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1. a Modula 2 is the language of choice for modern software engineering and LOGITECH Modula 2 is the most powerful implemen tation available for the PC The right language and the right tools have come together in one superior product Whether you
2. O LOGITECH Modula 2 09 V 3 0 Compiler Pack Compiler in overlay and fully linked form Linkable Library Post Mortem Debugger Point Editor C LOGITECH Modula 2 V 3 0 Toolkit 169 Library sources Linker Run Time Debug ger MAKE Decoder Version XRef Formatter C LOGITECH Modula 2 V 3 0 Development System 249 Compiler Pack plus Toolkit O Turbo Pascal to FREE Modula 2 Translator With Compiler Pack or Development System O Window Package 49 Build true windowing into your Modula 2 code CI Upgrade Package Call LOGITECH for information or to receive an order form Add 6 50 for shipping and handling California residents add applicable sales tax Prices valid in U S only Total Enclosed O VISA MasterCard 0 Check Enclosed Card Number Expiration Date Signature Name Address City Zip NEW IMPROVED _ COMPILER Faster and more flexible Now its DOS linker compatible object files OBJ can be li
3. Game Port Multi Function 1 ser par clk game Parallel printer 3c c aeiaceees Dual Serial Port Card 1 installed switchable Com 1 2 3 or n Kit for 2nd Port 0 640K RAM K installed Prices are subject to change without notice Shipping CHARGES will be added MOTHERBOARDS XT Turbo 4 77 10mhz AT 6 10 mhz Choice of Award Phoenix or DTK Bios XT Turbo 4 77 8 mhz 80386 8 16 mhz Award Bios amp 1MB RAM made in U S A 1595 00 For XT AT memory FLOPPY DISK DRIVES Fujitsu 360K oo cece Toshiba 360K 00 0 0 cee Jec LAMB uor enea Toshiba 3 Drive Kit 720K Toshiba 314 Drive 1 44mb 2 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 Pictured keyboard is 5339 KIT OPTIONS MS DOS 3 21 or 3 3 w GW Basic 0cccccceeees bee 5339 Keyboard Sub Color Options Includes video card amp monitor CGA Color sson cece cc cee e eee CGA EGA Color 0e eee CGA EGA VGA Color ASSEMBLY AND TESTING XT Systems 02 ccc eee eee eee AT 80386 Systems 00000 XT KIT W 2 Floppy Drives Includes K RAM Serial parallel and game ports clock calendar AT Style keyboard cabinet power supply mono graphics card and amber or green monitor Keyboard switchable turbo 8 mhz with lock LED Reset amp Turboswitch
4. 81 194 RAM Pal 81 Series Character Gen ROMs 81 Series Monitor ROMS 0 8VDC 100A Metered Volt amp Current Regulated 5V 1A 5V 2A 12V 1A 12V 2A 24V 05A 0 9 90 HOURS Mon Fri 9 6 Sat 10 4 MINIMUM ORDER 15 00 TERMS VISA MasterCard Certified Checks Money Order NO COD Visa and MasterCard add3 Personal checks must clear BEFORE we ship Inciude shipping charges California residents add 6 2 Sales Tax For more information please call CPU amp SUPPORT CHIPS Z80A GPU Gf sie ets Ge ache oe Sa acta 1 50 PROG er en ep EO 1 50 Z80A PIO gnan eini nae 2 00 Z80A SIO As ais a e aeei 5 00 BOG Bs fetes Ae sites E 6 50 BOGS Sadr Seaart ah Girt ire eae weed 6 50 DS264R 3230 Minna dren aiteu ots 2 50 4164 Oink sets Gare wt nied teks 1 90 BA OMe 2 isha 5 9 ke eS Nu oe 2 10 NOG secon yiiltauangebhactenad ame 6 00 NAOT 215 8 coed aOaA s Wicw tegen eee 7 00 1CL7107 LCD Driver 7 00 O64 Ss is hae anehwaduie Ree ued 5 00 VC3524 Switching Regulators 5 00 1458 Dual Op AMP 10 LM2877P 4W Stereo Amp Dual 2 50 MB81464 15 saint ahede ean oies 2 75 PIO e chi tars E eek 3 00 PTO ee ae a ee ere 3 25 PNA OA aca leans ines aires E 3 50 PAAIE A ttre AN Ws Bae meget 9 00 TACO oe anette eet og si cua TALS 20 aae i EEA A POLS SIS Sods AA RA RA TAES ITA nent aA Reader Service Number 93 12M5 NEW 24V INTERNAL B
5. These two come out of my library al locf checks the pointer p to see if it s NULL If so it doesn t do anything If not it calls free If freeQ returns an error code alloc generates an error message and the program halts map_not inverts len ints in the bit map pointed at by map void cga_movmem char far s char far d intn void cga_peekb char far p void cga_pokeb char far p char b These functions are the same as mov mem peekb and pokeb except that they wait for one of the CGA s horizontal retraces before access to avoid flicker The cga_movmem function is a straight block move so you ll have to check for overlapping blocks if you plan to move data from one part of CGA VRAM to another void ega_select_plane int plane int pcx_select_plane int plane The EGA VRAM holds 4 planes each mapped into the same memory space ega_select_plane is used to select one or more If the function is passed a negative number it uses the absolute value of the number as an enable mask ie if plane Ox0f all 4 planes are selected simul taneously This is handy when clearing the screen since a single call to setmem can then clear all 4 planes If plane is not negative then it must be from 0 to 3 and only that single plane is enabled pcx_select_plane selects the plane which will be used by the VGR_ ROW macro while drawing on a PCX picture KOALA COMPUTER INC The Friendly Compute
