing even though I am building an S100 board You have so much really helpful information including a lot of hardware articles that I can t get else where C Senger 11309 Markab D
8. 30h 39h will also work providing your numeric strings are right justified The second problem with numbers is that different languages and implemen tations store them differently My Pas cal Z compiler stores integers as two byte words This limits integers to values smaller than 32363 a very real limita tion when writing accounting programs My old North Star BASIC interpreter stores numerics as BCD representations Thus operating system incompatibili ties aside the two languages cannot read each other s numbers not good But both languages will allow you to convert numerics to strings and store them that way The conclusion to the zip problem is that numeric data should always be con verted to and stored as strings Now for the second real problem field dates Naturally Dave will want to go through his file each issue and drop those cads who have the effrontery not to renew their subscriptions Editor s note Give it to em Rex In data base ese that means make a new fileremember backups and select all records where expiration date is be fore after smaller or larger than xx xx xx Not terribly difficult to conceptual ize or to implement But again the standardization bug a boo Christmas may come on any of the following dates 25 Dec 1982 militarese note the ra tional ascending December 25 1982 conventional but not convenient for programmers 25 12 82 French 12 25 82 Yankee
9. COMPILATION AND EXECUTION AZTEC FOR CP M 199 Special price for Micro C subscribers 149 MANX software systems Box 55 Shrewsbury N J 07701 201 780 4004 Also available for Apple DOS HDOS CP M 86 PC DOS INTRODUCING One of the finest implementations of the FORTH language Field tested and reliable UNIFORTH is available for Z 80 and most 16 bit systems using 8 disk drives As a task UNIFORTH is compatible with and supports all features and file types of the CP M CDOS MS DOS and DEC operating systems As an operating system UNIFORTH will function stand alone on most commercial microcomputers The FORTH 79 Standard language has been extended with over 500 new words that provide full screen and line oriented editors array and string handling enhanced disk and terminal and an excellent assembler Detailed reference manuals supply complete documentation for programming and system Operation in an easy to understand conversational styie using numerous examples Optional features include an excellent floating point package with al transcendental functions logs tangents etc the MetaFORTH cross compiler printer plotting and CP M file transfer utilities astronomical and amateur radio applica tions etc Compare these features with any other FORTH on the market Speed and efficiency Variety of options Ease of use 9 Quality of documentation You ll find UNIFORTH is
10. anything to folks who don t know you have something to sell Ican count on 10 hands and 10 feet all the times I ve invested time in a project that I didn t finish Usually the problem was that I became too busy on another and later equally unfinished project I can count on one hand all the projects that I have actually finished and tried marketing and I can count on that same hand all the successful projects In fact once my projects started being successful my completion rate went to nearly 10096 and the success rate went way up too Complete complete complete I can t overemphasize the importance of completing something really giving it your best shot and then covering your eyes and holding it out to see if someone grabs it If folks don t grab it despite a good presentation to an appropriate audience audience and presentation are books unto themselves then it s time to tackle a new project But look at the new proj ect carefully Use the knowledge you gained from the unsuccessful project when you make your next selection Take full advantage of the flop Find some folks who are successful in the field show them what you did how you marketed it and to whom I ve seen beautiful products that wouldn t sell be cause the ads the literature and the documentation were absolutely horrid The printed materials were after thoughts for the designer but they were the purchaser s only impression of the pro
11. but it appears that Tandon isn t taking as much care manu facturing and aligning these drives as they do with their 8 I ve had a number of dealers comment not favorably about the Tandon 100s Anyone who has experience realigning the little units should get in touch with me as soon as possible There are a lot of people des perately waiting for such info On the other hand there are many things blamed on drives that may not be drive related and in fact the following fix for drive errors doesn t involve the drive at all Drive Fix The clock to the 1793 was slow with respect to the processor by about 40 nanoseconds and that made setup and hold times critical It turns out that with a little heat the times got too critical So the mod Remove U87 74L5390 Cut pin 9 or bend out also bend out pin 1 Jumper pin 1 to pin 6 Jumper pin 12 to pin 15 Put the 741 5390 back into the socket making sure that pin 9 and pin 1 are not making contact with anything If you bent out pin 9 make sure that it is not touching the resistor lead next to the socket Be sure that you don t get any solder down on the parts of the pins that go back into the socket This mod is now being done at the KayPro factory so you might take a close look around 087 for signs of jumpering If there isn t any and you are getting drive errors then this mod is probably just what the system ordered New ROMs We are selling new character and m
12. different types Variant records in which a portion of the record can have different components will be considered in a fu ture article TYPE entry RECORD date integer name array 1 20 of char ssno array 1 8 of char salary real end Most PASCALs have an additional pre defined data type STRING The type declaration for STRING would look like this TYPE STRING RECORD currentlength 0 max value array 1 max of char end Default max is usually 80 characters and absolute max is usually 255 JRT PASCAL allows strings up to 65 535 characters since the dynamic length is stored as a 16 bit value name limited to 30 chars VAR name STRING 30 use default length of 80 chars address STRING Strings can be read written com pared and handled much like other data Individual characters or sub strings can be manipulated by subscripting into the char array and most compilers will have a set of pre defined procedures and functions to simplify string handling In many applications the size of the database to be handled will be unknown or variable With most other languages the software will have to be written to allow for the maximum possible number of data items For instance a BASIC pro gram for analyzing a year s checkbook entries might have the statement nnDIM C3 12 100 22 Micro Cornucopia Number 11 April 1983 Eprom Programming Software for the Big Board Il feat
13. is the only line which must be repaired Pin 37 may be left as modified U53 pin4 BANK 2 ENABLE via RAS 2 To U53 pmlo BANK ENABLE via RAS 3 053 pin 13 BANK 3 ENABLE via RASI ie 2 DSKAC O 412 Memory Bank Select Circuit Note Bank 1 video RAM and ROM circuitry left intact 4 Micro Cornucopia Number 11 April 1983 OT5V al Pm SS Fa SP OF Tanta lum Polystyrene AT pf 5 VOLTAGE 1 75 when operating 47K 25K gok ias Adjust ars 4 57 Double Density Disk Controller to suit 1771 socket 5V Note Except for those lines marked lt ie pins 21 5K 26 31 17 18 33 25 all the WD1791 pins are Tantalum l 0uF routed right to the 40 pin DIP plug which goes TA to the 1771 socket 5 Cut track from U112 pin 1 on top of board before the plated through hole Connect U112 pin 1 to U111 pin 13 The drive power signal is now derived di rectly from the drive select enable line leaving pin 8 free for the CACHE mem ory bank select Adding Extra Banks of 64K RAM 1 We need to disconnect the select lines to U53 First isolate U53 pin 10 and U53 pin 4 by cutting the tracks from them between U53 and U54 Then cut the tracks from U53 pin 13 and U53 pin 1 be tween U53 and U54 2 The multiplexer to drive A7 of the 64K RAMs must be freed It is currently used as a buffer Cut track between pins 10 and 11 of U59 underneath the board and from
14. 2 1 5 amps noncomposite separate sync input A sync separator schematic is available It is also possible to mount a single 8 disk drive or two of the new slim line 8 disk drives in this enclosure All units are used and have been 10076 tested Shipping weight 35 ASCII Keyboard used with enclosure to match above monitor 77 keys 7 lightad pushbuttons on off sw Requires 5 volts DC Schematic included In cludes shift tab control and cursor control keys Size 19 x 4 x 572 The 995 Programmers Bundle offer good through July 15 1983 For a limited time we offer a unique software set Menu Plus Developed by Capacity Inc CP M complex ities are replaced with single keystroke invocation of common programs Micro WYL Infoworld 11 15 82 called this editor per fect for writing in nearly any programming language Tarbell BASIC Extended BASIC allows labels proce dures with local variables reassignment of I O devices Disk Inspector Examine Modify any area of diskette Fullscreen editor for diskettes competitors are 75 to 150 View Access examine and edit logical records in a file All of above programs plus several in public domain for 99 95 5 or more copies for 69 95 Institutional licenses available To order send cheque to Overbeek Enterprises PO Box 726 Elgin Illinois 60120 COD or MasterCard Visa Call 312 697 8420 between 9am and 5pm CST ALL ITEMS SENT VIA UPS COD
15. 48k RAM or more USER S MANUALS ONLY 3 00 ea BUY ALL THREE FOR 49 95 Send check or money order to 6708 Melrose Los Angeles Callfornia 90038 L A Software California residents add sales tax CP M is a trademark of Digital Research Copyright 1982 L A Software For Sale Bare Big Boards parts disk drives in stock Integrand 70007 vert ical drive cabinet with power supply Room for 2 or 3 drives amp Big Board 275 Stock horizontal drive cabinet with Borchert Power supply Room for 2 horizontal drives and Big board 250 The Electronics Shop 131 North Decatur Olympia WA 98502 206 357 6301 206 357 7400 CBBS TECHNICAL TIPS Burning 2716s on the BB II The following will let you program 2716s on the BBII without modifying the board Doug Durland s article in issue 10 pointed out the problems the BB II has programming the 2716 Pin 21 does need to remain at 5V during a read opera tion Jumper pin 21 to WR not Ed note appears to be from U 42 pin 9 which will always be high during chip reads If the program reads the 2716 with pin 21 jum pered to WR not and then waits for you to change the jumper to the OE VPP line then everything should work fine You can use a similar compare algorithm to determine if a byte should be pro grammed to be skipped but in this case the comparison must take place between the RAM image of the ROM and the new data Doug also mentioned tha
16. 80 syste including Apple Il with SOFTCARD Osborne 1 IBM PC with Baby oe Radio Shack and Televideo Distribution Media Diskettes 8 SSSD format amp most 5 formats The Electric Blackboard documentation includes a step by step learning guide command summary quick reference card and customization notes The configuration package _ includes user customizable source code In addition to checks and money orders we accept VISA and MASTERCARD Trademarks of Zilog Digital Research Cromemco Xedex and Microsoft Data Base Handlers By Rex Buddenberg The following is a view of file man agers in general and some of the things you may want to consider when you check out a package There are a number of general purpose Data Base Management Systems avail able today The market is similar to the word processing market a couple years ago with new entries showing up daily Most are known as file managers rather than data base managers a data base is made up of a number of files because most of these handle only one file at a time Data Compatibility Most of us have some sort of file sys tem already either under a file man ager for which you are looking for an im provement or under a BASIC or Pascal program Most of us are not really interested in retyping that data it was tedious enough the first time Similarly the file manager that we buy today will probably not be the one we use a c
17. 88 instructions in dexed Q C generates 23 instructions pointer and 72 instructions indexed Q C creates fewer instructions because it does calls to its runtime library for fetches and compares Aztec generates inline code C Compiler Wish List I wish all compilers would come with trace option like the one in Q C A pro gram compiled in trace mode spits out the name on entering and exiting a func tion Ialso wish that Aztec would provide a Z80 runtime library with the Z80 version of the compiler You have to create it yourself using a giant SUBMIT file It compiles and links a zillion little routines so there is no way to get the library to gether using two single density drives This irks me I pay 45 00 a year for up dates and they can t even send one extra disk along with the proper library on it READ THIS FIRST I am experi enced at electronics assembly and am set up to produce finished and tested Big Boards you can be proud of If yours arrives with any defective parts I ll test it and find the problem Negotiating for spares is between you and Digital Research Normal assembly time is about two weeks Total charge is 100 or 60 if you have already bought the kit with the sockets installed postage Include 5 extra for return Idaho residents add 3 sales tax I also repair botched Big Boards for a price to be determined upon inspection Send your kit or have Digital Researc
18. Cornucopia Number 11 April 1983 The Get Together We are already getting calls from folks all over the U S who are planning to come to the second annual Semi Official Get Together here in Bend Oregon July 30 and 31 The standard questions are What s the weather like in July Where s the nearest airport and Do you have a Holiday Inn Well the following should give you some idea and if you ll call or write we ll send out some more details in four color Weather Summer days are usually 85 to 95 and very dry not muggy We are at about 4000 feet elevation between the high Cascades and the high desert so it doesn t get sweaty sticky hot In fact 90 feels about the same as 80 does in the valley The night time lows range between 35 and 45 with occasional frosts So bring a sweater you can put over your warm weather clothes If you plan to do some backpacking in to the Three Sisters Wilderness twenty five minutes drive from the house bring warm clothing and warm sleeping bags Transportation The nearest commercial airport is Red mond just 13 miles from here It used to take us 40 minutes to get to the Portland Airport from our house in Portland It takes us 20 minutes to get to the Red mond Airport Republic Airlines flies into Redmond There is also a daily shuttle van between Bend and Portland International Air port It gets to the Portland airport at 9 a m and leaves Portland for the
19. FORTH uses BC for the In terpreter Pointer instead of HL If you are not using the Z80 specific registers then you won t need to save all of the registers upon interrupt UNIFORTH uses almost every available register which is why all of them are saved and restored by the high level interrupt han dler Using the MX 80 The MX 80 is perhaps the best dollar value in printers today and the recently introduced FX 80 will extend Epson s domination of the low end printer mar ket Screens 1 through 3 show how you can set most of the parameters for the MX 80 from FORTH This menu driven program is de signed around the basic MX 80 and should be usable with minor changes if you have GrafTrax installed As you can see user friendly interfaces are not diffi cult in FORTH These routines assume EPSON SETUP UTILITY add 128 then emit to printer 24 PREMIT 09 PREMIT PREMIT PREMIT PREMIT PREMIT PREMIT 27 PREMIT 71 27 PREMIT 72 27 PREMIT 69 27 PREMIT 70 we we we we we we we we 13 Enter spacing in 1 72 inch increments 12 single 14 GETNUM PREMIT 27 PREMIT 50 PREMIT gt Uu u v n 2 FORMLENGTH 2T PREMIT 67 PREMIT CR HTABS Enter tab lt er gt ends VTABS ees Enter form length default 66 PRECIS 8 0 lt IF 66 THEN PREMIT set horizontal tabs 27 PREMIT 68 PREMIT BEGIN CR EPSON SETUP UTILITY 2
20. Some systems can handle straight text files from disk Look also for the ability to route output to disc as well as the printer This will allow you to turn your data file into another pre formatted data file ready for the new system Look fora file manager that will take input data from 1 the keyboard they all do 2 a modem port 3 a disc file by far the most important for our mobility discus sion My prototype system lacked some of the above features but I was able to get around most of them An example I had a file system that I had labored mightily to write in Pascal The records were stored as a file of rec ords which was a text file but sans car riage returns and line feeds The data system that I wanted to transfer the file to needed straight text files plus a leader character Addition ally the file needed a header record that contained the record length and file size I transferred the file into the correct format added the header record with DDT and copied into a properly format ted file and presto It cost me a Sunday afternoon but that was alot quicker than rewriting the program or reentering the data Plus now know how Please specify desired disk format Loose Ends Data mobility is one aspect of a file manager or data base system that is im portant Several other subjects also should be understood both by users and programmers Some issues a Different data types I have dis
21. all of the implementations of PASCAL deviate from the standard and one another enough that there cannot be a truly gen eral text or reference Data Types One of the strengths of PASCAL is its variety of data types The pre defined simple data types are INTEGER REAL CHAR and BOOL EAN Integers are 16 bit signed numbers in the range 32767 32767 When written as constants no decimal point is allowed 0 3 24 4 769 Real or float ing point numbers are implementation dependent in their range and precision Precision can be from as few as 6 to as many as 14 digits When written the val 6245 Columbia Ave St Louis MO 63139 ue MUST have at least one digit preced ing the required decimal point 0 1 13 809E 12 6 4 Boolean variables are the objects of re lational expressions and can take on the values TRUE or FALSE Type CHAR is used for 8 bit characters such as B I C 6 Some PASCALs have extensions pro viding additional simple data types For example BYTE is an 8 bit integer in PAS CAL MT and LONG_INTEGER is 32 bit value in PASCAL M The above simple data types are fixed in their properties The other data types available have some of their properties defined by the programmer Scalars A scalar or enumerated type is defined by a list of all the possible values for that type TYPE day mon tue wed thu fri sat sun The enumerated values become or dinal constants of th
