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1. UPERLETTE Serving SuperBrain Owners and Users Around the World Feb March 1982 Vol 2 No 1 be filled with important informa tion to help you use your Super Brain or CompuStar computer more effi ciently Here are some topics that we feel need investigation and your input SPECIAL INTERFACING the SuperBrain with various types of hardware and hard disk systems other than the Intertec pro ducts For example do you know of a SuperBrain working with a Corvus Morrow Design or other hard disk system What about interfaces with teletype machines TV monitors security devices home appliances or even speech synthesizers g ooking forward I see a year that can The article in this issue by David Storti on the SuperBrain marriage with the ESCON typewriter system is a good exam ple of an interface that you our readers have expressed an interest in MODEMS What brands do you use What are the costs The problems The advantages What modifications have you made APPLICATIONS Do you know of any in teresting uses of the SuperBrain in educa tional environments farm forecasting monetary forecasting games and scien tific or other experimental areas SERVICE Send us the information you know about or may have regarding regional and national service centers in the United States Europe or other parts of the world We ll collect it organize it and list all of it in one special issue We ll need the facts2. It s your input that always makes the best news for this publication And that s the way it should be Abad Morans EDITOR Technical Corner HARDWARE INFORMATION ON THE SUPERBRAIN Second in a Series by Jonathan W Platt Special thanks to Paul L Kelley Ph D Copyright Jonathan Platt 1982 The CRT Display System The display system consists of three major chips the DP8350 CRT Controller CRTC the CRT 8002 Video Generator VDAC and the MM5035 80 bit x 8 shift register The CRTC generates ail the timing to display 24 rows of 80 characters each Each scan row is divided into ten scan lines During the first scan line of a row a horizontal blank signal is generated caus ing a BUS REQUEST to CPU 1 and an in terrupt The controller takes the buses and reads 80 characters from the CRT memory map which begins at F800H the upper 2K of RAM The address at which the CRTC begins reading the 80 characters is determined by the Row Start Register RSR of the CRTC The RSR is the working register for the CRTC address counter It determines the first video character address on a scan row to scan row basis The 80 characters are loaded into the 80 x 8 shift register The data in the shift register is then used by the CRTC during the next 9 scan lines to produce one row of video characters The video generator supplies character font and other character attributes discussed later There are 24 DMA cycles or horizonta
3. doubles the size of the standard font to yield 40 x 24 characters and 2 generates characters in reverse video e A PC board with a ten year battery operated time and date clock can be used as a software controlled timer to start and stop computer e A full keyboard cover with lock and key limits access e A drive cover conceals the drive discs e All key topping on the numeric pad is special for the application e The EPROM has been reprogrammed to stop the disc drives after three seconds of inactivity As of this writing North Ridge Data main tains 55 SuperBrain DD amp QD sites Since the first installation in February of Custom engraved to your specifications FAST We stock blank keytops for Cherry Electrical Products Keytronics Corp and other keyboard manufacturers Also For your word processor Don t ever forget a Command Again Keytop kits available for Spellbinder Magic Wand and other word processing packages For your Exidy Any questions Call or write Arkay Engravers Inc 1980 we have repaired the SuperBrain power supplies approximately 150 times In spite of the twelve different line filters and suppressors we have tried the rate of power supply failure has not sufficiently decreased If anyone knows of someone who has successfully externally fused the SuperBrain unit we want to know The most severe hardware deficiency which threatens the success of our entire effo
4. by setting the high bit of that character in the screen map There is an undocumented escape sequence to turn blinking on and off They are lt ESC gt lt gt lt B gt will blink every subsequent character printed to the screen lt ESC gt lt gt lt b gt will turn it off Blinking characters will re main blinking Reverse video is not controlled through the video generator but can be accomplished by setting PPIA 7 No escape sequence exists in Intertec s software for setting this although in their infinite ability to plan ahead and not carry through there is a sequence to turn it off It is lt ESC gt lt gt lt N gt It may also be gt turned off of course by resetting PPIA 7 Starting with DOS 3 1 Intertec has changed the escape code s meaning to turn blink mode off So instead of adding a reverse video sequence they have chosen to ignore the concept completely The video generator has four modes of no obvious use except Internal Mode Internal character mode is the normal operating mode The modes are PPIA 1 Mode PPIA 0 Wide Graphics 0 0 Thin Graphics 0 1 External Character 1 0 Internal Character 1 1 Continued on Page 8 SUPEXBRAIN 5 MB Plus K System Five Now available INTERTEC s amazing SUPERBRAIN with built in SMB Hard Disk Storage The K SYSTEM FIVE fooks and operates like a norme SIJPERBRAIN but with the advantage of 5 MB hard disk storage and hard disk speed that are im m