6. 8 channels SPDT form C Contact rating 1 Amp 120 V isolated Digital Inputs 8channels isolated or non isolated jumper selectable Type of opto isolator 2400 ALSO AVAILABLE 4N25 e Stepping Motor Control Card RS 422 Interface Card 3 CONVENIENT LOCATIONS 6819 S Santa Rosa Ave Cotati CA Sacramento CA e OPTO Isolated D l Board 16 CH Wiring Terminal Board 0000 OR e Quick Connect Wiring Module HSC Electronic Supply 5549 Hemlock St PCL 748 IEEE 488 Interface Card Turn your IBM PC XT AT toa powerful easy to use IEEE 488 controller Powerful easy to use software com mand set Few arguments and simple initialization All software driver is in on board firmware Reguires no additional disc software On board RAM for working space No system memory space is needed BASICA and BASIC compiler are supported as standard C and PASCAL language support packages available as options High data transfer speed 39500 PCL 750 Prototype Development Card PCL 750 is an excellent alternative to pure breadboard card for prototype developing of PC add on cards Built in basic circuit for a great deal of time saving Large breadboard area 3290 holes for user circuits Independent memory and I O address decoders included Address sizes of memory and I O are jumper selectable All bus signals are buffered marked and ready for use 7400 3060
7. THE MICRO TECHNICAL JOURNAL MICRO CORNUCOPIA Editor and Publisher David J Thompson Associate Editors Gary Entsminger Cary Gatton Technical Department Larry Fogg Director of Advertising amp Distribution Laura Logan Accounting Sandy Thompson Order Department Tammy Westfall Graphic Design Carol Steffy MICRO CORNUCOPIA ISSN 0747 587X is published bi monthly for 18 per year by Micro Cornucopia Inc 155 NW Hawthorne Bend OR 97701 Second class postage paid at Bend OR and additional mailing offices POSTMASTER Send ad dress changes to MICRO CORNUCOPIA PO Box 223 Bend OR 97709 SUBSCRIPTION RATES 1 yr 6 issues 18 00 2 yr 12 issues 34 00 3 yr 18 issues _ 48 00 1 yr Canada amp Mexico 26 00 1 yr Other foreign surfaca 36 00 1 yr Foreign airmail 50 00 Make all orders payable in U S funds on a U S bank please CHANGE OF ADDRESS Please send your old label and new address MICRO CORNUCOPIA P O Box 223 Bend Oregon 97709 CUSTOMER SERVICE For orders and subscription problems call 503 382 8048 9 am to 5 pm Pacific time M F For technical help call 503 382 8048 9 am to noon Pacific time M F RBBS 24 hrs 300 1200 2400 baud 8Bits No Parity 1 Stop Bit 503 382 7643 Copyright 1988 by Micro Cornucopia Inc All rights reserved 4 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 By David Thompson The West Coast Computer SOG Jim W
8. V COMMUNICATIONS 3031 Tisch Way Suite 200 Dept MC San Jose CA 95128 408 296 4224 99 95 PS 2 AT XT and PC are trademarks of IBM Corp Reader Service Number 62 safety s sake write protect the disk whenever it s in a 360K drive Of course the 1 2 meg drive will read anything created by a 360K drive If the 1 2 meg writes anything onto the disk however what is written can only be read dependably by another 1 2 meg drive The 1 2 meg drive reads and writes a track that s half as wide as a 360K track In 1 2 meg mode the drive writes twice as many tracks and writes nearly twice as many sectors per track much higher bit density In 360K mode the 1 2 meg drive double steps as it goes from track to track and it lays down bits at the lower 360K density When you write over a 360K track with a 1 2 meg head you leave half of the original 360K track Another 1 2 meg drive will only see the latest data but a 360K head will see the entire wide track half written by the 1 2 meg head half written by the earlier 360K head Quickies Many dual speed systems use the cursor as the speed indicator underline for slow larger block for fast However some programs can reverse the cursor If you re running into formatting or other speed related problems you might suspect your cursor s been mis lead Most people bring up a new hard drive by connecting it to their XT get ting into DEBUG and enteri