22. birth of yet another BB I with the prodi gious name of ACME There goes my favorite Saturday morning cartoon Thanks for all the assistance your fine magazine and readers have provided Jordan Freedman 93 Vine Street Newton MA 02167 Letters continued on page 20 Micro Cornucopia Number 11 April 1983 What s wrong with CP M Hard to operate Too many commands and options Too many ways perfectly good programs can fail Not enough specifically helpful messages It needs OKARA CP M user interfaces also called front ends shells or menu drivers All of them save one were mastodons slow clumsy inflexible disk hungry hard to install and overpriced Their buyers usually tried them sighed shelved them and forgot them OKARA on the other hand is a gazelle Once you have tried OKARA you will never willingly go back to bare CP M Why Because OKARA is Incredibly fast It operates at memory speed L Automatic and nearly invisible in operation O Flexible and programmable You decide how it communicates and just how much control it exercises O Immediately usable by the most casual beginner yet powerful enough for the most demanding OEM In some ways more capable than CP M 3 0 yet it runs on CP M 2 2 Field proven in many real world applications Low priced 39 95 This is the same first quality software package we used to sell for 150 We now proudl
23. configura tion of simple or hierarchical menus You can hide the complexities of CP M and allow single keystroke invocation of 2995 Each of these packages represents a true bargain If for any reason you cannot install a package successfully on your system or if you find that a package does not meet your needs we will refund the 29 95 Offer holds for 30 days from date of shipment Micro WYL A powerful Z80 CP M editor Tired of trying to use ED under CP M This is the editor developed by Realworld Software Inc and reviewed in Infoworld 11 15 82 Here are just a few unsolicited quotes from our cus tomers Micro WYL is undoubtedly the hottest bargain on the market Thank you thank you thank you This editor is perfect for writing in nearly any programming language I your programs It s a user s dream Both beginners and experi enced operators will find Menu Plus a significant enhancement You do not have to be a programmer to install or tailor Menu Plus on your system In just a few minutes you can easily create whatever new menus you desire with a text editor Our com petitors offer products in the 75 150 range We certainly invite comparison of this product with any comparable system in terms of features or user friendliness In terms of price there is no comparison Disk Inspector A full screen editor for disks that runs on Z80 CP M systems Have you ever been unable to read a file due to a bad
24. found some fairly dense felt and a leather punch and made little circles about 1 8 diameter and 1 8 thick I re duced these to 1 16 thick thickness is critical if they re too thick you get bad sectors too and rounded the edges slightly Then I removed the plastic pad assembly from the head load arm don t lift the arm too high scraped off the old pad and used cyano acrylate glue any good glue should do as long as it doesn t impregnate the felt to install the new pads Bad sectors went from 1 per 8 hours computing to 1 per 48 hours computing andIuse some Wabash disks Andy Robinson 73 Conroy Cres 102 Guelph Ont CANADA N1G 2V5 Cutting Restores Inoticed my drives Siemens FDD200 8 were doing random restores to track 0 during file I O I lowered the step but that didn t help However the problem stopped when I made a patch to PFM At F7A5 there is a time delay which takes 44 microseconds By lengthening this delay I cured the problem Change FTA5 from CD A8 F7 to E6 Call new pause Add FTE6 C5 PUSH BC 06 20 LD B 20H 9 10 FE DJNZ to 9 C1 POP BC FTEC C9 RET This little routine takes 18 micro seconds at 2 5 MHz Bob Felton 4803 Neblina Dr Carlsbad CA 92008 Simple 50 Hz video mod Using the BB I and KayPro in coun tries with 50 Hz mains is a problem be cause of the jittery screen caused by the beat between the 60 Hz vertical and the
25. in Micro C 9 I too had a bad experience with them Af ter sending me a faulty VERSAFLOPPY II double density disk controller board that was supposed to be assembled and TESTED they informed me that the in warranty repairs would take 2 4 weeks Well after they received my board they sat on it until the warranty period ex pired then sent it to SD Systems for re pairs 20 Micro Cornucopia Number 11 April 1983 SD Systems stated correctly that the warranty period had expired and thus they charged Jade for the repairs Jade in turn put the charge directly on my VISA card without my permission then proceeded to send the board back to me by UPS ground I had requested and paid accordingly for the board to be sent UPS Blue Label Air This whole fiasco took over three months and I was left with repair charges and a large tele phone bill I now have an oscilloscope which I fi nally purchased because of some more problems with the VF II board so I can state quite confidently the the PLL circuit is screwed up About those Teletype power supplies from B G Micro I bought the identical supply for the identical 67 50 from Bul let Electronics in Texas but they sent me the 24v modification parts the AC line connectors schematics modification in structions and a theory of operation ab solutely free They also promised to send me a service manual for the supply when they received them That s what I call a g
26. is defined by RO in conjunction with the other registers From the timing dia gram above you can see that given the Horizontal total and the first three ele ments the 6845 can deduce the scan de lay Note that all the timing values above are the values actually encountered in the ROM for the 7x9 character set and are defined in character times not real time The final timing is determined by the clock frequency 16 MHz Suggested Changes Now for some practical help in config uring your monitor We used monitors initially set up for 15 750 Hz horizontal sweep Needless to say this was not compatible with the 18 600 Hz required by the BB II The first thing to do is slowly increase RO horizontal total By tuning the hor izontal sweep rate on the CRT monitor we could keep up with the slowly chang ing timing Each increase in RO made the characters slightly smaller more charac ters in the same scan time right until we had 80 characters displayed on the screen Problem as RO is increased the front porch R2 needs to be adjusted to keep the display on the screen Increasing R2 moves the display to the left decreasing R2 moves it to the right These are the only changes we needed to make You may find that the sync width needs to be adjusted as well Do not alter R1 horizontal display do so will require changes to other areas in the BB II monitor ROM since PFM is counting on displaying 80 charact
27. pin 10 of U59 between U59 and U58 on top of board Cut track from pin 9 of U59 next to R13 Now link the 33 ohm resistor that was connected to pin U59 pin 9 to the plated through hole just be low pin U56 pin 8 This hole used to lead to U59 pin 10 A buffer is not required 3 The 64K RAM chips only require a 5 volt supply All the supplies must be re routed and the old 5 volt supply lines now become A7 Remove C1 C8 Cut the tracks from each of C78 C85 to pin 9 of each column of the RAM array Link pin 9 of each column to the next 8 links ora daisy chain Connect U59 9 to U46 pin 9 with a 33 ohm resistor un derneath the board Connect A15 and Precomp Adjust 12V A14to the multiplexer by linking U59 pin 10 to U55 pin 1 and U59 pin 11 to U55 pin 2 4 The 12 and 5 supplies to the RAM array must be cut The 8 tracks to the rows of the RAM array that carry them must be cut To be sure that you have not missed any it is wise to short pins 1 and 8 of U1 U13 and U26 and to place a 5V MOS protection diode type MPT5E or 5 6V 5 watt zener if an is not available between pins 16 and 8 of any one of the RAMs 5 The new 5 volt supply can conve niently be connected by soldering an RF choke 6 hole type between pin 8 of U39 and the 5 rail adjacent to U53 6 Extra BANK SELECT gating must now be provided An extra 74LS10 is added to the board between U8 and U9 to provide the additional fun
28. sector Have you ever erased the wrong file Disk Inspector acts as a full screen editor for diskettes You can simply watch as sectors are displayed on the screen in both character and hex formats When you wish to make the display pause touch the spacebar If you wish to alter a sector itis a simple matter to move the cursor over the appropriate character alter it and have the sector rewritten Recover an erased file Modify a directory entry Clean up a directory Utilize the CP M Auto Load feature Create multiple directory entries Read and modify non CP M diskettes Note Disk Inspector requires an 80x24 screen on your CRT Micro Cornucopia Number 11 April 1983 find myself looking for excuses to use Micro WYL and certainly have no hesitation in recommending it to anyone whose require ments match the capabilities of this inventive piece of software From a review in Infoworld 11 15 82 Now you can have the convenience of WYLBUR on your micro CP M is a registered trademark of Digital Research Inc O 8 SSSD D Apple Softcard KAYPRO 15 O NEC 5 O Zerox 820 Amount 29 95 for Menu Plus 29 95 for Micro WYL 29 95 for Disk Inspector 2 for postage amp handling Total Northstar 5 DD 0 Advantage DJ Horizon O Morrow Micro Decision O ALTOS Series 5 Televideo TS 802 0 Osborne O Superbrain LLL State Make your check payable to Overbeek Enterprises P O Box 726 Elgin IL 60120 To order C O
29. superior Prices start at 35 Call or write for our free brochure Unified Software Systems P O Box 2644 New Carrollton MD 20784 301 552 1295 w n 5 w Y gt 5 e 5 9 w B s ne m 2 gt 5 A ti
30. the disk which is used as ex ample in the manual And as if that wasn t enough the program has a HELP function that you can get on the screen at any time Printing your model is slick You can have up to 10 lines of headings at 80 characters each Underline and blank lines are available and if your model ex ceeds the width of your printer it breaks it up into separate pages You can also print the worksheet which is a list of your commands This is very handy for debugging a complex model What it doesn t do very well There is an INPUT function where by you can create a model but use the Micro Cornucopia Number 11 April 1983 CP M 2 2 License and disk for Scull Tek Big Board Reconfiguration of above for Ferguson Big Board or Xerox 820 CP M manuals C DIFF file compare utility for CP M With an assortment of public domain utilities to fill the disk Wabash 8 inch SSSD diskettes P O Box 1136 Liberty NC 27298 word input instead of an amount in each cell You can store this model and use copies of it to make additional mod els The problem is that you have to use their editing feature to replace the in puts with amounts Editing is awk ward First you have to hit the D key 5 times to delete the word input then hit the T key to insert the amount This is really a drag Also there is no way to take the re sults from one model a
31. you who were there thank you for coming It was a pleasure meeting you And lest I forget Jim Tyson was there distributing JRT Pascal version 3 I un derstand that sales were so brisk he ran out of some disk formats on Saturday So it s coming it s coming CP M and 256K of RAM There is a lot of interest in the new ver sion of CP M especially because of the added speed you get with disk buffering etc To take full advantage of version 3 you need more RAM and the BB I is ideally suited to expansion to 256K In this issue there is an article by Trevor Marshall covering his design for 256K and double density among other interesting things Trevor is using a BB I with a 160 Mbyte streaming tape as a bulletin board In issue 12 we will have a follow up article by Art Boehm covering very thoroughly how he came up with 4 banks of 64K chips Cheap Drives Unfortunately by the time Micro C 10 hit the streets BG Micro had sold all its 801s and by the time my comments is a trademark of Digital Research 6708 Metrose Los Angeles California 90038 213 932 0817 about their power supply made it into print they had sold out of those Howev er for those of you who can use the slightly larger not the standard R ver sion Shugart 801 there is still a real steal on the market Cascade Electronics of Randolph MN 55065 is selling Shugart 800s for 99 00 These are like the full blown 801s with the
32. 4k bytes of user storage per disk per side 5 users have up to 185k bytes of user storage per disk per side Dual Density software includes DDINIT COM a double density disk initializa tion and verification program Options 8 formats Format an entire disk or just system tracks Selection of sector skew Option to verify Choice of drive to be used Has a default which chooses the format that gives the most disk space DDSYSGEN COM a double density sysgen program with three options 1 Read double density system tracks into memory 2 Write double density system tracks from memory to a double density disk Generate a double density system disk complete with printer driver This process uses your single density CP M disk the SOFTWARE e Runs CP M 86 or MSDOS CP M 86 is compatible with CP M 2 2 Its command files have CMD as the extent making it possible for CP M 86 and CP M 2 2 files to co exist on the same disk CP M 2 2 command files have COM as the extent MSDOS is the operating system of the IBM PC IBM PC MSDOS programs are compatible with the CO POWER 88 MSDOS Simple commands move the user between the Z80 CP M2 2 system and the 8088 CP M 86 MSDOS system The RAM of CO POWER 88 can be used as a memory M disk drive for CP M 2 2 Programs can be compiled in M then save
33. 82 12 25 computerese often without the Note the descending order on this last one making it easy to sort on the field This is a military standard as well 360 Julian date also computerese The Julian date is not accurate on leap years And you thought the Biblical scholars had a problem reckoning the coming 1910 Ash St North Bend OR 97459 Any of the above conventions will work fine if the file manager is pro grammed to handle them Most systems havea date field that implements one of these Some simply punt and expect you to fill in an alphanumeric string That will work OK if there is some edit check ing so the s get in the right place and so on In writing this kind of stuff from scratch I find it best to treat day month and year as three separate fields with separate edit checking on each That al lows the 25 Dec 1982 form which hap pens to be my personal favorite com pact ascending order no month date ambiguity The things you need to check for in a date field are a A format you can live with b Storage as a string see the zip code discussion above c Edit checking that rejects attempted inputs of the 13th month or the 43rd day The sophisticated edits know about Feb ruary and leap year but unless you com pound interest daily that probably is not necessary My recommendation is that you find a file manager that stores all data as strings This gets you several benef
34. BB EPROM Program Relocating Your CP M Serial Print Driver Big Board Fixes Bringing Up WordStar Cheap RAM Disk 32 pages ISSUE NO 10 2 83 Saving a Flaky Disk Hooking Wini to BB The Disk Inspector JRT Fix Serial Keyboard Interface Pascal Procedures begins 36 pages ISSUE NO 11 4 83 BB Expansions BB Details Dyna RAM Disk Review Easier Reverse Video Cursor PlannerCalc Review KayPro Column begins 36 pages MICRO CORNUCOPIA P O Box 223 Bend Oregon 97709 TWO WAYS TO ENHANCE YOUR BIGBOARD S CAPABILITIES 1 DUAL DENSITY 2 CO POWER 88 HARDWARE HARDWARE e A daughter board that plugs into the 1771 A powerful 16 bit 8088 coprocessor socket With this board the system employs e Available in three RAM sizes 64k 128k automatic density select and 256k You can run 5 drives by following the 5 simple steps outlined in the manual A 50 34 Consists of two main boards the Z80 adapter pin disk drive adapter board is included with board and the main processor board The 280 5 orders adapter board plugs into the Bigboard Z80 socket A ribbon cable connects the Z80 SOFTWARE adapter board to the main processor board The main processor board holds 128k of RAM Choose 2 5 MHz or 4 MHz software for 5 ae ore or 8 drives Also select software for single An additional 128k RAM is available using an or for double sided drives add on RAM card 8 users have up to 67
35. D or with a MasterCard or Visa call 312 697 8420 between 9am and 5pm CST Zip 11 C ing Clearly Column by Tony Ozrelic 6708 Melrose Los Angeles CA 90038 Pointers A pointer is a variable that contains the address of another variable Soft ware Tools P89 For the novice pointers may be mys terious and not too useful To the assem bly language programmer pointers are old hat In most micros the largest regis ter is 16 bits and operating on items larger than 16 bits usually means passing the address of the item rather than the item itself to a subroutine In C a string of characters is not passed from one function to another rather it passes the address of the beginning of the string The declaration for a pointer to a string would look like char answer This line isread answerisa pointer to a character Thechar tells the compiler to make an swer a pointer to a byte so that when an swerisincremented it isincremented by ones If answer were a pointer to an integer int answer then incrementing an swer answer would add two to its value since integers contain two bytes Similarly pointers to doubles longs or floats cause similar compensation in the address arithmetic Since answer is just an address how do we access the characters it points to Figure 1 Copy Routines Pointer version of copy copy to from char to from do to from while from
36. D 6F 111 characters per line the 80 you see plus another 31 CC Drive Select DMA Mux ODC 2 Now we want R2 DO Keyboard Inputs ODD 59 Position the display on screen 5 Select Disk Controller DC Figure 6 Wordstar Customization DD Select 6845 Crt Controller register Use selected 6845 register CTC BAUD RATE DIVISOR DIVISOR BAUD RATE ERAEOL 01 18 Erase to end of line 128 300 BPS LINDEL 02 1B 52 Delete line 64 600 BPS LININS 02 1B 45 Insert line 32 1200 BPS IVON 03 1B 47 34 Inverse video on 16 2400 BPS IVOFF 03 1B 47 30 Inverse video off 8 4800 BPS TRMINI 01 14 Terminal initialize 9600 BPS TRMUNI 01 14 Terminal un initialized 2 19200 BPS Divisor is in Decimal Convert to hex and output to port 88 for SIO port A and port 89 for SIO port B Micro Cornucopia Number 11 April 1983 9 Dyna A Very Fast Disk Review by David Thompson The disk I m using to hold this text during editing is not a disk at all It is a memory board with 256K of 4164s The difference between this and a regular disk is incredible Absolutely incredible History First I have to warn you that little biased Tony Ozrelic the sole own er employee and dishwasher for LA software called me one evening and mentioned that he was trying to figure out what would sell to the Big Board folks He is a hardware engineer who has been trying to make it on his own writing and selling software tools really neat tools but that is anothe