5. CRTC via the address lines Any other of the three registers may be loaded here as well _ XRA A OUT PPICW Disable register load mode The beginning of the screen s memory map is at F800H the up per 2K The addresses held in the CRTC registers may be thought of as indexes from this address into the screen map The TOPR holds the address of the first character of the first video row This register allows display scroll with the CRTC without the use of external memory address adders The RSR is the working register for the CRTC address counter It determines the first video character address on a row to row basis Modification of this register will modify the address counter outputs at the start of video on the next row If the RSR is never externally loaded the CRTC address outputs will be se quential from row to row from TOPR contents at the start of the video page With external loading row to row non sequential operation of the CRTC address outputs is possible thus row to row edit capability A load to the RSR during vertical blanking will also load the TOPR Intertec has written their software such that the screen map is sequential in memory from row to row So they only load the RSR and thus the TOPR during a vertical blank They keep ac count of scrolling by adding 80 to the Top of Page after every scroll There are over 25 lines of storage available in 2K of memory The other method of row to row loading of the RSR
6. FTWARE The new DATALEX Ex tended BIOS Includes the following features e conforms to the full p System ADAP TABLE XSBIOS specification as documented in the UCSD Pascal User s Manual e much faster disk writes e high speed console and remote queu ing 64 character queues to provide ac curate type ahead andcommunications capabilities e Repeatamatic keys which perform a key repeat function by holding the key down The time parameters of this key repeat are configurable by the new CONFIGURE program _ Pascal programmer access to all the system functions which previously re _ quired assembler programming including physical disk I O disk formatting baud rate setting remote port checking and access implementation of the Pascal Time function This requires no SuperBrain hardware modification The clock is driven by the CRT hardware and in most instances is accurate within 30 60 seconds to the hour e newly revised documentation E Potpourri Disk Treatment The single largest cause of user problems encountered by our readers is mis handling of floppy diskettes Please be sure to observe the following rules when handling diskettes Don t bend or fold a floppy disk This sounds like a reasonable rule but it is the one most violated by users Don t underestimate the ability of the U S Postal Service to fold your diskette for you If you
7. T PC 0600 0100 1441 0441 SUI 61 0443 STA OE7D 0446 MOV C A 0447 MVI A 19 0449 CMP C 044A JNC 0456 044D LXI B 019D 0450 CALL 02A7_ 0452 JMP 045E 0456 LDA OE7D 0459 INR A 5442 0442 61 41 0443 32 g0 A gt save 5 submit com A gt p gt ZED IS HERE ZED makes your SuperBrain a full function word processor with exceptional ease of use and these special features COLOR CODED CUE CARDS eliminate control character commands and menus Just point with the cursor and type fast on screen word wrap always shows how your text will look Full disk scrolling Complete User s Guide TELECOMMUNICATIONS Send receive and edit files at the touch of a key ZED S VIDEO CALCULATOR Let Zed do the arithmetic in your documents _ PROGRAMMABLE KEYS Save time by storing commands and phrases for playback All for only 195 Turn your SuperBrain into a really SUPER workstation with ZED from Roytek P O Box 92 Arlington MA 02174 617 646 4137 CUSTOMIZE your keyboards s fo th Letters fo the Pe T D a Editor This letter is an account of one system house s effort to use the SuperBrain to market its software system This letter is also a request for help in solving two basic problems still haunting the SuperBrain In order to tailor the SuperBrain to meet our specific requirements we have modified each unit to date as follows A PC board attaches to the main board and 1