37. D FLOPPIES WITH THE MODEL 3801 ALL SOLID STATE RELAY SMALL ENOUGH TO FIT EASILY INSIDE YOUR DISK DRIVE THE 3801 CAN BE INSTALLED IN MINUTES YOUR BIG BOARD WILL THEN TURN YOUR DRIVES ON AND OFF AUTOMATICALLY AS THEY ARE NEEDED FEATURES SMALL SIZE 1 75 X 1 40 X 35 FAST INSTALLATION DIAGRAM INCLUDED ZERO CROSSING ELIMINATES ALL SWITCHING NOISE TRIAC OUTPUT NO MECHANICAL PARTS DVDT FILTER INCLUDED LOW COST ONLY 8 80 EACH 1 YEAR WARRANTY 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE COMPANY OF CALIFORNIA 1619 SOUTH MINNIE STREET SANTA ANA CALIFORNIA 92707 714 547 4316 CALIF RES ADD 62 SALES TAX ADD 1 00 POSTAGE amp HANDLING KEYBOARD ENCLOSURE 20 00 UNPAINTED 25 00 PAINTED M a mH 7 Yur CUTOUT a Pos ge REINFORCED FIBERGLASS 6 FOR EASY CUTOUT DETAILED CUTOUT INSTRUCTIONS REQUIRES ONLY HACKSAW BLADE AND SANDPAPER COLOR WHITE BEIGE BLACK ROB BAKER 513 W J 13 LANCASTER CA 93534 XEROX 820 CABLES XEROX 820 cable harness assemblies for J5 Power J6 Monitor Power J7 Monitor Signal Ground Connector All cables have Xerox speci fied AmP connectors on one end The other end is open Schematics of cables included 20 00 per set ppd U S FULL SET XEROX 820 SCHEMATICS 5 00 NUF Computer Co Inc 99 Pennsylvania Ave Nexton MA 02164 617 964 8041 VISA amp MASTERCARD ACCEPTED Pascal Pr
38. DD 5 DIGITAL RESEARCH COMPUTERS PO Box 401565 Garland TX 75040 214 271 3538 ALL DRIVES GUARANTEED We wil exchange if defective within 30 days ppd one way OUR INVENTORY i ALWAYS CHANGING SEND STAMPED ADDRESSED ENVELOPE MONITORS TERMINALS KEYBOARDS COMPONENTS IC s Etc NEW LOW PRICES x Word Processing Programs 24 95 A unique modular set of software tools designed to make your word processing chores faster and easier PROGRAMS INCLUDE Text formatter generates justified text for manuals letters etc Print utility for program listings rough drafts non justified prin ting jobs File encryption decryption protect your files against ac cidental display or casual probing File transliteration word line counting and more 9 programs in all BIG BOARD SOFTWARE 19 95 TIME amp DATE Real Time Clock programs designed for BB s with a Z80 CTC chip installed Time programs time date stamp files and more X is a disk copy program so easy to use that you ll never use PIP again to copy files ARK maintains an archive of up to 64 single density 8 disks on a master disk no more looking thru dozens of disks for one program Get organized 8080 280 8080 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE TRANSLATOR 29 95 Why go nuts hand translating 8080 mnemonics into Z80 mnemonics or vice versa Our XLT macro processor does the work for yout For CP M 2 2 8 single density disk systems
39. EPROM locations provided Z 80 is a Trademark of Zilog Digital Research Computers OF TEXAS P O BOX 401565 GARLAND TEXAS 75040 214 271 3538 TERMS Shipments wil be made approximately 3 to 6 weeks after we receive your order VISA MC cash accepted We willaccept COD s for the Big Board only with a 75 deposit Balance UPS COD Add 4 00 shipping USA AND CANADA ONLY TRADEMARK OF DIGITAL RESEARCH NOT ASSOCIATED WITH DIGITAL RESEARCH OF CALIFORNIA THE ORIGINATORS OF CPM SOFTWARE 1 TO 4 PIECE DOMESTIC USA PRICE MICRO CORNUCOPIA P O Box 223 Bend Oregon 97709 503 382 8048 Editor amp Publisher David J Thompson Graphic Design Sandra Thompson Illustrator Gary Whitley Typography Patti Morris amp Martin White Irish Setter Staff Assistant Barbara Hicks MICRO CORNUCOPIA is the sin gle board systems journal support ing systems programming lan guages and single board systems including the Big Board the Big Board II and the Xerox 820 MICRO CORNUCOPIA is pub lished six times a year by Micro Cor nucopia of Oregon P O Box 223 Bend Oregon 97709 SUBSCRIPTION RATES 1 yr 6 issues 1 yr Canada amp Mexico 1 yr other foreign 16 00 20 00 26 00 All subscription orders payable in U S funds on a U S bank please ADVERTISING RATES Available on request CHANGE OF ADDRESS Please send old label and new address SOFTWARE HARDWARE AND BOOK VENDORS We would v
40. ERS DISK 4 1 CBIOS custom bios for Tandon drives 2 ZCPR dynamite CCP checks drive A for missing COM files improved commands 3 ZCPRBLOC identifies CCP location USERS DISK 5 1 CAT disk cataloging routines 2 Modem7 for Port A 3 Modem7 for Port B 4 PACMAN the arcade game 5 FAST buffers the disk to speed up assemblies 6 NOLOCK removes BB 1 shift lock 7 VERIFY cleanup amp verify a flaky disk 8 DUMPX enhanced for BB I 503 382 8048 VISA 5 USERS DISK 6 1 REZ 8080 280 disassembler TDL mnemonics 2 PRINTPRN prints Crowe listings 3 RUNPAC run time utility package for 8080 assembly language programs Has 51 functions Includes source which assembles under ASM USERS DISK 7 1 CHNGPFM PFM monitor mods 2 TERM terminal routines let you set up BB as simple terminal as a file receiver or as a file sender 3 Checkbook balancing package 4 Disk Utilities copy to memory from memory and dump USERS DISK 8 1 BDSCIO custom BDSC 1 O for BB I both h and c 2 YAM Yet Another Modem program in source amp COM form Turns BB into paging intelligent terminal complete with printer interface baud rates to 9600 3 ROFF text formatter 4 SIGNS prints large block letters USERS DISK 9 1 ADVENTURE expanded 550 pt version 2 Keyboard translation program 3 CBIOS serial amp parallel printer interface 4 EPROM programming package for BB II USERS DISK 10 Lots of Dis
41. II Character Mode Setting up the Display You have a number of options when setting up the Big Board II display First the 8002 003A part requires a 16MHz crystal Switch number 4 should be set to the off position and both jumpers on JB13 must be installed This sets the scan row counter for twelve rows and full CP M User s Group PO Box 153 Roy UT 84067 801 776 5024 BB RCPM There is one problem with using this mode the monitor must be able to han dle an 18 7KHz horizontal scan rate Editor s note with the new video setup routine available from Cal Tex most garden variety 15 750 KHz monitors will work displaying descenders and all This routine however will not nec essarily provide perfectly centered etc display for all monitors without some futzing on the centering or the width See below The 8002B You can select the 8002B attributes controller instead of the 8002A The dif ference between the two parts is the 8002B does not have descenders and it requires an 11 MHz crystal instead of 16 MHz The 8002B still has full graphics and attribute options To set the Big Board II up for the 8002B switch number four should be in the on position and both jumpers JB13 must be removed The 6845 One of the most powerful features of the new BB II is the programmable CRT controller the Motorola 6845 Itis easy to wonder when setting up the new com puter how we ever got along without being able to easi
42. LII I um i a ule April 1983 TABLE OF CONTENTS Souping Up the BB Detailed View of the BB II Dyna A Very Fast Disk Easier Reverse Video Cursor Data Base Handlers Epson MX 80 PlannerCalc REGULAR FEATURES C ing Clearly FORTHwords On Your Own Technical Tips lm PBugsbury SE ATES ERRORS NEE EROR Y ROE BRAS TERE Bene eet THE ORIGINAL BIG BOARD OEM INDUSTRIAL BUSINESS SCIENTIFIC SINGLE BOARD COMPUTER KIT Z 80 CPU 64K RAM DO NOT CONFUSE WITH ANY OF OUR FLATTERING IMITATORS th es 05 AST cee M And Soldered Add 50 Not For Blank PCB WANT MORE INFO Full Documentation and Schematics 5 VPE uiu ur ut utt OE For All Sockets Installed A att PARTIALLY ASSEMBLED KITS DEA alten ines THE BIG BOARD two years of field experience the Big Board may just be one of the most reliable single board computers available today This is the same design that was licensed by Xerox Corp as the basis for their 820 computer i The Big Board gives you the right mix of most needed computing features all on one board The Big Board was designed from scratch to run the latest version of CP M Just imagine all the off the shelf software that can be run on the Big Board without any modifications needed FULLY SOCKETED FEATURES Remember all this on one board 64K KIT BASIC 1 0 SIZE 8 x 13 IN SAME AS AN B IN DRI
43. PROMs W CP M CP M with Russell Smith s CBIOS for the new Cal Tex computer is available for 150 The CBIOS is available separately for 25 The new Ferguson computer has a 280 DMA chip that will allow byte wise data transfers at 500 KBytes per second and bit serial transfers via the Z80 A 510 at 880 Kbits per second with minimal processor overhead When a hard disk subsystem is added the DMA chip makes impressive disk performance possible CAL TEX COMPUTERS INC 780 E TRIMBLE ROAD 504 SAN JOSE CA 95131 e 408 942 1424 SINGLE QUANTITY PRICE ATTRACTIVE DISCOUNTS FOR DEALERS AND OEMs CPI M IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF DIGITAL RESEARCH TERMS Orders paid for with a cashier s check or bank card will be shipped within three working days Orders paid for with a personal check will be shipped within three weeks Add 5 for packing amp shipping DETAILED VIEW OF THE BB 1 continued The horizontal display is set by R1 and determines how many charcters will be displayed on the line This is set to 80 in the ROM The next area defined by R2 is the front porch or Sync Delay This sets the time between the last character and the start of the sync pulse The front porch default value is 71 The next value the Horizontal sync pulse width is the low order four bits of R3 the upper four bits are used for the vertical sync width in the 6845 The de fault value is 8 Finally the back porch or scan delay
44. PUTER EQUIPMENT 240 W Market St Box 589 Somonauk Illinois 60552 2 00 Shipping 815 498 2111 Registered Trademark Digital Research WHY BUY ROMAC S SCULL TEK COMPUTER It s as Fast or FASTER THAN MOST OTHER Its mure EXPANDABLE SINGLE BOARD COMPUTERS It COSTS LESS COMPLETE BOARD AND DISK DIAGNOSTICS ARE INCLUDED IN MONITOR 4 programmable timers e Memory mapping provides 64K for CP M Full 4 or 5 MHZ Z 80 MICRO PROCESSOR with 64K dynamic RAM Complete 6K BlOS monitor boots runs CP M version 2 2 50 pin expansion connector 2 eight bit 1 O ports and sense switch for expandability Floppy disk controller operates both 8 and mini floppy drives at the same time including the new megabyte 96TPI double sided disk drives TR T E xs S os FULL SAE FLOPPY INTERFACE JZ CORN EC TOR ax HIE e zar g 000 000 rrj dq 83 83 9 8 pum ua qq jede ee pee ee re MP BS ope X 1 0 ee e gt 8 595 XI Faot AE E FLOPPY X4TRARKAC CO MNECTOA Mna Bum 0000000000 dc CEUC KO LALEA EEO E a gt ot TUR IX pere see Ti pene on uf et ro m yes LI 1504 1500 t500 BD MK 38382 02 1 TET 05121 05132 471 472 55 Eus FENCE PrO Z t amp RFACE CONNECTOR ee 000000000000000000000000000 000000000000000000000800000 c vi BOARD ASSEMBLY IN
45. STRUCTIONS BIOS 99 00 BOARD and COMPLETE PARTS KIT 4MHZ 349 00 BOARD and COMPLETE PARTS KIT 5 MHZ 375 00 COMBINATION SPECIAL CP M 2 2 WITH THE CP M PRIMER by Stephen Murtha SCULL TEK COMPUTER BOARD AND COMPLETE PARTS KIT 449 00 SCULL TEK EPROM PROGRAMMER BOARD assembly instructions with utility programs on lobby disk 49 00 SCULL TEK CENTRONIC PRINTER INTERFACE BOARD and assembly instructions 20 00 SCULL TEK CENTRONIC PRINTER INTERFACE with COMPLETE BOARD PARTS KIT 25 00 DISK MOTOR CONTROL BOARD and assembly instructions 15 00 SBA COMPUTER EQUIPMENT 240 W Market St Box 589 Somonauk Illinois 60552 815 498 2111 2 00 Shipping Registered Trademark Digital Research FORTHwords Column by Arne A Henden Last column we discussed a simple random number generator and applied ittoa game This time around we ll cover MX 80 programming and in the next is sue we will apply the program to a typ ing task But first a few words about the latest happenings in the FORTH world Vendors I recently received a copy of the Idaho ROM FORTH User s Manual Ingerson and Buvel of the Physics Department at the University of Idaho have developed a replacement for the PFM monitor that is a really nifty use of FORTH The PFM jump table is retained but many new monitor features have been added such as disk copy CP M system copy track read write RAM verify standard 16 and 32 bit arithmetic and FORTH defin i
46. VE REQUIRES 5V 3 AMPS 120 5 AMPS 64K RAM Uses Industry standard 4116 RAM s All 64K is available to the user our VIDEO and EPROM sections do not make holes in system RAM Also very special care was taken in the RAM array PC layout to eliminate potential noise and glitches Z 80 CPU Running at 2 5 MHZ Handles all 4116 RAM refresh and supports Mode 2 INTERUPTS Fully buffered and runs 8080 software SERIAL 1 0 OPTIONAL Fuli 2 channels using the Z80 SIO andthe SMC 8116 Baud Rate Generator FULL RS232 For synchronous or asynchronous communication In synchronous mode the clocks can be transmitted or received by amodem Both channels can be set up for either data communication or data terminals Supports mode 2 Int Price for all parts and connectors 39 95 BASIC I O Consists of separate parallel port 280 PIO for use with an ASCII encoded keyboard for input Output would be on the 80 x 24 Video Display BLANK PC BOARD 119 The blank Big Board PC Board comes complete with full documentation including schematics the character ROM the PFM 3 3 MONITOR ROM and a diskette with the source of our BIOS BOOT and PFM 3 3 MONITOR 24 x 80 CHARACTER VIDEO With a crisp flicker free display that looks extremely sharp even on small monitors Hardware scroll and full cursor control Composite video or splitvideo and sync Character set is supplied on a 2716 style ROM making customized fonts easy Sync pulses c
47. ad to give up double density on this BB to run Dyna although I don t see why you couldn t use Software Pub lishers dual density package along with Dyna You see Software Publishers dual density board can run the original single density BB bios just fine so you can run Dyna When running double density however you wouldn t have access to the RAM disk M80 assembly of 46K source yielding 108K PRN file Create second copy of 22K file using PIP VERIFY all sectors on disk Dyna Load 11K text editor and 22K text file Exit 11K text editor and create new 22K text file If you have four drives on your system already the D drive will be disabled when you enter Dyna However you don t have to junk your D drive You can go ahead and use it just as you used to without entering Dyna Once you are in to Dyna you can get out by hitting the reset button and rebooting then you can use the real drive again Resetting and rebooting however don t affect the contents of Dyna So you really can have five 241K storage de vices Just enter DYNA and the RAM disk is back with all its data intact So far Dyna has hung on to its data no matter what I ve done to the system I purposely ran the system for a whole day with the fan off the cabinet got very warm but Dyna didn t lose a single bit The only thing you have to remember is to copy Dyna to areal disk before power ing down Documentation Tony did his usual ver
48. an be any desired length or polarity Video may be inverted or true 5 x 7 Matrix Upper amp Lower Case FLOPPY DISC CONTROLLER Uses WD1771 controller chip with a TTL Data Separator for enhanced reliability BM 3740 compatible Supports up to four 8 inch disc drives Directly compatible with standard Shugart drives such as the SA800 or SA801 Drives can be configured for remote AC off on Runs CP M 2 2 TWO PORT PARALLEL 1 0 OPTIONAL Uses Z 80 PIO Full 16 bits fully buffered bi directional Uses selectable hand shake polarity Set of all parts and connectors for parallel 1 0 19 95 REAL TIME CLOCK OPTIONAL Uses Z 80 CTC Can be configured as a Counter on Real Time Clock Set of all parts 9 95 CP M 2 2 FOR BIG BOARD The popular CP M D O S to run on Big Board is available tor 139 00 BIG BOARD SOFTWARE SPECIAL 149 Through special arrangement with CDL we offer a package of TDL 2 80 software that has a suggested retail of almost 600 Includes Extended Disk Business Basic ZEDIT text editor MACRO Il Macro Assembler LINKER DEBUG I and DEBUG II Supplied on 8 in diskette with extensive manual 3 3 2K SYSTEM MONITOR The real power of the Big Board lies in its 3 3 on board monitor commands include Dump Memory Boot CP M Copy Examine Fill Memory Test Memory Go To Read and Write I O Ports Disc Read Drive Track Sector and Search PFM occupies one of the four 2716
49. and animal 20 00 each other foreign All The Users Disks Contain Documentation On Disk In DOC Files OTHER GOODIES Screen Editor in Small C 39 00 44 00 A simple but full function screen text editor plus a text format ter all written in Small C by Edward Ream This package in cludes the editor and formatter COM files setup for the Big Board Small C itself and source code for all With the docu mentation this is over 400K on a flippy disk Edward is selling this package for 50 you can buy it from us for 39 and Ed gets a royalty Where else can you get an editor a formatter a C compiler and source for all for under 40 Your choice of a user s disk or the deluxe char acter ROM free if you send an article or software and a ROM or extra disk FREE US CAN MEX Other Foreign Your Fortune in the Microcomputer Business lesse 26 45 36 45 This is the best most complete collection of working for yourself information I ve found and I ve heard nothing but good comments from those who have received it This two volume set is a perfect for those blustery fall evenings when you snuggle up in front of the fire and dream of great riches MORE ROMS Fast monitor ROMs for speed freaks and our famous better than Texas character ROM V2 3 for screen freaks Fast Monitor 25 00 Version 2 3 Char ROM 25 00 30 00 30 00 Send Big Board
50. at type the first val ue being ordinal 0 Thus ORD thu 3 The values cannot be written directly you must use the ORD function Scalars can be used for array indices loop con trol CASE switches and the like Subrange types are defined by two constants TYPE smalLinteger 1 10 lowercase 2 The associated scalar type is that of the constants in the declaration and any op erations valid for that type will be valid for the subrange SETs A SET is a collection of objects of the same type TYPE week SET of day weekend SET of sat sun weekday SET of mon fri Set variables can be assigned com pared and otherwise manipulated using conventional set algebra The symbols gt lt and IN are used for un ion difference intersection contains is contained by and inclusion respective ly ARRAYs and RECORDs ARRAYs and RECORDs are the struc tured data types of PASCAL An ARRAY is a collection of data ele ments all of the same type accessed by an index subscript VAR name ARRAY 1 30 of CHAR screen ARRAY 0 23 0 79 of CHAR matrix ARRAY 1 10 1 10 of INTEGER daily_pay ARRAY week of REAL A multiply dimensioned array is in ef fect an array of arrays Array elements do not have to be simple types A RECORD is a grouping of related data elements fields which can be ma nipulated as a unit The component data items are accessed by name and can be of