8. a nonsequential memory map although it creates a bit more overhead in the interrupt routine can make line insert delete trivial and fast whereas if line insert delete were done with a se quential map a block move and probably padding to the ter minal would be necessary at high baud rates I have written a non sequential memory map monitor for the SuperBrain which works well with line insert delete A curious problem arises however with the location of the cursor on the screen which I have not been able to solve The cursor block is displayed seven scan lines too early Obviously some sort of tim ing problem but still very mysterious The CR holds the present address of the cursor When a match with the CR and the address register occurs a pulse will appear at this output at that video character time character field width for every line in that row The video generator supplies the character font to the CRTC for display to the screen The Line Buffer Clock from the CRTC tells the shift register to send a character to the video generator The video generator then sends the dots of that character for the working scan line to the CRTC The video generator also controls various character attributes Strike through and underlining are available although they have no real use since the entire row is underlined or struck through no one single character can be selected Blinking is also available and can be done from character to character
9. another computer system Hundreds of our SB E sets are in everyday use at government agencies leading universities and Fortune 500 companies in America Canada Europe Africa and Australia Literature available on request Call or write for further information Dealer inquiries invited trademarks of Intertec Data Systems IE Systems and Digital Research IE Systems Inc Information Engineering Box 359 Newmarket NH 03857 need to underline you need the bell backspace and tab option for 65 Unless you can wire an RS232 cable yourself you need to buy one from them for 30 With California sales tax 6 added in the total bill came to 731 40 Adding in the 75 service charge for IPEX s work on the typewriter itself plus the 36 for the ad justment my own service man made my total cost to get the interface running was 842 40 not counting 160 miles worth of gas It was not IPEX s fault that my Selectric was in such bad shape but I suspect many typewriters have seen the same hard usage so I would strongly recommend having any older machine serviced before attempting the installa tion It will up the cost a bit but it may well save money later particularly if you aren t within driving distance of Calabasas California LIMITATIONS If this type of interface to your SuperBrain is to be of any value its limitations must be acceptable First of all it s slow 12 5 cps or about 150 words per minu
10. ch printed character The unit draws its power from the typewriter so it is only on when the typewriter is on HARDWARE As delivered the unit consists of three manuals a pre assembled electronic in terface twelve solenoids with their atten dant mounting hardware and lever assemblies and a PC board with ribbon cable attached used to terminate the solenoid wiring All necessary wires and cables are included The components all seem to be of good quality and the sheet metal and aluminum mounting brackets are heavy gauge and well designed One touch I liked was the in clusion of spares for some small Selectric parts that tend to get lost in assembly CONSTRUCTION Installing the unit consists of taking the case off the typewriter doing some minor disassembly screwing the mounting brackets with attached lever and solenoid assemblies into existing holes in the typewriter frame running the solenoid wires and soldering them to the PC board tapping into the typewriters power cord for 120 V to power the electronic interface and then reassembling the typewriter The assemblies are designed to fit into already existing spaces in the typewriter mechanism so no modifications to the case are necessary and only very minor modifications to the machine itself Assembly was reasonably painless but if the thought of tinkering with the mechanics of a thousand dollar typewriter is daunting the factory will do the w
11. ediately available to the operator Kramer Systems International Inc has successfully installed COMPUSTAR and SUPERBRAIN Systems worldwide Floppy Single or Double Sided 5 MB Hard Disk Kramer Systems International Inc is an authorized established distributor for the complete Iintertec Data Systems product line We have a proven record of providing full support and service to all of our customers Superbrains Compustars Disk Storage Systems Printers Software Maintenance amp Support Modular replacement is available to all customers with 48 hour response in most cases Our maintenance personnel are ex perienced professionals who have trained government and commercial technicians in the repair and maintenance of the Super brain and Compustar Dealer and International inquiries invited Available on the GSA schedule Kramer Systems International Inc 8403 Dixon Avenue Silver Spring Maryland 20910 301 585 7480 Call today for additional information Guest Article A SUPERBRAIN AND A SELECTRIC A MARRIAGE THAT WORKS by David Storti The ELF 1 Interface priced at under 600 is intended to inexpensively con vert a Selectric I II or II typewriter into a letter quality printer Since for example a NEC Spinwriter can run close to 3 000 Escon s idea is a very attractive one to anyone doing word processing on a Super Brain or CompuStar on a budget par ticularly i