51. began plotting massive changes The first thing we no ticed was the section on cursor position ing Since the Televideo 920 uses the same cursor positioning commands as the Big Boards we ran INSTALL COM with the TVI920 set for the terminal The 920 uses the special functions of Word Star but not in the same way as the Big Board See Figure 6 for patch points to opti mize Word Star With these changes in place Word Star will run faster and look great All of the menu information is printed in reverse video with section titles in normal video When a block is labeled for a block op eration the text within the bounds of the block is changed to reverse video to make formatting easy If you don t like reverse video you can select any of the other attributes and subsitute the appro priate value in thelast byte of each patch PORT NUMBER FUNCTION 80 SIO Data Port A 81 SIO Control Status Port A 82 SIO Data Port B 83 SIO Control Status Port B 84 CTC A Channel 0 Keyboard Strobe 85 CTC A Channel 1 Index Pulse Count 86 CTC A Channel 2 SIO Syne Interupt 87 CTC A Channel 3 VSYNC Interupt 88 CTC B Channel 0 SIO A Baud Rate 89 B Channel 1 SIO B Baud Rate B Channel 2 1 Millisecond Timer 8B CTC B Channel 3 Clock Interupt CO Memory Control Program C4 Sense Inputs Index Kbst SW4 C8 Mise System Control Bits U14 Latch Select General Purpose Parallel Ports ODC 0 Tell the 6845 we want RO OD
52. bought my Big Board 18 months ago I intended to use it largely for word processing So I scoured the magazines to find an inexpensive printer that had the basic requirements speed lowercase descenders sheet feed graphics and low price Six months ear lier Centronics had the market locked up and didn t meet the criteria But Ep son appeared and rapidly became the leading marketer of printers because they did fit the bill Strengths Epson has made a real workhorse of a printer Mine has been in constant use over the past year with no hint of failure I suggest you only buy the printer with the Graftrax option G Not only do you get dot addressable graphics but in ad dition Epson includes italic print sub and super scripts and many more ERN printer commands SCR 3 O EPSON SETUP UTILITY 3 1 MENU this is the printed menu 2 CR TO GET OPTION ENTER 3 CR Reset printer 0 4 CR Compressed width 16 5epi 1 5 CR Normal width 10 a 6 CR Double strike 3 T CR Single strike qn 8 CR Emphasized 5 9 CR Non enphasized 6 10 CR Set form length 1 11 CR Set horizontal tabs 8 12 CR Set vertical tabs 9 13 CR Set vertical spacing 10 14 CR Return to FORTH lt er gt 15 CR Enter option number gt SCR 4 0 EPSON SETUP UTILITY 4 1 EPSON the main word 2 BEGIN MENU GETNUM PRECIS 6 0 gt WHILE CASE 3 0 RESET 3 4 1
53. cepts composite video should check with Acme Electronics 224 Washington Ave N Minneapolis MN 55401 612 338 4754 They have no cabi net and require 12V at 8 amp but they are new and only 59 00 plus 5 00 ship ping Tom Mason 2402 Audubon Rd Akron OH 44320 Dear Editor Im working on a high resolution graphics add on board for the BB I It has its own processor and connects via the parallel ports If anyone else is working on graphics hardware or software please get in contact with me Robert A Van Winkle 11497 Sandpiper Way Penn Valley CA 95946 Dear Editor Now that CP M 3 0 is just around the corner I m wondering which brave souls are going to write a BB I or II CBIOS for it In the banked mode the operating system requires 96K of RAM minimum but can talk to a good deal more I m presently looking at an application that would be immeasurably speeded up by the additional RAM space since the space can be used as disk data buffers I d appreciate hearing from anyone working on this or planning to go this direction Jim Totten 700 N Melborn Dearborn MICH 48128 313 561 6794 after 6pm EST Dere Editore I wuz so pleezed to see yor add 4 a spellin checker I reeley kneed won En clozed yu ll find a cheek 4 29 95 Congratulations I luked thet won up on gettin MicroGroup red it from the add off on the rite fut I am busy with Easy Calc and hop we cun add it to yur oferings reel soon I ll keep yu poste
54. cro Cornucopia Number 11 April 1983 31 GET IN THE FAST LANE WITHOUT BURNING YOUR WALLET ona U S ROBOTICS 1200 BAUD MODEM Micro Link 1200 1200 baud 9299 Auto Link 1200 1200 baud auto 5333 Auto Link 212A 1200 300 baud auto 379 Auto Dial 212A 1200 300 baud auto answer auto dial 425 The latest I C technology gives these modems superior performance at 100 to 300 under the competition All units are direct connect answer originate full duplex 212A stand alone in a metal case with analog loopback selftest two RJLIC jacks reversible data pins DTR override 9 10 bits char and status LED s The Auto Dial is software compatible with the Hayes Smartmodem II Two year warranty Two week delivery Cash price includes shipping Visa MC add 42 Widener Consulting 270 SE 15th 5 Hillsboro OR 97123 503 648 0363 DISK DRIVES 99 10 shipping SHUGART SA800 2 STANDARD MOUNT HARD TO GET PARTS The Easy Way COM 8116 8 Soft sector Single or Double Density CRYSTALS REMOVED FROM UNSOLD EQUIPMENT 13 89 MHz 20 MHz 5 0688 MHz LIKE NEW Send Check or Money Order to CASCADE ELECTRONICS RTI BOX 8 RANDOLPH 55065 PHONE 507 645 7997 POWER CONNECTOR RESISTOR PACKS For the Pair POSTAGE MINN RES ADD 6 SALES TAX VISA er MASTER CARD A
55. ctions however if two extra banks of 48K are desired then U10 pins 2 1 13 must be freed for use by the bank select circuitry Pin 2 passes under IC towards U11 Cut it between the two ICs The pin 12 track should already have been cut Cut tracks to pins 1 and 13 on the underside of the board The 74LS10 alone can handle the cache memory Bank Select BANK 0 the main memory bank is enabled whenever any of the 4 outputs of U55 are active low and all of BANKS 1 2 and are not active 02 DEM VFOE WF Raw READ 1 Tantalum BANK 1 the disk CACHE memory is enabled when pin 8 of U111 is active LOW At power on PA6 floats HI and BANK 1 is thus disabled BANK 2 the spare memory is enabled by sacrificing the BELL on PA4 It is enabled if the appropriate jumpers are installed and PA4 is LOW Don t jumper these if you are using the bell You also need to modify the operat ing system Editor s note Here s where CP M vrs 3 comes in The file BBSYSTEM ZQ0 is the BIOS use for CP M and the monitor ROM The file BBDRIVER ZQO is the CACHE buffer BIOS I developed for INFOSOFT IOS v2 34 Critical ICs U75 should be 74151 U77 must be 74504 SHOTTKY TTL U76 should be 74164 U59 and U58 must be 74157 U112 should be 7414 U109 should be 7445 All Z80 chips should be Z80B types although only Z80A CTC SIO and PIO are currently available These A parts seem to work well as does standard 250 nsec mem
56. d to disk decreasing job time by avoiding disk access tinie 3 SWP distribution disk and a blank disk PRICING Five serial printer drivers and a parallel 64k CO POWER 88 699 95 driver are included and there is an option 128k CO POWER 88 799 95 to install a user written driver All drivers 256k CO POWER 88 1049 95 can be modified 256k CO POWER 88 with CP M 86 1250 00 DDCOPY COM a double density copy CP M 86 for CO POWER 88 250 00 program that copies all files from a source MSDOS for CO POWER 88 CALL disk to a destination disk Being a dual density system the computer automatically distinguishes between single and double density disks Densities may be mixed Add on RAM cards are available Call CO POWER 88 is available for nearly all Z80 or 8080 computers using CP M 2 2 199 95 3149 95 CP M and CP M 86 are trademarks of Digital Research Inc MSDOS is trademark of Microsoft is a trademark of 2 80 is a trademark of Zilog SOFTWARE PUBLISHERS INC 2500 E Randol Mill Rd Suite 125 Arlington TX 76011 817 469 1181 On Your Own Column by David Thompson This time we re covering a most im portant topic for those of you doing your own thing getting something out the door The next column will be on Hamp ton Miller s experi
57. d 5 of U76 and move the CAS line to pin 4 and the MUXC to pin 3 The Z80 clock can then be changed from U96 pin 4 to pin 5 The clock line for the Z80 chips has to be damped since it is resonant and the ringing causes problems Two 33 ohm resistors are needed one in series with the collector lead of Q2 which must be changed to an MPS3640 and one in se ries with pin 8 of U77 which must be changed to a 74504 A 3K resistor must be soldered between pins 3 and 7 of U77 to yield a more symmetrical 20MHz waveform The track to pin 8 of U77 is cut on the top of the board between U77 and U79 The 33 ohm resistor is soldered between U77 pin 8 and the plated through hole adjacent to pin 16 of U80 More Details Cut trace between pin 4 of U96 and pin 9 of U78 on bottom of board Link pin 5 of U96 to pin 9 of U78 Cut trace between pin 5 of U76 and plat ed through hole adjacent to pin 3 of U65 Link this plated through hole to pin 4 of U76 Cut trace between pin 4 of U76 and plated through hole adjacent to pin 8 of U52 Link this hole to pin 3 of U76 Lower Case Modifications You will need a new character EPROM see file DISPPROM BB on the above bulletin board for a hex image for your prom programmer 1 Remove link between pins 14 to 3 of U11 2 Cut trace to pin 4 of U11 below board 3 Link pin 3 of U11 to plated through hole adjacent to pin 9 of U21 below board 4 Link pin 4 of U11 to pin 11 of U9 5 Cut trace to p
58. d on devlopmints Thanx and gud luk X Editor s note Dear X I can see immediately that you have a large amount of raw writing talent you did spell X correctly If you use SpellSys regularly you may have a chance to bribe your way into Lonny La Lonzo s Famous Writing by Mail School You should contact them quickly though they may soon be shut down for mail fraud Some people just can t handle fame Another way for you to develop a vague familiarity with English is to write a large technical manual However there is no guar antee that this method will work We ll be contacting you for a review of SpellSys Dear Editor Being a rank amateur I had trouble in corporating the EBBIOS from user disk 9 into my CP M I was faithfully blindly following Jim Simon s Chang ing your BIOS instructions in issue 8 page 17 including step 11 which is a DDT read command with offset R3780 Well when E8BIOS HEX executes it al so offsets by 3780 The cure is to enter only the R The E8BIOS works beauti fully with my Diablo 1640 I am a cement plant accountant and am working on replacing my pad and calculator with a computer Now I can get down to the business of learning how to use word processing spreadsheets and CP M Also hope to add double density and a RAM disk in the near fu ture John Allen 144 Yagi Lane RR 1 Bowling Green MO 63334 Dear Editor DRC is now selling the BB kit
59. d rate operation to 19 2 Kbaud e Flicker free display of reverse video data Supports HEATH H19 and DEC VT52 escape se quences Escape sequences include full cursor movement and editing functions Display memory supported by access arbitration circuitry preventing video noise on screen when memory is accessed Reverse video attribute and special alternate character mode available on a per character basis Standard character generator provides 33 graphic HEATH SYSTEM H19 compatible symbols Bit 8 of incoming ASCII characters may be used to cause the character to address an alternate user defined character generator Zilog SIO DART serial device allows async communication or may be reprogrammed to communi cate in bit or byte sync modes Display signals Composite video 1 5 volt P P negative sync Seperate sync and video outputs polarities selectable and widths programmable KEYBOARD INTERFACE e Standard RS 232 serial communication Allows detachable keyboard Only 4 wires connect keyboard for communication Programmable keys reduce many multiple key WORSTAR functions to a single key stroke S 100 BOARD with assembly and operating instructions firmware on 2732 EPROM 79 00 5 100 BOARD and TERMINAL PARTS KIT 184 00 STAND ALONE BARE BOARD assembly and operating instructions firmware on 2732 EPROM 84 00 STAND ALONE BOARD and TERMINAL PARTS with manual 179 00 STAND ALONE POWER SUPPLY and TRANSFORMER 15 00 ROHE COM
60. duct Your product is not ready to go out the door until it is well documented and well displayed Talk to the people who might pur chase this item Do they want it Will they want it in a year How large is the audience Is the audience easy to reach Is there any competition How and where is the competition advertising Your second product also may not fly but it should do better than the first If not and the third time isn t the charm either then you probably ought to try another stint in the mines What sells There about probably 6 000 to 8 000 perhaps more Big Board I s loose out there waiting to gobble up anything that looks interesting Some VERY useful things have remained ungobbled AB computers Microtime 80 and LA Soft ware s XLT translator while others have really been slurped up AZTEC CII Soft ware Publishers dual density the 10 disk controller from Phenix and the new Dyna disk The ECRL board really met a need Tom just didn t ship them and now I understand the whole company has disappeared If you are interested in de signing a new board for the BB I you might still do very well redoing that one Irecall Tom Brandt the sole proprietor of ECRL mentioning to me that orders were running better than 100 000 per month Many of those were initial orders from outfits who would have based new systems on the combination of the Big BoardIand the ECRL board If you are designing a produc
61. e sold un used as is in original shipping boxes 380 each plus 12 shipping New Western Digital controller card for this drive 350 each Call LIQUIDATORS 803 877 9828 or send check to 105 S Main St Greer SC 29651 Micro Cornucopia Number 11 April 1983 PlannerCalc Review by Kenneth R Schurr Jr When Comshare Target Software re duced the price of their program Plan nerCalc to 50 00 they declared that the calc price war has just ended If you need to make financial spread sheets then this program is for you If you want to do expense accounting or budgeting then it s not but more about that later What it does PlannerCalc hereinafter referred to as PC allows you to develop view and manipulate financial models from a gridsheet or matrix screen approach You can enter commands by line or col umn using a large variety of arithmetic conditions functions and operations Any formulae or values used in calcula tions are seen and changed easily First some terms A gridsheet is com posed of a number of vertical blocks col umns and horizontal blocks rows A cell is a single matrix position It is the intersection of a column and a line The locator is a movable block used to high light the cell on the screen to which a command or value is being placed There is a command line at the bottom of the screen where you tell PC what to do Capabilities The program is very powe
62. e same pins on the 151 Now reinstall U75 with the piggy backed 158 on top of it Make sure that pin 6 of U75 is not inserted in the socket Jumper pin 7 of the 158 to U94 pin 10 and jumper pin 1 of the 158 to U74 pin 10 This gives you blinking reverse video controlled by bit 7 If you don t want the blink move the jumper attached to U37 pin 11 to U37 pin 12 Ed note if you want to switch select blinking and non blinking just add a simple single pole double pole switch to this line PFM does not set bit 7 if the cursor is located on a blank space 20H In a space position it displays an underline charac Suite 222 Park Cherry Bldg 114 East Park Olathe Kansas 66061 ter instead If you would rather have the space displayed in reverse video you can use the memory utility in PFM to alter the monitor MF54A PFM will respond with F54A 20 Now enter a character value not normal ly displayed such as a value less than 20H Then boot CP M Overbeek Enterprises is committed to providing quality software atlow prices We intend to make a handsome profit by having thousands of satisfied customers Menu Plus A fast convenient menu package for CP M systems Are your users finding it painful to cope with CP M You ve probably heard about the glories of menu driven systems This powerful package developed by Capa city Inc makes the ease of menu driven systems affordable to any CP M user Menu Plus allows rapid easy
63. e sucking on a lemon to save what was left of my voice There were alot of questions Whatis the history of the BB I the Xerox the KayPro and the BB II What is Bend like Who are you meaning me Tell us more about the BB What is the story about the RAM disk Are they ever going to finish the documenta tion for the BB II Fortunately Bill Siegmund was there to field the BB II questions I still don t know however if or when Cal Tex is going to finish the manual I m going to give you as much BB ITinformation as I can through Micro C but it would be real ly super ifthey would come up with doc umentation appropriate to such a pow erful system Tony Ozrelic was there to handle the questions about the new RAM Dyna disk so I turned the podium over to him andI went back to sucking on my lemon He had just installed Dyna on my BB so at the end of the meeting we all adjorned back to the booth to watch my BB play VAX VAX simili I don t know how many orders got at the Faire but he sure had a mob of folks following him about See my very continued on page 26 Dear Editor My BB is running 4MHz I had prob lems with the EPROM and with the 74LS04 in clock generator circuits video amp system I replaced them with 7404 The second problem I had with floppy drive SA901 It was an error in the index circuit I found the error in four hours without an electric scheme Now I am buildi
64. eign USERS DISK 9 1 ADVENTURE expanded 550 pt version 2 Keyboard translation program 3 CBIOS serial amp parallel printer interface 4 EPROM programming package for BB II for 2732s only USERS DISK 10 Lots of Disk Utilities 1 REBOOT sets up the CP M auto load 2 SWEEP directory file transfer routine 3 A Lets BB I recognize a double sided drive as one drive with 494K of usable space 4 FIX super disk utility does everything much easier to use than DU77 5 Compare files routine 6 UNERA retrieve erased files T FIND check all drives on system for a file 8 MENU menu program for CP M 9 NEWCAT enhanced disk catalog program 10 Single drive copy program that does track by track copies rather than file by file 11 Extended CRC checker creates file amp checks file 12 Super disk formatter program for BB I USERS DISK 11 Printer Utilities 1 Microline 92 printer routine 2 Graphics display package for MX 80 with Graftrax very fancy 3 Epson MX80 setup for BB with 59 5K CP M 4 Epson MX8 setup for any CP M lets you set print modes 5 Micro Tek print driver Ports A amp B USERS DISK 12 Games for BB 1 ALIENS a fast exciting arcade game 2 ZCHESS chess with a 1 6 level look ahead 3 MasterMind match wits with the computer 4 BIO Biorythm charts complete with graphics on the BB I 5 LIFE so fast it s real animation 6 CRAPS see how much you d lose in Vegas 7 WUMPUS a caver s delight kill the Wum
65. ences as he begins his own consulting business You ll have a chance to talk to Hampton in person at the Get Together Dear Editor T have an inexpensive 300 baud mo dem board If I ever get the time I will send in an article about it and even offer kits for sale Daniel Lang 24661 W Passavant Round Lake IL 60073 This note really hit me because this is exactly why many of us don t ever get out on our own and why many of those of us who do are often forced to go back to the sweatshops The problem is that we get something almost done almost ready almost avail able almost documented almost publi cized There is always that last hump to get over before something is really fin ished Daniel has already done a lot of things right He s got a product a lot of people are interested in he can make it available in kit form which is perfect for the Micro C group and it s not a big item so he can stock a few sets of parts without going into hock He can get free publicity by writing an article about it and ads in Mi cro C are very inexpensive In fact if you interested in his modem write to him What usually happens Often a new project comes along that looks bigger and better or at least more interesting than the present one So you drop what you re doing and move on You re never going to sell anything that isn t finished unless you are a major cor poration and you aren t going to sell
66. ers listed above have circumvented this limitation by placing key run time routines in the mask PROM with an outboard ROM to provide I O and user functions I ve also heard that a single chip FORTH micro processor with FORTH as its instruction set an object oriented processor like the iAPX 432 is soon to be announced Stay tuned Interrupt Handling The December column issue 9 de scribed a high level interrupt handling routine There were some vendor spe cific parameters that were not adequate ly mentioned NEXT LINK is the address of NEXT in UNIFORTH NEXT LINK 1 bypasses one of the initialization instructions needed for UNIFORTH most FORTH systems can replace this with NEXT LINK PC is the same as the fig FORTH P since UNIFORTH is available for 16 SCR 1 PREMIT n 128 PREMIT RESET reset printer TAB horizontal tab COMPRESS 0FF DSTRIKE ON DSTRIKE OFF EMPHASIZE EMPHASIZE OFF VSPACE 12 27 PREMIT 65 PREMIT CR 2 COMPRESS 0N turn on compressed mode 15 turn it off 18 PREMIT double strike mode turn it off emphasize mode turn it off set vertical spacing 7415 Leahy Road New Carrollton MD 20784 301 552 1295 bit systems it has PC and P functions for 8 and 16 bit port store respectively The word INTERRUPT SERVICE loads register HL with the interrupt rou tine CFA Fig
67. ers per line Several different monitors were ad justed using this technique After a little fine tuning of the hardware and soft ware the BB II makes a very impressive display One final note on using PFM to alter the register values Once the display has started scrolling the system ignores changes to the registers so an occas sional CTRLZ clear screen is necessary DC is the port used to tell the 6845 what register you will be working with then use port DD to actually put the val ue there Figure 3 shows the commands which worked for our monitors Installing Disk Drives We used two Shugart850 Double Den sity Double Sided disk drives They work very well with the standard soft ware timing that the Big Board II uses See Figure 4 for jumper configuration More Drive Details Five inch drives do not supply a drive ready signal so the ready line on the disk controller must be tied to five volts This is done at JB4 by inserting a jumper from the center pin to the pin facing the drive connector To jumper the board for the ready line that is supplied by most eight inch drives install a jumper from the center pin to the pin farthest from the drive connectors Next comes the option that enables the write precompensation Single density drives will have this option disabled and double density will have it enabled To select precompensation install a jumper from the center pin of JB38 to the pin far thest away fro
68. ery much like to review your CP M compatible products for Micro C Please send material to the Review Editor Micro Cornucopia LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Please sound off CP M is a trademark of Digital Research Inc Copyright 1983 by Micro Cornucopia All rights reserved MICRO CORNUCOPIA April 1983 Fairely Flagged The Computer Faire amp It s hard to be both a participant and an observer but here I am trying to tell you about the West Coast Computer Faire after Sandy and I observed it from the confines of one small booth Of course it seems crazy in Bend sometimes with the phone ringing stacks of mail to be answered user disks to put together and a magazine to pro duce but the Faire really puts things in perspective First of all San Francisco streets are a good place to find out if you have any insecurities The two and a half blocks between the show and our hotel were a sort of no man s land of empty shops porno flicks and panhandlers The parking lot attendent suggested that we not leave our little green Honda Kermit in the lot overnight because it would be broken into Smashing I thought where do we keep the car in the hotel room Hello room service Please send up supper for Sandy and I plus a quart of your best 10 40 for Kermit Anyway we were for tunate The Honda was not molested Second manning a booth means 30 hours of talking Actually the first day we shouted in an atte
69. essing 1 EDIT very fancy line editor which almost looks identical to EX Unix Includes help menu programmable key and full manual on disk 2 TED simple minded line editor easy to learn amp use Very fast 3 TTYPE typing training program written in BASIC 4 TINYPLAN very simple minded spread sheet Whets your appetite for a fancy one 5 C80 Text Utilities 6 CHOP cuts off file after N bytes 7 ENTAB replace spaces with tabs where possible 8 MS double or triple spaces a file to output 9 RTW removes trailing spaces from file 10 TRUNC truncates each line to specified length 11 WRAP wraps at column 80 plus pretty pretty printing page s REMEMBER FREE Users Disks in exchange for submitted software or articles USERS DISK 16 BB I Modem Software 1 RCPM27 list of U S bulletin boards 2 SMODEM interfaces BB with Hayes Smartmodem 3 PLINK66 easy to use with non CP M host for port A 4 BBPAT menu selection of BAUD rate bits char parity amp stop bits 5 MODEM Modem7 plus BBPAT lets you talk to anything from port A USERS DISK 17 Small C version 2 SMALLC2 this substantially expanded ver sion of Small C now includes for goto la bel switch case external declarations new preprocessor commands expanded 1 0 incl udes redirection initializers plus 12 new ex pressions The 1 O and runtime libraries have been greatly expanded including printf Source amp documentation o
70. f information do you need right now the doers in this crazy industry So we encourage you to share your trials and tribulations That way we can invent new wheels rather than redoing the old ones over and over What kind of exciting adventure misadventure are you working on Total Can amp Mex BACK ISSUES Eum s s o SUBSCRIPTION 1 year 6 issues 0 16 Bulk 0 20 0 26 Renewal 0 20 1st Class Air Mail Air Mail Prices include media package 1st Class postage Air Mail for Other Foreign Check or money order enclosed Make checks payable to TOTAL US funds only payable on a US bank MICRO CORNUCOPIA ENCLOSED Card No Visa MasterCard NAME PHONE ADDRESS CITY STATE ZIP MICRO CORNUCOPIA P O Box 223 Bend Oregon 97709 503 382 8048 MEN Eon ep ma mer sn scuole Su Hp cR t USERS DISK 1 1 Two fast disk copiers 2 The manual for Small C 3 Crowe Z80 Assembler 4 Two disk formatters 5 Modem7 6 Othello 7 Serial print routine Port B USERS DISK 2 1 Two single disk drive copy programs both with source 2 Crowe Z80 Assembler source 3 New Crowe COM file debugged version 4 New CBIOS with parallel print driver amp other extensions for CP M 1 4 amp 2 2 5 Disk mapper with source USERS DISK 3 T EPROM burning software for BB 1 2 Reset bit 7 unWordStar a file 3 Disk file CRC checker 4 New fast c
71. for only 319 and the bareboard for 119 I still remember when the kit was 699 DRC is also offering a BB software package for 149 the software comes from CDL By the way why does DRC take so long to fill its orders I ve ordered three S 100 memory boards as well as the bare Big Board from them and nothing has reached me in less than 6 weeks And the S 100 boards were shipped Priority Mail I would have gotten the boards quicker by stage coach if only DRC had shipped them the day they received my order Boy am I pleased with the Big Board though It was up and running in no time and has been running reliably ever since I like DRC s products but their ser vice stinks Here are my experiences on disks I use IBM diskettes almost exclusively Yes they re expensive but if you ask me they re worth it They cost 47 50 box in quantities of 1 or 2 40 00 box for3 or 4 and 37 50 box for 5 or more boxes at the IBM Product Center downtown Phila delphia I recently converted 5 Verbatim disks to flippies and 2 of the 5 had bad sectors on the back side though I had no problems with the front sides I bought some Jade disks and though I haven t had any bad sector problems they make so much noise when they re in the drive that I keep thinking there s a war going on behind the little red drive light I now use the Jade disks only for backup and mailing Speaking of Jade as with SRA David B Burgess see the letters
72. h one Winchester The disk also contains a disk formatter called BB2FORMT This utility will for mat a disk in one of eight formats The Big Board II will automatically figure out the format of a disk that it is reading so you can use any of the formats The sector skew should be set to 1 for single density and 3 for double density Figure 4 Shugart 850 Jumpers JUMPER DESCRIPTION OPTION DS1 Drive Select 1 In DS2 3 4 Drive Select 2 3 4 In 1B 4B Side Sel Using Drv Sel Out RR Radial Ready In RI Radial Index and Sector R Ready Output In 28 Two Side Status Output Out 850 851 Sector Option Enable 850 I Index Output In S Sector Output Out Dc Disk Change Option Out HL Stepper Power frm HLoad In DS Stepper Power frm DSlet Out WP Inhib Wrt When Wrt Prot In NP Allow Wrt When Wrt Prot Out D Alternate Input In Use Out DD Standard Drive Select In DL Door Lock Latch Option Out A B Radial Head Load In X Radial Head Load Shunt Out C Alternate Input HLoad In Z In Use from Drv Select In Y In Use from Head Load Out 51 Side Sel frm Direc Sel Out S2 Standard Side Select In S3 Side Sel from Drive Sel Out TS FS Data Separ Opt Select N A Iw Write Current Switch In RS Ready Standard In RM Ready Modified Out HLL Head Load Latch Out IT In Use Terminator In HI Head Load or In Use Out These jumpers are located near the I O connector in a 16 pin dip socket marked 4H Jumpered according to logic positi
73. h send it to Jay Papillon 871 N Eisenhower Moscow Idaho 83843 If you have any questions or wish references as to the quality of my work call 208 885 7093 weekdays evenings call 208 883 0847 ASK ABOUT PRICES FOR COMPLETE SYSTEMS Micro Cornucopia Number 11 April 1983 The computers of tomorrow will have and flexibility of your micro for only multiple windows Yours can have 198 00 manual alone 30 00 them today The Electric Blackboard multi window text editor allows you to divide the screen of your CRT into any combination of horizontal and vertical windows Cut paste compare draw charts V review scroll and edit your favorite SP nri he enc vhat veu think 4 5 or even 10 files simultaneously wn tat Create your own commands for your own applications Increase your S ANTA CRUZ productivity Whether scientist or novice it takes only minutes to get SOFTWARE SERVICES i j 1711 Quail Hollow Road started Let our multiple windows Ben Lomond CA 95005 unleash the extraordinary power 408 438 2360 667 Electric Blackboard has become my sole program editor under C PM The advantages of a windowing editor are well known to us hard core computer folk in theory but I couldn t really imagine just how much it would increase my productivity until I actually used it 99 David Ramsey The Electric Blackboard is confit over 30 terminals and most 2
74. in 11 of U9 below board 6 Link pin 5 of U25 to pin 9 of U60 7 Link pin 8 of U22 to pin 19 of U73 8 Cut trace on bottom of board from pin 19 of U73 It comes through a plated through hole adjacent to pin 4 of U73 9 Cut trace to pin 11 of U9 between 09 and U10 on top of board 10 Cut trace to pin 12 of U10 between U10 and U11 11 Cut trace to pin 5 of U25 It emerges between pins 6 and 7 of U23 and disap pears between pin 8 and 9 of U22 on top of the board 3423 Hill Canyon Ave Thousand Oaks CA 91360 BB RCPM 805 492 5472 24 hrs 12 Link pin 7 of U11 earth to the plat ed through hole of the trace which used to go to pin 4 of U11 it is adjacent to pin 13 of U22 Double Density Floppy Controller 1 Cut trace from pin 12 of U111 on top of the board before it goes to the plated through hole The software has been re written so that the PBRDY handshake is not required 2 Cut trace from U102 pin 37 to U102 pin 22 Link U102 pin 37 to U111 pin 12 This is the Double Density control line 3 Link U111 pin 9 to U112 pin 13 Link U112 pin 12 to pin 14 of J1 the floppy disk drive header This connects the Side Select circuitry of the YEDATA drives 4 Cut the track from U102 pin 27 on the top of the board between U102 and U104 pin 6 Link U102 pin 27 to U101 pin 3 This is the RAW DATA line which must bypass the on board circuitry when using the double density control ler When changing back to the 1771 this
75. ine editor easy to learn amp use Very fast 3 TTYPE typing training program written in BASIC 4 TINYPLAN very simple minded spread sheet Whets your appetite for a fancy one 5 C80 Text Utilities 6 CHOP cuts off file after N bytes 7 ENTAB replace spaces with tabs where possible 8 MS double or triple spaces a file to output 9 RTW removes trailing spaces from file 10 TRUNC truncates each line to specified length 11 WRAP wraps at column 80 plus pretty pretty printing page s USERS DISK 16 BB 1 Modem Software 1 RCPM27 list of U S bulletin boards 2 SMODEM interfaces BB I with Hayes Smartmodem 3 PLINK66 easy to use with non CP M host for port A 4 BBPAT menu selection of BAUD rate bits char parity amp stop bits 5 7 Modem7 plus BBPAT lets you talk to anything from port A USERS DISK 17 Small C version 2 SMALLC2 this substantially expanded ver sion of Small C now includes for goto la bel switch case external declarations new preprocessor commands expanded I O incl udes redirection initializers plus 12 new ex pressions The I O and runtime libraries have been greatly expanded including printf Source amp documentation on one full disk USERS DISK 18 FORTH IFORTH this is Idaho FORTH which can be burned into ROM or loaded from disk It replaces the PFM monitor amp handles all the monitor functions See issue 11 FORTH column for more info about IFORTH and this d
76. is available Shipping weight 253 D amp W ASSOCIATES PO Box 60 Rome NY 13440 315 339 2232 or 337 7968 Please call either number evenings only Data Base Handlers continued tives damn the computer and call the programmers incorrigible bastards and other related but less printable names Conversely the programmers and ana lysts rightly recognize the execs as capri cious and arbitrary do they REALLY need this Look for the ability to reconfigure data files in any system you buy or write One of the slickest l ve seen uses a direc tory file to store the file structure Simply create a new file structure and copy from one file to another This prototype sys tem that I am describing allows you to add or delete entire fields lengthen or shorten existing fields or change their order within the record What a heart burn saver Lesson 3 Transferrability In another few months you will have worn out your big board and will want the data on a system based on Steve Ciarcia s 8088 single board computer How to get the data from one system to another There are several ways to skin this cat most of them with some hangups Look for a section in the manual that may be titled Foreign Files 12 Green Ball Brothers monitor with enclosure measuring 19 x 16 5 x 14 Room inside to mount a Ferguson single board computer or small SS 50 S 100 system Power supply available see be low Requires 15 volts DC
77. isk EEE OREGON op FOR MOST EVERY RS 232 TEST YOU HAVE THE ROMAC LINE CHECK WILL DO IT Tri color LED s mounted nearest the source signal clearly display activity polarity and validity of seven of the most commonly used RS 232 signals TD RD RTS CTS DSR DSD and DTR A switch reverses TD pin 2 and RD pin 3 Versatility is provided by either standard wire connect or printed circuit mount DB 25 connectors which can be soldered to the board Aconvenient RS 232 tester by using standard wire type connectors An easy to use monitor for a data set or computer port by using PC board connectors mounted to the back A parallel connector to a communication port by using both types of DB 25 connectors BOARD with instructions 7 50 BOARD and PARTS KIT Includes 7 tri color LED s 7 resistors male and female DB 25 connectors and switch 25 00 COMPUTER EQUIPMENT 240 W Market St Box 589 Somonauk Illinois 60552 815 498 2111 2 00 Shipping ae ae ae ee LEAP INTO A NEW DIMENSION WITH AZTEC Cll 60446 NOO3HO ON38 ezz xog Od swejshg ejDuis eut Full implementation of C with standard floating point library and I O subroutines UNIX VER 7 compatible Produces relocatable 8080 optional 0280 assembler code Relocating assembler and linker supplied with package or use Microsoft M80 and L80 SID ZSID debugger interface FAST
78. its a Files can be TYPEd right from the operating system b A text editor or DDT can be used to do emergency surgery c If you bomb a disc like I recently did you can use Ward Christensen s Disc Utility or the PFM monitor to find and read the data for which the directory is missing Lesson 2 Reconfiguration This problem has plagued anyone who has ever worked with a file man ager After Dave gets all his programming done and all of us subscribers entered he thinks Wouldn t it be a good idea if I knew who had ordered which user discs He wants another field folks That means updating the original pro gram first piece of frustration writing a transfer utility what a waste you will only use it once and transliterating all that data into a new file ulcer time This isthe major reason why corporate execu continued on next page 14 Micro Cornucopia Number 11 April 1983 UNIVERSAL ENCLOSURE Retina ERE Shipping weight 8 Modular power supply missing regulator card fits inside above monitor enclosure Includes large transformer that outputs 8 5 volts 2 17 amps 18 volts 1 5 amps each 15 volts 1 5 amps for monitor three large capacitors 1 18kuf 2 Bkuf 1 30 amp 2 3 amp bridge rec tifiers The transformer and rectifiers Capacitors make a perfect unregulated SS 50 S 100 power supply The schematic for the regulator card