12. elected and all printout was garbage I suspect the reason for the problem was an odd bit of aluminum possibly shaved off a fitting that fell into the works and caused one of the rotate latches to bind Eventually it was knocked loose and dropped out returning everything to nor mal Whatever it was the lesson here is to be sure that your Selectric is in very good shape before interfacing it While the mechanical forces the interface generates are not great any weaknesses in your machine could lead to rather strange and frustrating results A full service job on the typewriter cleared up the problem It works beautifully now REAL COSTS The ELF 1 is advertised as under 600 That s true but a bit misleading If you SUPERBRAIN OWNERS You ve made a smart move buying Intertec s powerful Super Brain Now activate all of its capabilities by installing SB E a Super Bios and EPROM software firmware set Here are just a few SB E features m greater disk capacity a faster disk access 75 faster on copy 500 on seeks a 35 programmable keys e auto repeat on all keys a real time clock automatic spindle motor shut off a more reliable operation m standard CP M not a compatible derivative We also offer special keycap support for word processing and interfacing for hard disk Our communications software package IE Modem allows file transfers between a CP M based computer system and
13. ere will be a small fee for this service We ll be announcing it shortly Please alert your readers that there is a problem with Structured Systems Group software It is great software friendly as hell and my NAD and Q Sort work wonders The problem is with that of the line which requires a CRT DEF con figuration In my case it is Letteright It prints fine and does great mailmerges etc but it is impossible to use in composi tion There is no SuperBrain DEF con figuration for it SSG ships about a dozen CRT DEF programs with the heavy soft ware and only one will even shape it up on a SuperBrain CRT that being the one for ADDS terminals But it will not work on the command lines for example erase to end of line SSG has even been nice enough to offer to write one for the Super Brain for my benefit and for future customers but they need the CRT data for _ the SuperBrain Intertec does not supply it in the quantity necessary to do the con figuration and refuses to supply it because it is proprietary Continued on Page 8 SET FIRE TO YOUR need the Spellbinder Word Processing System f Spellbinder puts the heat on almost any paperwork tega task saving you time and increasing your output i Z SPELLBINDER IS WORD PROCESSING You won t find a more sophisticated word processing package And you won t find a system that s easier to use The result You get the impressive benefits of top qual
14. est routines programmed into it The first repetitively operates each solenoid either alone or in combination the second types all characters first shifted then un shifted over and over Using the first test the linkage between each solenoid is ac complished by bending the heavy gauge wire with two pairs of pliers until it is just the right length This may sound cumber some but in fact this kind of linkage is sturdy very reliable and once set can t slip out of adjustment Once the adjustments are correct and the second test pattern will run correctly the typewriter can be closed and the unit con nected to a computer A DIP switch sets the interface s BAUD rate up to 9600 I have had the best luck with mine set to 110 even parity and XON XOFF hand shaking PROBLEMS I mentioned earlier that it took eight weeks to get the first perfectly printed sheet true enough but the fault lay with my typewriter not with the ELF 1 My machine is about eight years old and because I earn my living at it it has seen hard usage and not enough preventive maintenance Some parts were worn others were dirty and all had more play in them than a new typewriter would have It typed perfectly but when I finished the installation and started prin ting out a file I found that the typing ele ments home position had been knocked out of adjustment This meant that the element wasn t rotating far enough each time a character was s
15. f one already owns a Selectric Recently I bought and installed an ELF 1 in my eight year old Selectric II and con nected it via the serial port to my quad SuperBrain Despite problems that resulted in an eight week hiatus between purchase and the day I got the first perfectly printed sheet discussed below I believe the unit does exactly what it is supposed to do does it well and if some serious limitations are acceptable should definitely be considered when shopping for a printer THE COMPANY Though the ELF 1 is made by Escon my unit came from IPEX International 213 710 1444 a Calabasas California distributor for Escon Throughout the period of getting the unit up and running the people at IPEX were helpful cooperative and patient Because they were pleasant and obviously trying hard they made the somewhat painful process of getting the printer up and running much easier OPERATION The ELF 1 works in a very straightfor ward manner an electronic interface takes ASCII output from the SuperBrain translating it into on off voltage levels used to activate one or a combination of solenoids installed in the typewriter The solenoids are connected in turn to lever assemblies which when pulled trigger the correct latches for the required character Six latches control character selection and six more are used to activate shift tab carriage return space backspace and print which must be ac tivated once for ea