79. k Utilities 1 REBOOT sets up the CP M auto load 2 SWEEP directory file transfer routine 3 A Lets BB I recognize a double sided drive as one drive with 494K of usable space 4 FIX super disk utility does everything much easier to use than DU77 5 Compare files routine 6 UNERA retrieve erased files 7 FIND check all drives on system for a file 8 MENU menu program for CP M 9 NEWCAT enhanced disk catalog program 10 Single drive copy program that does track by track copies rather than file by file 11 Extended CRC checker creates file amp checks file 12 Super disk formatter program for BB I USERS DISK 11 Printer Utilities 1 Microline 92 printer routine 2 Graphics display package for MX 80 with Graftrax very fancy 3 Epson MX80 setup for BB I with 59 5K CP M 4 Epson MX8 setup for any CP M lets you set print modes 5 Micro Tek print driver Ports A amp B USERS DISK 12 Games for BB I T ALIENS a fast exciting arcade game 2 ZCHESS chess with a 1 6 level look ahead 3 MasterMind match wits with the computer 4 BIO Biorythm charts complete with graphics on the BB 5 LIFE so fast it s real animation 6 CRAPS see how much you d lose in Vegas 7 WUMPUS a caver s delight kill the Wumpus or be killed 8 PRESSUP similar to Othello 9 Games 7 games in one program includes 9 UNLOAD create HEX file from COM file for 2732s only All Users Disks 15 00 each US Can Mex blackjack maze
80. ly Then you need SpellSys With this full feature package you can write prose with the pros SpellSys fea tures a 42 000 word dictionary and all the bells and whistles of those expensive checkers including rhyming crossword search letter unscrambling etc SpellSys is made up of a group of indiv idual programs which you can use toge ther or separately With SpellSys you can setup and maintain your own custom dictionary in addition to the main dic tionary These are real dictionaries not hash tables so you edit or remove words from your own dictionary at will I should have graphics display run ning on either the BB or the KayPro that you can play with And of course Dyna will be here Tony Ozrelic LA software and his wife are planning to come so you might just take home your own Dyna disk You folks with hardware and software for trade or sale should definitely bring along some goodies Activities There are a number of really fine short trips you can make from here Local guides will be glad to take you out sail ing kayaking river running fishing backpacking bicycling you name it The Bend area is internationally known as one of the most beautiful and varied rec reation areas in the Northwest so plan to stay a few extra days and enjoy IT S EASY TO USE Just enter SPELLSYS select which disks you ll use and file you re checking Then SpellSys takes over Everything i
81. ly change the character istics of the CRT Trouble is though that with all that power and flexibility comes very broad range of values that do not work with a given monitor The following will hope fully be a help in setting up the most critical values so you can get your moni tor running The horizontal timing registers are RO R1 R2 and R3 They are respectively the Horizontal Total Register the Hor izontal Displayed Register the Horizon tal Sync Position Register and the Sync Width Register These registers work together to set the horizontal timing in four areas char acters displayed front porch sync width and back porch see Figure 2 ESC G0 s descenders continued on page 8 P i lt Horizontal Total gt i _ Figure 2 6845 Horizontal Display Horizontal display Front porch Hor syne Back porch 7 77 7 6 7 Micro Cornucopia Number 11 April 1983 BIG BOARD II 4 MHz 280 SINGLE BOARD COMPUTER WITH SASI HARD DISK INTERFACE 895 ASSEMBLED TESTED 695FULLKIT 245 PC BOARD WITH EPROM amp PALS Jim Ferguson the designer of the Big Board distributed by Digital Research Computers has produced a stunning new computer that Cal Tex Computers began shipping in June Called Big Board II it has the following features B 4 MHz 280 CPU and Peripheral Chips The new Ferguson computer ru
82. m the disk drive connec tors You can have write precompensation on all tracks or just after track forty two Five inch double density will have write precompensation on all tracks while most eight inch drives only need it on the inner tracks Eight inch drives run fine with it enabled for all tracks but it is not necessary and there is a possibility of incompatibility with other systems Last comes the clock selection for the drives Five inch drives have a lower da ta transfer rate than the eight inch drives so the clock to the disk controller chip must be halved On JB35 jumper the center pin to the pin nearest the CTC for eight inch drives and away from the CTC for the fives BB II Double Density The Big Board II can be brought up with the same software that the Big Board I used but it will only be single density The CBIOS disk from Cal Tex Com puters has the necessary utilities to change the Big Board CP M to the ver sion needed for double density opera tion It just takes a few minutes to make the modifications The CBIOS disk from Cal Tex contains several versions of CBIOS Each version has a MAC file for assembly by M80 and its associated HEX file The DS60E8 and DS60EA files are for two drive double density systems with 59 5K and 60K CP M The SS60E8 and SS60EA files are for four drive single density 59 5K and 60K CP M Lastly the SW59E4 and SWS9E6 are for two drive double density 59 5K and 60K CP M wit
83. mpt to be heard over the din the second and third days our voices were in no shape to shout So it was a crazy time two weeks get ting ready one day of travel one day of setup three days of Faire one more day getting back to Bend and then back into the thick of things trying to get caught up It was worth going We were able to put together a lot of names and voices and faces Also we found out that a lot of people are aware of the Big Board and have considered getting one but didn t The Single Board Systems Journal No 11 know about Micro C There was also a LOT of interest in the KayPro Most of the KayPro folks were not in terested in hardware or software details they were just users But those interest ed in the nits and grits were delighted to see the kind of information they could getin Micro C We put up a little sign announcing the Saturday meeting of the Big Board Users We got a larger room than we had last year but we filled it had more folks than the TRS 80 color users and we were a much more colorful group I did a rough count and it looked like better than 100 Over 90 percent had at least one Big Board 1 20 percent had Big Board Ils 5 percent had KayPros and 2 percent had Xerox s Iknow this doesn t add up but I m sure you realize that you don t have to be into sports to give more than 100 percent The presentation was very impromptu unorganized and I spent good a por tion of the tim
84. n one full disk USERS DISK 18 FORTH IFORTH this is Idaho FORTH which can be burned into ROM or loaded from disk It replaces the PFM monitor amp handles all the monitor functions See issue 11 FORTH column for more info about IFORTH and this disk ANNOUNCING NINE 20 00 each other foreign All The Users Disks Contain Documentation On Disk In DOC Files BACK ISSUES 3 00 each US CAN MEX 5 00 each Other Foreign 16 pages ISSUE NO 1 8 81 Power Supply RAM Protection ISSUE NO 3 12 81 4 MHz Mods Configuring Modem 7 Safer Formatter Reverse Video Cursor FORTHwords begins ISSUE NO 4 2 82 Keyboard Translation More 4 MHz Mods ISSUE NO 6 6 82 Customize Your Chars Double Density Update Self Loading ROM Terminal in FORTH 24 pages ISSUE NO 7 8 82 6 Reviews of C Adding 6K of RAM Video Wiggle Modems Lync and SIOs Viewing 50 Hz Y PFM PRN Undoing CP M ERASE On Your Own begins 16 pages Keyboard Encoder 24 pages 20 pages ISSUE NO 2 10 81 Parallel Print Driver Drive Motor Control Shugart Jumpers Program Storage Above PFM PFM PRN 16 pages 20 pages ISSUE NO 5 4 82 Word Processing Two Great Spells Two Text Editors Double Density Review Scribble a Formatter ISSUE NO 8 10 82 Drive Maintenance Interfacing Drives Installing a New BIOS Flippy Floppies C ing Clearly begins Xerox 820 begins 28 pages BB EPROM Programmer ISSUE NO 9 12 82
85. nd use them in another model I wanted to use it for my expense accounting but I can t get the ending balance from this week s model to be the beginning balance for next week s In summary PlannerCalc is a great tool for doing spreadsheets They have a more advanced model called MAS TERPLANNER that overcomes the limitations l ve mentioned above but that costs 325 00 TARGET PlannerCalc Comshare Target Software 1935 Cliff Valley Way Suite 200 Atlanta Georgia 30329 404 634 9535 Price 50 00 plus 5 00 shipping Editor s note PlannerCalc is being up graded according to Comshare and the new version will sell for about 100 00 The 50 version will no longer be available They sold something like 10 000 copies in the first month that it was available for 50 per copy So if anyone wants write a new super deluxe 50 spreadsheet program here s your chance 10 for 30 00 plus 2 shipping per box of 10 CP M Public Domain Software Collections Add 2 00 each to copy CPMUG RCPM or SIGM disks onto new disks Specify which disk numbers you want There are over 200 disks full of gt public domain software available in these three collections The best way tofindout whatis available is to order a box of 10 disks plus 20 for copying iting and specify that you want the catalogs and abstracts which will fill all ten mu then after you read the abstracts order the disks you have picked Out Quantity discounts and c
86. ng a box from wood for the BB and floppy drive In December I received JRT PASCAL Itis very good In software I made simple assembly programs for copying programs using a single drive and made a calculator in Pascal In future I shall make screen edi tor in JRT Pascal At the end I must write 1 BB is the best 2 Micro Cornucopia is very good 3 I am happy I hope that you understood all My English is not well Martin Mali Dipl Ing Borovnica Blok 7 61353 Borovnica Yugoslavia Editor s note Don t apologize for your English Martin It isvery well indeed And definitely keep Mi cro C in mind when you have your text editor running It sounds most interesting Dear Editor Here s the promised update on Siemens drives I talked with a sales rep from a distributor and was told that Siemens had installed faulty DC stepper motors in several thousand of their FDD 100 8 8 SS DD disk drives before they found out the motors had a short life span Instead of replacing the motors they decided to call it a loss and dump the drives on the surplus market instead f trying to pass them off on their regular OEM customers Not to worry though the life span of the motors is probably sufficient for most anyone s purposes since short life refers to industrial standards I don t think I could getacou ple of thousand hours of operating time out of a stepper motor even if I played Adventure 24 ho
87. ng functions The IFORTH compiled code is available on disk from Univ Ida ho It can be run from disk or burned into 4 EPROMs for permanent installation in the Big Board Editor s note User disk 18 contains the complete IFORTH package as well as fig FORTH and every other scrap of FORTH re lated material I could find The FORTH disk is not full but then no one seems to write any thing very large in FORTH very frustrat ing The disk is available for 15 00 from Micro C Hampton Miller is working on an interface between IFORTH and the Dyna Disk and should have his results available shortly Tom Ingerson Ray Buvel and Jay Papillon worked on IFORTH Jay will burn IFORTH into ROM for you if you send him 4 2716s and 35 00 Contact him at 871 N Eisen hower Moscow Id 83843 208 883 0847 evenings New Products Triangle Digital Systems London uses FORTH on their TDS900 SBC This 180 board is an all CMOS Eurocard de sign utilizing a 6301 microprocessor The software includes a full screen edi tor You already know about the BASIC on a chip microprocessors such as the Z8 Several manufacturers are now start ing to ship samples of their FORTH based chips Three that have already been announced are the Rockwell RF611 12 a 6502 with FORTH mask programmed into 3K bytes the RCA 1804N 2K byte and the TI TMS7000 The holdup to date has been the lim ited on chip PROM space usually 2 3K bytes The manufactur
88. ns at 4 MHz Its Monitor code is lean uses Mode 2 interrupts and makes good use of the Z80 A DMA chip W 64K Dynamic RAM 4K Static CRT RAM 24K E E PROM or Static RAM Big Board II has three memory banks The first memory bank has eight 4164 DRAMS that provide 60K of user space and 4K of monitor space The second memory bank has two 2Kx8 SRAMs for the memory mapped CRT display and space for six 2732As 2Kx8 static RAMs or pin compatible EEPROMS The third SIZE 8 75 x 15 5 POWER 5V Q 12V 0 1A SASI Interface for Winchester Disks Our Big Board implements the Host portion of the Shugart Associates Systems Interface Adding a Winchester disk drive is no harder than attaching a floppy disk drive A user simply 1 runs a fifty conductor ribbon cable from a header on the board to a Xebec controller that costs only 295 and implements the con troller portion of the SASI interface 2 cables the controller to a Seagate Technology ST 506 hard disk or one compatible with it and 3 provides power for the controller card and drive Since our CBIOS contains code for communicating with hard disks that s all a user has to do to add a Winchester to a system memory bank is for RAM or ROM added to the board via the STD bus Whether bought as a bare board a full kit or assembled and tested it comes with a 250 nS 2732 EPROM containing Russell Smith s superb Monitor W Multiple Density Controller for SSIDS Floppy Di
89. number with ROM orders Monitor amp char ROMs 5 00 each if you send a fast ROM and a stamped self addressed return envelope MICRO CORNUCOPIA Box 223 Bend Oregon 97709 From Micro Cornucopia USERS DISK 13 General Utilities BB 1 ZZSOURCE disassembles to real Zilog mnemonics 2 EX14 superset of submit or supersub 3 MOVPATCH lets you use MOVECPM on other copies of CP M 4 XMON expanded BB monitor use in ROM or as overlay 5 CURSOR prompts you for cursor char you want 6 UMPIRE very fancy RAM test 7 ZSIDFIX display improvement for ZSID 8 PIPPAT modify PIP so you can reset system from within PIP 9 G Lets you use the BB as a calculator including HEX 10 SORT sort package written in C80 USERS DISK 14 II Software 1 PRO32 latest 2732 reader amp programmer 2 SMODEM2 lets BB talk to Hayes Smartmodem 3 GRAFDEMO demonstrates BB II graphics in BASIC 4 ATTRTEST demonstrates BB 11 graphics in JRT Pascal 5 INITSIO initializes port B for 300 or 1200 baud 6 MENU displays menu of COM files enter number to run file 7 SETCLK sets realtime clock built into BB 8 PRINT2 modified print which accesses BB II clock 9 BOX draws a thin line box on screen determined by HL and BC 10 ALIENS space invaders arcade game 11 LISTSET printer interface auto enables RTS ignores DCD All Users Disks 515 00 each US Can Mex USERS DISK 15 Word Proc
90. o vided on the CBIOS disk to generate and copy the system With the new system on the newly for matted disk the Big Board ILis now fully Figure 3 6845 Video Patch operational The copy routines that were previously used on the Big Board I can not be used on the Big Board II but PIP can be used in the global format For ex ample the command PIP A B would copy the entire contents of disk B to disk A All CP M 2 2 compatible pro grams and utlities that use the BDOS seem to work fine Of special interest are SWEEP FIX and DU Connecting a Keyboard The keyboard connector for the Big Board II is the same as the Big Board I The connection diagram is shown be low The Big Board II does not have to be jumpered for the strobe polarity It senses the strobe polarity on the first keypress and stores the level informa tion in memory This is very nice when bringing up the board for the first time Connect a test jumper to pin 17 of the keyboard connector Ground the free end of the test jumper and the monitor will display the monitor startup mes sage So a keyboard is not necessary to test the board Patching WordStar Almost immediately after we got the Big Board II running we just had to patch WordStar The Big Board I does not sup Figure 5 Port Addresses port some of the special features that are available with WordStar but the Big Board II does We quickly got out appendix E of the WordStar Manual and
91. ocedures Column by John P Jones T had planned to give a preliminary report on JRT PASCAL Version 3 0 by this time but as is the case with most soft ware products the release date was postponed I hope to have a full report by next issue Before we continue with our look at the language I have a few comments on PASCAL textbooks The last time I was at a major bookstore I must have found at least twelve volumes which dealt with PASCAL and PASCAL programming Many dealt with specific versions of the language but most were designed to teach standard PASCAL Someone wanting to learn the language has the problem of trying to decide which one or two texts will be best to purchase Without going into detail I would rec ommend the following For those with out much experience in any program ming language Introduction to PASCAL by Rodnay Zaks Sybex 1981 The text is designed as a tutorial in the language and even the beginner should have no trouble with it For those wanting to learn PASCAL as a second language Programming in PAS CAL by Peter Grogono Addison Wesley 1980 is a better choice The explanations and examples in this text are on a more technical level more suited to the expe rienced programmer Finally as a reference to the language The PASCAL Handbook by Jaques Ti berghien Sybex 1981 All of the above should be used along with whatever documentation you got with your PAS CAL compiler Unfortunately
92. on of drive 8 Micro Cornucopia Number 11 April 1983 Once you have decided which CBIOS you ll use refer to the BIOS DOC and MELDING DOC files on the CBIOS disk Using SID or DDT load the CP M file that you have produced via MOVCPM Move the CP M out of the way by typing M0980 1F7F 4000 This will move CP M so the lower part of memory can be cleared Fill lower memory with 00H NOP by typing F100 3FFF 00 This clears lower memory with a value that will not affect the operation of the Z80 Next prepare to read the selected CBIOS For example for DS60E8 HEX type IDS60E8 HEX Now read the file in to memory from disk using the read command and the offset specified in the MELDING DOC file In the case of DS60E8 HEX the com mand would be R2200 This will read the CBIOS into memory at and the one sector loader at 900H with the signon message at 980H This is a little different from the BB I and other CP M computers but is needed for the version of Sysgen supplied There are several cold boot routines thatareloadedinto areas of memory that are overwritten after boot There is no need for these routines to be in the per manent BIOS as they are only used dur ing cold boot Also there is not room in the BIOS to store these routines Now move CP M back down to 1600H by typing M4000 55FF 1600 CP M and the CBIOS are now ready to be saved and copied onto the system tracks of the newly formatted disk SYSGENS is pr