16. ity word processing quickly The effect on output is significant SPELLBINDER FOR OFFICE amp DATA MANAGEMENT With Spellbinder you can create files for frequently used office forms allowing you to fill in information blanks at your convenience You can merge selected mailing list information into a form letter for personalized mass mailings And Spellbinder will sort information from a customer list in up to 19 different categories plus order by zip code or alphabetically CUSTOM FEATURES AUTOMATE SPECIAL JOBS Spellbinder s macro programming features lets you shape your text into any format required by your business You can number the lines on legal documents print in two columns or in patterned shapes or create custom page headings for running pagination LEXISOFT INC p A lot hotter than plain word processing SPECIAL OFFER SuperBrain formatted SB E Prom compatible Spellbinder software is now available to Superletter readers at a subscriber discount price of 345 List price is regularly 495 Call 213 277 2410 or write to Spellbinder Offer P O Box 3121 Beverly Hills California 90212 Guest Article Continued from Page 3 model of absolute clarity for the absolute ly inexperienced And if you run into problems with the typewriter itself as I did the IBM manual is invaluable Once everything is installed the solenoid linkages need to be adjusted To help with this the electronic interface has two t
17. know when typing over it where the new line ends and the old line is still viewed It is slow and tor turous to say the least I know you would want to be alerted to this problem and maybe be able to get the necessary data to create a CRT DEF for SuperBrain use of SSG software Thanks for the great newsletter it is read over and over again and I appreciate the ads But particularly to be able to get software that will work on the SuperBrain will be a great long term benefit from you Sincerely Edward F Sayle 2522 North Upland Street Arlington Virginia 22207 Editor s Note A copy of this issue which in cludes your letter and the CRT data in the Technical Corner is being sent to Heather Shanklin at Structured Systems Group Stay in touch with us and SSG as the problem is examined by their technical staff SuperClassifieds SACRIFICE PRICE for never used Peachtree programs for 64K DD Super Brain P R G L Power Text A P A R Magic Wand 2 Inv Mgt Mail Address 200 00 per program or 1 200 for all Manuals never opened Call Jim Rachels ABS Sales 919 895 2878 CP M Software SB E Proms Graphics Packages and much much more are now available to SuperBrain owners at special discount prices To order call Abrams Creative Services 213 277 2410 Great Programming Aid PEARL Level III program with complete documentation available at substantial discount below list C Basic language
18. l blanks per frame There are a total of 25 interrupts generated one for each scan row as described above and one more during ver tical blanking During the first 24 the in terrupt routine in the SuperBrain s Continued on Page 2 a i i a a Sot el Superletter is published bi monthly by Abrams Creative Services Mailing address P O Box 3121 Beverly Hills CA 90212 Phone 213 277 2410 Copyright 1982 by Abrams Creative Services All Rights Reserved No part of this newsletter can be copied by any means without prior written permission from the publisher Editor Albert Abrams Advertising amp Subscrip tion Linda Patchell SuperBrain is a registered trademark of Intertec Data Systems Inc CP M is a registered trademark of Digital Research Inc Technical Corner Continued from Page 1 monitor sets or resets PPIC 1 character blanking depending on whether that row is displayed or not The monitor knows if there are any characters on a given line If not that line is not displayed During the 25th interrupt and BUS REQUEST the interrupt routine initializes the CRTC address registers to the top of page and also updates the cursor address There are 60 vertical blanking interrupts per second at 60 Hertz The line frequency is very useful for implementing a system clock Any routines which implement auto repeat or buffered type ahead should also be done in the vertical blank section of the monitor The CRTC ha
19. must mail a disk be sure to put a piece of corrugated box cardboard on each side of the diskette The corrugations on the two pieces should be aligned at 90 degrees to each other The thin cardboard backs of writing tablets are not sufficient protection Don t expect to get away with ignoring the last paragraph The Postal Service con siders DO NOT BEND stamps a challenge Don t leave diskettes lying around outside of their protective envelopes When they are in their envelopes store them verti cally in a cool dry place Don t touch the magnetic surface of the diskette Fingerprints almost invariably destroy the readability of your data Don t write on a label that has already been applied to a disk The pressure of the pen will imbed dust particles in the magnetic surface and drastically reduce the reliability of the diskette Don t expose a diskette to magnetic fields Electric motors and the degaussing coil around color TV picture tubes are the greatest offenders Control Characters in Submit Files CP M 2 2 Submit Patch 1 SUBMIT does not allow any control characters in SUB files Certain control characters are recognized by SUBMIT when preceded by an up arrow The two characters fz should be interpreted by SUBMIT as a control Z The following procedure using DDT will fix this problem Make sure the listing shown here matches yours before patch ing A lt ddt submit com DDT VERS 2 2 NEX
20. on the numbers of technical per sonnel available the size of the facilities hourly service bench rates shipping instructions and special services that are offered This international service listing could turn out to be one of the most important issues of the year Many of you have asked about games that can be played on the SuperBrain We have found NEMESIS by SuperSoft Associates It is a Dungeons and Dragons game that will consume your imagination and free time DUNGEON MASTER is an optional accessory that permits you to completely create new obstacles and mazes within NEMESIS We are now offering both in SuperBrain formats at 40 00 and 35 00 respectively Regarding the differences between IE s S BE 4 DOS and the new 3 1 DOS by In tertec here are some important dif ferences IE s is much faster you can pro gram many keystrokes with theirs and only one within the Intertec DOS The IE DOS supports the Corvus hard disk while Intertec s doesn t Auto repeat is not programmable with Intertec s and they don t have a communications buffer or a spindle motor speed check The Intertec DOS does have a built in on screen clock however with their auto repeat and other features Remember some back issues are still available for those of you who want to have them for your library The cost in cluding shipping is 3 50 an issue Stay in touch with us and let us know what you re up to with your SuperBrains and CompuStars
21. ork for you for 150 If you elect to do the installation yourself get the big service manual from IBM about 7 50 As I read the Escon manuals now after the fact they are complete and to the point but in the actual process of in stallation I was often confused by them particularly when trying to find a specific IBM part for the first time There is nothing actually bad about the manuals but neither do they follow the Heathkit Continued on Page 7 SUBSCRIPTION RATES U S 1 yr bi monthly 20 00 Canada amp Mexico 20 00 All other Foreign 35 00 Airmail Only Back Issues 3 00 Feb March April May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec Jan 81 82 Write To SUPERLETTER Circulation Dept P O Box 3121 Beverly Hills California 90212 SuperClassified rates are 4 00 per line 3 line minimum 5 words per line Please note Publication of all Super Classifieds are dependent on dates of receipt of copy and payment and space availability Mail to SuperClassifieds P O Box 3121 Beverly Hills CA 90212 New Products MIKEN OPTICAL COMPANY 53 Abbet Avenue Morristown New Jersey 07960 201 267 1210 or 201 543 7372 Contact Robert J Lurie SOFTWARE Markets IBIOS an interac tive BIOS for CP M It overcomes CP M s most serious weakness as a single user operating system CP M locks you into a running program without giving you any way to interrupt it The only commands
22. re quired Language disc and manual also available if needed Strictly new mer chandise Contact Cedar Micro Systems 9818 Cedar Drive Overland Park KS 66207 913 648 3899 Technical Corner Continued from Page 2 The Keyboard The keyboard is attached to the Keyboard Encoder the only chip central to serv ing the keyboard The PPI contains all the status information output from the KB En coder Four ports are associated with the keyboard the actual character port from the encoder port 50H and three test ports on the PPI When PPIC 7 is set new character tests may be done at PPIB 0 The Data Ready DR line on the encoder will set that bit when a new key is depressed This prevents multiple inputs of a character PPIB 1 will be set if a key is currently down This is essential for character repeat Resetting then setting PPIC 7 will enable the new character test This should be done immediately after any NEW character is input Editor s note The Hardware Information on the SuperBrain may be purchased in its en tirety from Jonathan Platt for 50 He also has SOS a new BIOS for the SuperBrain Write to Jonathan Platt Pine Villa Apt 114 200 East University Blvd Melbourne FL 32901 305 724 6148