93. onitor ROMs for the KayPro The monitor provides both a non blinking cursor and 5 retries on a disk read error The new character ROM contains our new BB character set plus the Non Lin ear Greek set or blanks in place of the special characters Reading other 5 disk formats A software package called UniForm sets up the KayPro to read write and format disks for Osborne 1 SD and DD Superbrain NEC 8001A Xerox 820 SD and DD TRS 80 MOD 1 SD Morrow Micro Decision Heath with Magnolia DD UniForm contains two programs One lets you format a disk in drive B to any of the above formats the other lets you read or write any of the formats You can run the programs on these other disk formats and you can PIP programs be tween these disks and the KayPro format disk in drive A The UniForm programs are complete ly menu driven so you don t need to re fer to the manual The user interface is well done Weaknesses Drive A is always in KayPro format and you may only transfer files from the KayPro format to the other formats using PIP which is quite slow It would be much nicer to be able to select a special format for both drives and if the format were the same be able to do a fast track by track copy between the two drives It also would be nice if the program smartened up the BIOS enough so the system could automatically figure out a new disk format and access the data with no operator intervention just like Soft Ware P
94. opy program amp source 5 DU77 disk inspector editor 6 FINDBAD isolates bad disk sectors 7 Print fancy page headings USERS DISK 4 1 CBIOS custom bios for Tandon drives 2 ZCPR dynamite CCP checks drive A for missing COM files improved commands 3 ZCPRBLOC identifies CCP location USERS DISK 5 1 CAT disk cataloging routines 2 Modem 7 for Port A 3 Modem7 Port B 4 PACMAN the arcade game 5 FAST buffers the disk to speed up assemblies 6 NOLOCK removes BB I shift lock 7 VERIFY cleanup amp verify a flaky disk 8 DUMPX enhanced for BB 9 UNLOAD create HEX file from COM file USERS DISK 6 1 REZ 8080 Z80 disassembler TDL mnemonics 2 PRINTPRN prints Crowe listings 3 RUNPAC run time utility package for 8080 assembly language programs Has 51 functions Includes source which assembles under ASM USERS DISK 7 1 CHNGPFM PFM monitor mods 2 TERM terminal routines let you set up BB as simple terminal as a file receiver or as a file sender 3 Checkbook balancing package 4 Disk Utilities copy to memory from memory and dump USERS DISK 8 1 BDSCIO custom BDSC 1 0 for BB both h and c 2 YAM Yet Another Modem program in source amp COM form Turns BB into paging intelligent terminal complete with printer interface baud rates to 9600 3 ROFF text formatter 4 SIGNS prints large block letters BIG BOARD USERS DISKS 15 00 each US Can Mex 20 00 each Other For
95. ory Micro Cornucopia Number 11 April 1983 Detailed View of the BB II By Brett Berg The following is a detailed look at set ting up the BB II First we ll discuss the video section followed by BIOS incor poration disk drive interfacing Word Star and more The Video Section The Big Board II uses the Motorola 6845 Video Timing Controller along with a Standard Micro Systems 8002 003 Video Display Attributes Controller The 6845 sets up the screen refresh and sync timing It also handles the scroll and cur sor positioning A light pen can be con nected to the designated input on the 6845 This input is located on the edge of the board in the power block The 8002 handles the character and graphics generation It also creates the cursor and the various attributes that have been mask programmed into it The two chips provide a very advanced video display system using just a few parts With the new X command in the monitor the Big Board II user can di rectly access video RAM by switching to bank 0 When you enter XO for instance you select bank 0 where you ll find ROM starting at address 0000H character RAM starting at address 6000H and at tribute RAM starting at address 7000H If you insert hex codes from 00H to FFH into the video RAM using the Modi fy memory command in the monitor the screen will display all of the characters of the 8002 Dumping the video attribute memory with the Dump command will
96. ouple years from now Just like the Big Board I bought last summer may soon get sup planted with a 16 bit machine For the remainder of this article I intend to de scribe some of the lessons have learned Lesson 1 Data Representation For this discussion I will use a stand ard type of file made up of fixed length records each with a defined structure of fields Variable length records pile files and such are subjects that are worth dis cussing but you are in the wrong forum Dave s subscription list is a good exam ple each of us has an entry consisting of name address city state zip expira tion date and whatever else Dave s KGB has unearthed for our dossiers When considering data mobility it is important to know how this data is stored Name address and city are fairly ob viously stored as alphanumeric strings that is the easy part Zip code can be stored as a number or a string And the real stinker is the date field But first The Post Office usually likes bulk mailings in zip code order so they can sort it easily So Dave s list needs to be able to handle that A zip code stored asa five digit numeric is a piece of cake to sort right But we Yanks are getting longer zips next year with a hyphen in it And the Canadians and Brits have 6 digit alphanumerics that won t fit Most alphanumeric sorts use the ASCII collat ing sequence to sort on so strings con sisting of the ASCII numeric characters
97. power Fortunately you can slow the vertical to 50 Hz without cutting foils or chang ing the video crystal Just slow down the vertical timing for 50 Hz by having the scan counter U22 divide by 12 instead of 10 You can do this by replacing U22 with a small piggyback board containing 022 74LS290 plus 74LS161 and a 7410 Uwe Pitz Hauptstr 36 3180 Wolfsburg 29 West Germany Editor s note It appears to me that the only lines you bring up from U22 s socket are those marked as pins on the 74LS290 and you bring up thesame pin numbers that are marked Then you tie the 74LS161 and the 7410 to the ap propriate pins on the LS290 Big Board Bulletin Boards Twin Cities 612 432 0428 24 hrs 300 amp 1200 baud Chris Torkildson 13791 Heywood Ct Apple Valley Mn 55124 There are two other BB bulletin boards that I m aware of though I m sure there are more Both run by au thors who have articles in this issue See the BB I article by Trevor Marshall and the BB II article by Brett Berg for more information Both are 24 hours and I know that Trevor s handles both 300 and 1200 baud Micro Cornucopia Number 11 April 1983 33 E D cog i WP ATE 900 Wh ley J 8 areer Ln For WUR Software ACER DLE EE arava BTR 1 Micro Cornucopia Number 11 April 1983 r IM FORM 4 Micro C works because it is a central information exchange for What kinds o
98. ptr Define the type word ptr to be a pointer to a dynamic variable of type word Type word is a record two fields of which are pointers to additional varia bles of type word PASCAL allows pointers to be defined before their target types have been specified to allow for just this kind of recursive definition The variables associated with base and current do not actually exist until creat Winnipeg Canada ed by the built in procedure NEW The statement NEW base will create a variable of type word and base will then point to that variable The expression baseCTRL means the vari able pointed to by base and is used to access the newly created variable base spelling hello Because pointers can point to records and fields of records can be pointers all kinds of linked list structures rings trees queues can be built at execution time The example above could be used to build a binary tree of dictionary entries for a text to speech conversion pro gram The pre defined value NIL is recognized by the compiler for null pointers i e pointers that don t point to anything Finally the procedure DIS releases the storage allocated to a dynamic variable As for all variables in PASCAL values are meaningless until they are assigned To start a dictionary as above create the variable NEW base then assign its values base spelling hello base sound
99. pus or be killed 8 PRESSUP similar to Othello 9 Games 7 games in one program includes blackjack maze and animal USERS DISK 13 General Utilities BB I 1 ZZSOURCE disassembles to real Zilog mnemonics 2 EX14 superset of submit or supersub 3 MOVPATCH lets you use MOVECPM on other copies of CP M 4 XMON 3K expanded BB 1 monitor use in ROM or as overlay 5 CURSOR prompts you for cursor char you want 6 UMPIRE very fancy RAM test 7 ZSIDFIX display improvement for ZSID 8 PIPPAT modify PIP so you can reset system from within PIP 9 Lets you use the BB as a calculator including HEX 10 SORT sort package written in C80 USERS DISK 14 BB II Software 1 PRO32 latest 2732 reader amp programmer 2 SMODEM2 lets BB II talk to Hayes Smartmodem 3 GRAF DEMO demonstrates BB 11 graphics in BASIC 4 ATTRTEST demonstrates BB 11 graphics in JRT Pascal 5 INITSIO initializes port B for 300 or 1200 baud 6 MENU displays menu of COM files enter number to run file 7 SETCLK sets realtime clock built into BB 8 PRINT2 modified print which accesses BB clock 9 BOX draws a thin line box on screen determined by HL and BC 10 ALIENS space invaders arcade game 11 LISTSET printer interface auto enables RTS ignores DCD USERS DISK 15 Word Processing 1 EDIT very fancy line editor which almost looks identical to EX Unix Includes help menu programmable key and full manual on disk 2 TED simple minded l
100. r San Diego CA 92126 Dear Editor I am looking for a Double Density modification using the Western Digital 2795 all in one disk controller chip and a new BIOS Mark Hedin 320 Prospect Ave 9 Redondo Beach CA 90277 Dear Editor I would like to know if anyone has a daughter board that will handle 5 and 8 SD and DD drives at the same time Dan R Farris 6101 Alvis Circle SW Albuquerque NM 87105 Editor s note So would a lot of people I get requests for this kind of drive interface almost daily Anyone listening 2 Micro Cornucopia Number 11 April 1983 Dear Editor I d like to become a Big Board contact for Central Europe I m stationed at the Ramstein Air Force Base People can call me at 0631 54908 just about any time Also UNIVAC just got the contract for the new phase IV computers for the Air Force This means that Burroughs will probably be dumping a lot of older equipment on the surplus market Along this line is anyone familiar with a Bur roughs RLP and has anyone interfaced it to anything but a Burroughs I d like to get mine going David Burgess Box 5921 Ramstein AB APO NY NY 09012 Dear Editor Instead of cutting board runs when making modifications to the BB you can often bend the IC pins out of the sockets and then solder jumpers to the pins This type of change is much easier to undo than cuts on the board David Strauss 247 Greendale Ave Needham MA 02914 Dear Edi
101. r story The tools have not been selling Anyway he mentioned a few ideas he had and in passing added that he had wire wrapped up a 256K RAM disk for his Big Board Being a person who sees the obvious in almost no time at all I suggested that he market the RAM disk Then I signed up for board 1 Tony brought board 1 up to the Computer Faire and I got my first glimpse of what I O had been doing to me all this time and I mean TIME A number of other Big Board owners also got a first hand chance to drool all over my new Dyna powered screamer Un fortunately I didn t get a chance to cruise the strip with it Since you can t see what my Dyna does first hand unless you come to the Get Together which is not a bad idea I ll try to give you an idea what it does How Fast Is It First of all once you have loaded Dyna it takes 38 seconds to transfer the entire contents of a disk into Dyna you are surprised by the silence the drive mo tors don t so much as twitch and normal CP M activities become instantaneous Run your fancy directory program such as DIRR and the files are dis played almost before you hit the carriage return You can get into and out of your text editor so quickly and easily that edit ing multiple files with a single file editor is often easier than using a fancy multi ple file editor with standard disks Large assemblies become trivial If there s an error in the source it s no great los
102. reat deal My power supply worked the first time I plugged it in and like yours it s as solid as the rock of Gibraltar I ordered Aztec C II for the special Mi cro C subscriber price of 149 about a month ago I ve been in love ever since Boy is it great to have a complete UNIX 7 C to program in I do almost all my editing with VEDIT though I only have their mini version Mini Vedit 3 31 to be exact It doesn t have the fancy features like word wrap or all the text buffers only 1 not 10 but it s still quite powerful and for writing programs its almost unbeatable I also have Wordstar but those HELP screens and all the disk banging drives me cra zy Yes I know those HELP screens can be made to disappear but once they re gone I have no idea what any control key does VEDIT is simple and fast 49 for the mini version is a steal Aneat book is Mastering CP M by Alan Miller of 8080 Z80 Assembly Language Techniques for Improved Programming fame It s put out by Sybex copyright 1983 How d they manage that I bought the book the week after Thanks giving This book is really a huge macro library containing routines for just about anything you d ever want to do in as sembly language in the CP M environ ment Don Brittain 4200 Spruce St Apt 208 Philadelphia PA 19104 Micro Cornucopia Number 11 April 1983 LOW COST DISK CONTROLLER LESS THAN 10 COMPLETE SAVE WEAR AND TEAR ON YOUR DISK DRIVES AN
103. return trip at 4 p m 23 each way Hertz and National rent cars at the Redmond airport and there is an inex pensive limo service that takes you any where you want to go in Bend Lodging Bend has a plethora of places to stay ranging from the plush resorts complete with river running horseback riding tennis fishing etc 38 60 per night to plain but nice motel rooms for 15 95 A couple of miles outside of town is a state campground which has full facili Micro Cornucopia Number 11 April 1983 ties for tenting and trailering including solar heated showers and trout fishing It is only 8 00 per night Plus we have a large yard for all in tents and purposes Goodies Already there are some indications of the kinds of things we ll be doing here Trevor Marshall is hoping to bring a sys tem along It will be a Big Board with 4 banks of 64K dynamic RAM and 160 MBytes of streaming tape divided up in to 8 MByte pseudo disks And it s not that much slower than a floppy He s al ready using such a system for a bulletin board A very famous person may have a whole new system to show I can t say anything more than that even though I know none of you would breathe a word of it if I told you Hopefully someone will bring an op erating copy of CP M 3 along with some copies of the CBIOS You could be a very well loved person A Are you signing your name with an X because spelling doesn t come easi
104. rful you can have up to 128 columns and 512 lines in one matrix It s easy to communicate with you talk to it in simple English statements like COLUMN 1 FALL 82 COLUMN 2 WINTER 82 COLUMN 3 SPRING 83 COLUMN 4 SUMMER 83 COLUMN 5 TOTAL COLUMN 1 THRU COLUMN 4 LINE 1 UNIT SALES 100 200 300 350 LINE 2 UNIT PRICE 4 5 6 6 LINE 3 REVENUE UNIT SALES UNIT PRICE There re all kinds of logic that you can apply to cells Besides normal adding subtraction multiplication and division logic you can use min max average cum greater less than grow by expo nents and these can be nested to build some very complex models There is also a net present value feature for finding the profitability of one or more invest ments Features Naturally you can only see the num ber of columns on your screen that your VDT allows but PC has horizontal scrolling so you can scroll from one end of your model to the other It even has two split screen capabilities vertical and horizontal The vertical split is useful when you want to compare two columns whose numbers have separated It allows you to view any two columns next to each other The horizontal split works the same way allowing you to see two dif ferent parts of the model at the same time The documentation with this program is the best I ve seen There is a manual that is 1 2 thick that leads you through step by step They give you a sample model on
105. rs are available Weaknesses On the negative side the Epson is no ticeably slower than is the competition with an advertised speed of 80 cps but an actual throughput more like 40 cps The typestyle is not typewriter quality in stead itis quite plain and square To me this is the largest negative factor for the MX 80 The IDS and NEC printers are much prettier The basic MX 80 does not take single sheet paper The form feed action is very slow The dip switches to change printer configuration are deep inside the printer and require considera ble dismantling to set On the other hand the printer ribbon is exceptionally easy to change and the print head is user replaceable Conclusion Ireally like the printer and know many friends that feel the same way Check it out first and then compare with the competitors to make your final decision 19 Dear Editor The article on interfacing CDC drives in issue 8 was a useful guide however there appears to be an error on diagram 3 HDLD1 and HDLDO head load are on pin 26 instead of pin 36 as indicated in the diagram My converted television set did not like the composite video output from the BB The screen had vertical bars and bad ghosts The following cured the prob lem Wesley Ebisuzaki 550 Memorial Dr 16E Cambridge MA r5 NO CRITICAL VALUES ADJUST FoR BEST PICTURE J6 ek Dear Editor Folks looking for a 9 hi res Motorola monitor which ac
106. s I can correct a 46K source file Sample times in seconds on 4MHz BB with single density disks Disk Dyna Description 182 0 40 0 120 0 16 0 CRC of 39 files 194K 27 3 1 8 348 0 2 4 14 1 8 14 5 8 with my text editor and then do a com plete reassembly in just over a minute It took over four times as long to do the same thing on disk The editor times above are the best example of how responsive the system gets I have a good stopwatch but a sig nificant share of the 8 seconds is simply reaction time Many other CP M proc esses are so quick they appear instanta neous I d like to see the IBM PC or the IBM anything take on my little Z80 now Ease of Use Dyna is very easy to use You just boot up on drive A and then enter DD which formats Dyna copies the entire contents of drive A into Dyna and then does a swap Dyna becomes drive A and the disk becomes drive D You also get small 1K programs that do each of these functions individually Dyna has not generated any BDOS er rors You know drive not ready or bad sector If your CP M contains ZCPR as mine does Dyna is perfect as drive A All of the COM files on Dyna are automatically available on the other drives so it s much faster to NOT have the COM files on drives B D because the programs load so much more quickly from Dyna PIP transfers between Dyna and a disk are twice as fast as the same transfer be tween two disks More Details Ih
107. s self prompting so sit back and relax Word Review Operations Show Context in file Lookup word in dictionary Misspelled correct file to putin user Dictionary Ignore Next word Previous word Exit review or any other key displays menu ORDER AT NO RISK Check out the manual and if you don t agree that SpellSys is a super bargain just return the package with the disk un opened within 30 days and we ll refund your money SPELLSYS 29 95 ppd in US amp Can Other Foreign add 5 00 Requires 32K CP M Formats 8 SS SD or 5 SS DD for KayPro Xerox Osborne Morrow Superbrain CP M is a trademark of Digital Research 65 Bend OR 97709 MC 503 382 8048 Visa 27 Especially For The Big Board USERS DISK 1 1 Two fast disk copiers 2 The manual for Small C 3 Crowe Z80 Assembler 4 Two disk formatters 5 Modem7 6 Othello 7 Serial print routine Port B USERS DISK 2 1 Two single disk drive copy programs both with source 2 Crowe Z80 Assembler source 3 New Crowe COM file debugged version 4 New CBIOS with parallel print driver amp other extensions for CP M 1 4 amp 2 2 5 Disk mapper with source USERS DISK 3 1 EPROM burning software for 2 Reset bit 7 unWordStar a file 3 Disk file CRC checker 4 New fast copy program amp source 5 DU77 disk inspector editor 6 FINDBAD isolates bad disk sectors 7 Print fancy page headings US
108. sks The new Cal Tex single board computer has a multiple density disk controller If can use 1793 1797 or 8877 controller chips since it generates the side signal with TTL parts The board has two connectors for disk signals one with 34 pins for 5 25 drives the other with 50 pins for 8 drives W Vastly Improved CRT Display The new Ferguson SBC uses a 6845 CRT controller and SMC 8002 video attributes controller to produce a display rivaling the display of quality terminals There are three display modes Character block graphics and line graphics The board emulates an ADM 31 with 24 lines of 80 characters formed by a 7x9 dot matrix STD Bus The new Ferguson computer has an STD Bus port for easy system expansion B W Two Synchronous Asynchronous Serial Ports With a Z80 A SIO O and a Z80 A CTC as a baud rate generator the new Ferguson computer has two full RS232 C ports It autobauds on both A Parallel Keyboard Port Four Other Parallel Ports for User I O The new Cal Tex single board computer has one parallel port for an ASCII keyboard and four others for user defined I O W Two 280 5 Eight Programmable Counters Timers The new Ferguson computer has two Z80 A CTCs One is used to clock data into and out of the Z80 A SIO O while the other is for systems and applications use W PROM Programming Circuitry The new Cal Tex SBC has circuitry for programming 2716s 2732 A s or pin compatible EE
109. standard interface and all the stand ard jumpers They run single and double density The difference is that they have the older TTL style boards service men prefer these boards so they require 12V or 5V Mine came jumpered for 12V Jumper 1 if you have 5V I bought two and checked them out with the scope and the alignment disk They were both right on and in beautiful condition They are better drives than the new ones I bought for 400 each So if you can use the larger drives and don t mind the fact that they were pulled out of new unsold commercial comput ers and checked out on a BB before ship ping then this is definitely the way to go RS 232 C Test Board AfterItook a shot at ROMAC for their documentation on the ScullTek comput er I didn t expect to hear from them As you will see in this issue s ads I ve heard from them They say that they have greatly improved the manual on that board I have to take their word for it be cause I haven t seen it yet They are also selling two other products a terminal board that sounds neat there are some very nice programs written to run on the Heath terminal and a really zingy little serial test board I ordered the RS 232 C line check board complete with parts It takes about 10 minutes to build and at 25 00 it costs less than 1 4 as much as any other units The following folks are reaching you for only 20 cents per word If you would like to reach the same a
110. t either for the BB II for the general CP M market you should consider a display ad in Micro C A sixth of a page is only 40 and the ad works for along time We are keeping all the issues of Micro C in print we have reprinted issue 1 three times already So there s no cheaper way to test the waters if you are after a sophisticated audience Competition Obviously if two or three folks are al ready supplying your product to the Big Board market then you ought to look for another product or another market But if you are aiming at a larger market it s a different story If Non Linear had given up because Osborne hit the market so fast and hard they wouldn t now be selling 10 000 KayPros a month The portable comput er market is huge and growing rapidly I don t have to tell you how many of the rest of us thought about building a portable BB I You could still do it and do it successfully if you researched the mar ket carefully and added the appropriate new bells and whistles However you d better have a couple of million bucks in your pocket before you start So Pick your project carefully You need to know early who will finance it who will design it who will document it who will publicize it who will buy it who will build it and how do you reach the buy er And once you know all these things remember that if it doesn t get out the door then none of the above really mat ters Ba Mi
111. t the 2716 needs to see a low to high transition on the chip enable pin He said that it is dif ficultto guarantee that RCE not will stay low during address changes We agree However RCE not can stay high during address changes If we disable all REC not lines before writing each new data byte we can then drop RCE not raise it for 50ms and then go to the next ad dress It is this low to high transition with VPP present that programs the 2716 I make these comments because I don tlike hardware modifications unless they are absolutely necessary For just a couple of 2716s I wouldn t modify the board And if I were doing production runs on 2716s set up the prom pro grammer to burn 5 chips at a time using the PGM not line This line is common toall 6 sockets and can be used in place of the RCE not line to pulse pin 18 of sev eral chips at a time Note that we made MOM of PROM configurable so that without re assem bling etc you can read or burn any EPROM that can be physically handled by the Big Board II In fact with an exter nal adapter you can handle any EPROM up to 256K Cindy Hollenbeck Industrial Software 19623 Autumn Creek Humble TX 77346 Head Load Pads For those of you wanting to follow the drive maintenance article in issue 8 by replacing your Shugart A800 801 s head load pads but not wanting to buy a whole package of pads probably 100 per pack for 25 00 you can make them out of scrap felt I
112. tor I have not had many disk problems in the last four years But recently the sys tem crashed while booting and it de stroyed the directory Ward Christian sen s disk editor helped me recover some of the text files but I lost the rest Very discouraging I d like to see a utility that would copy the directory to another place on the disk a reserved area or to another disk Then if the utility could access the disk using the special file as a directory we d be all set Rex Buddenberg 1910 Ash St North Bend OR 97459 Dear Editor In a recent issue you asked us to let you know if we had experience with dBase II I have been using it for a year now and find it excellent I am about to take delivery of my first run time pack ages 50 per copy so that I can start to resell the results of my labors Ihave been looking at updating to the BB II or the Insight Enterprises board is sue 8 I need to transfer data from 8 to 5 but find the drives cannot yet be mixed on the BB II I spoke to Bill Siegmund but he was about to depart with all his equipment to escape the rising California floodwaters It s ironic that we meanwhile are expe riencing the worst drought in our his tory I issue 6 Andrew Beck mentioned he was trying to bring up Turbodos on the Big Board Do you know if he has had any success Also is there any way to run CP M 3 on the BB I And may I once again reiterate my satisfaction with the quali
113. ty of your pub lication You have no idea what a breath of fresh air it brings to the technological desert we live in Down Under Jim Reid 82 Parriwi Rd Mosman 2088 Australia Editor s note Bill Siegmund s back now and pretty much dried out Iam working on reviews of a number of the data base handlers so I really appreciate your comments about dBase Good data base application generators can be invaluable to the programmer and to the end user but most of them are quite expensive too expensive for casual purchase Please anyone using dBase II Selector Quick n easy Software Associates database system dBase Window etc please fill about a page with the name of the package the retail price where it s available short description database language or screen generator main strengths main weaknesses how it compares with any other packages you ve tried and your general impressions When you send me your page specify which user disk you want in return Try to get your com ments in to us by the middle of June Also read the database overview in this issue Dear Editor While using the PFM monitor DUMP command I noticed a bug The ASCII dump resets bit 7 of the hex byte so a C3H displays as a C just like a 43H Walking through the monitor I found the RES 7 A at F23CH Just NOP out the two byte instruction and the dump works This helped eliminate attendant con fusion confused attendants during the
114. ublishers dual density package Anyway there is a super demand for this kind of software and I m sure a num ber of folks will follow along with new packages Meanwhile at 39 95 Uni Form is certainly worth getting UniForm Micro Solutions 125 S Fourth St DeKalb IL 60115 24 8 Drives for the KayPro A couple of folks are working on an 8 drive interface for the KayPro II and we ve had numerous requests from users and dealers for information that they might use to help them make this mod Well there is nothing so far but things should be coming There are a couple of options First you could do away with the 5 drives altogether Just modify the CBIOS for 8 and the drive cable for 8 compati bility and pick off 2MHz for the control ler Second you could add one or two 8 drives as drives C and D This would take some additional table space for sec tor decoding etc but would be the most versatile Since the KayPro has a 1793 on board you could make your 8 double density 670K per SS disk but you d have to speed up the KayPro to 4MHz to transfer data fast enough Unless you could fig ure our how Russell Smith did it at 2 5 MHz on the BB Anyway considering the calls we get about this the demand here is pretty gi gantic too WINCHESTER DISK DRIVE LIQUIDATION Cash pressed OEM is quidating its inventory of new Shugart SA1002 8 5 33 megabyte Winchester hard disk drives These ar
115. udience send your words and 20 cents for each to Micro Cornucopia RENT SOFTWARE Hundreds of public domain software pro grams available copy it yourself amp save CP M USERS GROUP Vol 1 80 30 00 SIG M USERS GROUP Vol 1 60 30 Disks Get both for just 50 00 FLIPPY Disks use both sides with order 3 00 each RENT TEST EQUIPMENT Align amp repair your own disk drives with our equipment amp technical data Amaze your friends and save money too 100 00 CALL 619 727 1015 HAVE CREDIT CARD READY PJS CO 933 5 Santa Fe C Vista CA 92083 BIG BOARD must sell to help pay 1000 tuition Fully loaded runs great Make reasonable offer Reldon Ravellette Rt 3 Box 115 D Siloam Springs AR 72761 I ve found Plus it s really handy Prob ably half of the serial printer problems are a result of electrical misconnections If you insert pins into the extra holes provided on the board and cut the traces between the male and female sockets you can make this little unit into a real RS 232 breakout box This way you can try out any conceivable interface ar rangement very quickly Then you can build a custom cable knowing it will work CPMug For those of you interested in contact ing the CP M Users Group the address is 1651 Third Ave New York NY 10028 The price of each CPMug volume is now 13 for 8 and 18 for Northstar and Ap ple 5 David Thompson Editor amp Publisher 26 Micro
116. ures are Program Verify Load and check for Erased 2716 2732 2732A 2764 EPROMS 16 k byte memory buffer allows you to work with up to 8 2716 EPROMS at the same time Upload and Download Intel Hex Files with the memory buffer Edit the data in the memory buffer Define your own addresses for the memory buffer so you never calculate where your data is in the memory buffer Complete screen error messages Software is delivered on a standard 8 inch SS SD floppy disk User must use the video output from Big Board or an equivalent terminal Please notify us if you are using a different terminal 29 95 Send order to Biegun and Associates P O Box 4071 Station B Winnipeg Manitoba Canada R2W 5K8 incl 3 00 for shipping all prices shown are in US Funds Biegun amp Associates which would allow for 100 checks for each of the 12 months If more than 100 checks are entered for any month the program will likely bomb On the other hand if fewer than 100 checks were writ ten in any month or if the analysis is for less than a full year the extra storage is wasted PASCAL provides a method for the dynamic creation of variables at ex ecution time Dynamic variables are ac _cessed through a pointer variable bound to a particular data type The statements TYPE word ptr word word record spelling string 15 sound string 12 before after word ptr end VAR base current word
117. urs a day There is some truth to the rumor that Siemens is getting out of the drive mar ket 1 was told that Siemens had sold their drive operation to a place called In ternational Storage Technology or something like that No one seems to know yet whether or not it will change names but the drives will go on Until the stepper motors quit Two more notes that may be of inter est First anyone interested in the Dvorak keyboard layout can find an article in the history and a picture of the layout in the June 1980 issue of Phi Kappa Deltan pp 671 3 I have set up my keyboard this way and I have to agree it is quick to learn and easy to use Second if you have had difficulty 1o cating a solid state relay for the time out on the disk drive AC motors Micro C Sept 81 p5 then write or call ITT Components 3201 S Standard Santa Ana CA 92707 714 751 3900 fora distributor in your area The price is about 8 50 each Darren Hiebert 1188 Masselin Ave Los Angeles CA 90019 Dear Editor I can implement double density but I need help with the software If anyone is willing to do the software I would be willing to share the hardware design in an article I am also working on a disk interface with DMA 256K RAM conversion for CP M plus NEC 7220 interface and an NEC 7261 hard disk controller interface 1984 I would also be more than happy to contribute to the Pascal column Robert C Hughes
118. ustom CP M configurations available Send 1 for catalog which describes the above and other items in more detail her ENTERPRISES P O BOX 395 NAUVOO ILLINOIS 62354 217 453 2345 Illinois residents add 5 sales tax CP M is a trademark of Digital Research Inc 25 Canned Lightning For Your Big Board If you re hot for speed and have a standard BB with a parallel interface flash on this Anything CP M does with a regular disk drive it can do 35 300 faster with dynaDisk dynaDisk is a 256k RAM board that runs on 5 volts and plugs into your parallel interface J5 It comes with auto patching soft ware which makes it look like an 8 single density disk drive to CP M See December 82 issue of MC for more details dynaDisk comes in four flavors 1 HOMEBREW manual amp software on 8 single density disk 2 PARTIAL KIT above plus PC board 3 ASSEMBLED amp TESTED we put it together for you burn it in for 48 hrs amp test it 35 00 95 00 495 00 Allow 4 6 wks for delivery CA residents add sales tax Send check or money order today to L A Software EDITORIAL continued biased review in this issue for more in formation about Dyna P S On Sunday a number of BBers stopped back by the booth to say they had enjoyed the meeting and to take an other peek at the Dyna disk Jim Simon presented me with a large and deli cious grapefruit more voice medicine Anyway to all those of
119. y join the industry wide trend toward reasonable software prices OKARA runs on any standard CP M 2 2 system We distribute it in CP M standard 8 SSSD Northstar SSDD and Osborne SD formats Order today We re sure you ll be delighted and we have stacks of testimonial letters to prove it We are Oakland KIAI lt syslems 415 654 8671 California residents add sales tax Add 3 00 for COD s 10 00 for net 30 CP M Is a trademark of Digital Research 180 Grand Ave Suite 900 Souping Up the BB I By Trevor Marshall Editor s note The following are some of the hardware mods that Trevor has done to his BB I Steve Hope helped de velop the video mods which I under stand include longer descenders for lower case The files refered to in this ar ticle are available on weekends on Trevor s RCPM You ll get a chance to meet him and possibly see a version of his system if you come to the Semi Offi cial Get Together SOG Reliable 5MHz Operation First you will need to replace the monitor EPROM with a 2716 1 The 2716 1s distributed by DR work fine I used the one they supplied for the char acter generator which works OK with any Garden variety EPROM Program your fast PFM monitor before attempt ing the following steps The RAM array is refreshed by 128 RAS only cycles The delay needed to clock in the column data is provided by U76 To operate at 5MHZ we must cut the tracks to pins 4 an
120. y thorough and well written manual It is not fancy just dot matrix output but it is very laid out so it is easy to find the information A lot of typeset manuals with color covers should be this nice to use A Quick Conclusion I love it I suppose I shouldn t have even tried it because in just a few days I ve become very aware of the penalty that flexible disks extract Now I expect things to happen instantly Using the RAM disk has been a sort of quantum leap very much like moving from cassette tape to disk Now itis frus trating to go back and use a system which has only floppies Very frustrat ing 10 Micro Cornucopia Number 11 April 1983 Easier Reverse Video Cursor By John J Phillips For some time now I have had a re verse video blinking cursor I want to share it because it is quite simple re quiring no trace cuts and only a few jumpers First remove U25 and bend out pins 2 and 3 and reinsert we are bending out the pins to that they don t go back into the sockets On the underside of the board jumper U25 pin 4 to U25 pin 1 Install a second jumper connecting U37 pin 11 to U74 pin 11 Next remove U75 and bend out pin 6 Now prepare to piggy back a74LS158 on top of U75 Setup the 74LS158 by bend ing up all of its pins except 5 6 8 and 16 Add a short jumper between pin 8 and pin 15 on the 158 Place the 158 on top of the LS151 and carefully solder pins 5 6 8 and 16 of the 158 onto th

11 198304 micro cornucopia

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