23. rt is the non recoverable disc read er rors Essential and non recoverable elements from our disseminated data bases are lost daily relegating reliability to a laughing matter As a solution to our CRC problems we have concluded that a phase lock loop data recovery circuit must replace the present Intertec circuit If someone has a PPL circuit please contact this writer before we get deeper into our own development With these power supply and data reliability problems solved we look for ward to receiving years of tolerable ser vice from our SuperBrains NORTH RIDGE DATA 1700 Southwest 12th Avenue Boca Raton Florida 33432 305 392 6740 Do you have any suggestion as to how a SuperBrain owner might gain access to the CP M Users Group library This library seems to have a large amount of useful software for a relatively low price I have written to CP MUG who reply 2073 Newbridge Road PO Box 916 Bellmore N Y 11710 516 781 9859 Pictured MAGIC WAND KEYTOP KIT FOR SUPERBRAIN that they do not distribute in Intertec for mat Is there anything to do next Do you know of a SuperBrain user or users group which might be working on this Sincerely Jeff Bangert 721 Tennessee Lawrence Kansas 66044 Editor s Note Soon we will be providing an 8 down loading service to our readers One of the first assignments will be to transfer the CP MUG library to 5 SuperBrain format Th
24. s 3 registers the Top of Page Register TOPR the Row Start Register RSR and the Cursor Register CR These three registers may be changed under program control during either a vertical blank or horizontal blank Looking at PPIB 2 will differentiate between a vertical or horizontal blank It will be set for a vertical blank reset for a horizontal blank A load toa CRTC register is accomplished by setting PPIC 0 and then mov ing the register select as data to a location in memory corresponding to the desired register value between zero and 2K The CRTC data lines are AO All of the CPU s address bus and the register select lines are DO and D1 of the data bus After loading the desired registers PPIC O must be reset Care must be taken not to enable the register load from a program in the first 2K of memory The address lines in this area are write only to the address data lines of the CRTC while the register load is enabled Register Load Table DO D1 PPIC 0 Register Access 0 0 0 No Select 0 1 0 Top of Page 1 0 0 Row Start 1 1 0 Cursor X X 1 No Select During vertical blanking a load to the RSR will load the TOPR For example to place the cursor at the beginning of the second row the code would be MVI A 1 Set register load mode OUT PPICW Control Word to PPI sets PPIC 0 LXI H 80 Addresses start at zero so 2nd row MVI M 3 This will send the Cursor Register Select via the data lines and the address to the
25. te Com pare that to 55 cps 660 wpm for a NEC Spinwriter It won t print bidirectionally 603 659 5891 either which means time wasted on car riage returns And since a Selectric II won t do proportional spacing text can only be justified by inserting full spaces between words In short the output copy will look typed not printed If that and the slow speed are acceptable the ELF 1 will be useful As far as reliability is concerned it s too early for me to tell If I have problems I ll report it here in Superletter SUMMARY In conclusion the ELF 1 is a well designed and executed unit that seems to do the job it was designed to do very well The problems I had with my Selectric were I suspect very atypical as IPEX kept insisting nevertheless have your machine serviced thoroughly before in stallation The IPEX people do their jobs well and are a pleasure to deal with If you have or can get a Selectric I II or II and can live with the slow speed and non proportional printing this might be exact ly the way for you to get letter quality printing from your SuperBrain at a bargain price oe SSVI LSI ZIZO6 VO SMH A TETE XOY O d GS LLATaACNS Letters to the Editor Continued from Page 5 One problem as an example is that you type your input line then do a return to enter it into the copy block Great However it still remains in the input line and you never really
26. you can execute are those that conform to the provisions of the program with respect to function syntax and time of issuance l IBIOS requires no interrupt hardware Nevertheless with IBIOS you are able to interrupt any program that performs any I O You define the IBIOS command functions and command syntax IBIOS then lets you execute these commands almost immediately from any program en vironment With IBIOS you are at all times just a keystroke or two away from accessing your calculator debugger or monitor in high memory reassigning your I O devices bank switching your memory write protecting your disks turning your drive motors on or off disabling your keyboard or displaying time and date IBIOS is completely transparent not only to the currently running program but to CP M itself It loads automatically and fits into the space that CP M assigns to BIOS Positioned at the bottom of the program hierarchy IBIOS puts you in continuous _ control of your computer and lets you define its functionality Installation requires a knowledge of assembly language programming and CP M system alteration procedures IBIOS is available in the form of an notated 8080 source code listings com plete with command examples for 60 00 U S 75 00 foreign single user non commercial use only THE DATALEX COMPANY 1431 Twelfth Avenue San Francisco California 94122 415 665 4467 l Contact John J Tibbetts SO
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