9. When people call in about increas ing sector errors I usually tell them to back up what they can and reformat Backup once a week and keep two copies one off premises If you forgot to do a backup then call us we do data recovery On what percentage of the drives you receive can you recover the data We re about 85 successful Of the 85 of the drives we ll retrieve an average of 90 of the data On the others the FAT files have been totally obliterated We just spent 36 hours on a hard drive from a cardiovascular unit We got almost all their data Not all of it but almost Controllers what do you like or not like Western Digital is far better has an excellent controller for the AT The 1002 27X is the one I m liking more and more for the XT The 27X is an RLL controller If you were going to run RLL which drive would you use Miniscribe 3425 it s a 5 1 4 half height Rodime has a 202E which is good too But I m hearing about problems with RLL What you re looking for on RLL is a zero defect error map You don t want to see any consistent errors like head 3 cylinder 193 something like that Let s say you get a standard MFM drive with no defects Would that work Chances are it would For example the Rodime RO204 is a 20 meg MFM but I m willing to bet that it would for mat fine RLL as 30 meg Can people predict if they re going to have troubl
10. ference in the exhibits but it did bother me that there weren t many micro booths Those booths always had the flakiest shakiest weirdest collection of really exciting displays Those booths attracted the best crowds had the best deals the best tech nology the newest products and you were dealing with the creators Without the creators it s possible to kill the Faire They are the people who created the Faire Another thing Jim and I talked about was Greyhound Exhibitions the show s uh exhibitionist Greyhound told me they would charge me 70 if I had the Micro C office send me a small package Federal Express That s 70 just to accept the package But it was the only way I could get it delivered at the Faire Exhibitors couldn t use anything with wheels to move materials to their booths Everything had to be hand carried and Greyhound enforced it at least until the show was over Setup without hand trucks took a day and a half Teardown with the little beauties took two hours Tve thought about starting another show but it s a royal hassle I don t want the responsibility Jim said I was sorry to see the light crowd sorry to hear the complaints from ex hibitors but my session was really fun Note Jim Warren is coming to SOG VIL Join him for rafting eating and long evening discussions about life the universe and everything in Bend July 14 16 Discoveries I
11. 179 95 BARE BOARD 49 95 See you at SOG 85636 Call or write EM ENTERPRISES PO BOX 3228 SIERRA VISTA AZ 602 458 4065 Reader Service Number 38 66 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 Gary L Scott Decision Technology P O Box 5040 Aloha OR 97007 A Dog amp Pony Show Great Way To Get Feedback So you ve got a winning idea You re sure of it However it would be a big mistake to sit down and start coding You haven t done your listening yet ast issue we talked about the develop ment of a features matrix to help identify the features you ll need in your new product If you re like me you now have a list of features long enough to guarantee that you ll be coding well into the year 2000 This month s article will discuss how to pare the list down and develop a customer oriented product Prioritize First prioritize the features list Many people will tell you that a dart board is a useful instrument for this job But our goal is to develop a saleable and profitable product so let s try something more organized The first step is to prototype the user inter face You could use an interpreted language such as QuickC or QuickBASIC but I prefer Dan Briklin s Demo Maker The idea here is to evaluate the look and feel issues You want a product that can be demonstrated It isn t necessary to prototype the product down to the last comma What you want is a program that will s
12. 206 682 5025 206 682 5593 WARNING Voltages present and use by lasers can be lethal Permanent eve damage could result from direct exposure to an oncoming laser beam Only those persons qualified to handle such potentials should do so Reader Service Number 101 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 61 Eco C88 C Compiler with Cmore Debugger I m very impressed with the com piler editor and debugger I ve tried quite a few different compilers for the PC and have given up on all of the others in favor of yours I ve gotten to the point where I download C code from a DEC VAX VMS system just to be able to compile it with the picky flag set at 9 It finds lots of things VMS totally ignores JS Oak Ridge TN Our Guarantee Try the Eco C88 compiler for 99 95 Use it for 30 days and if you are not completely satisfied simply return it for a full refund We are confident that once you ve tried Eco C88 you ll never use anything else Call or write today ___ ECOSOFT Reader Service Number 9 size would remain at its previous value For other cards even more lines could be displayed As a matter of fact func tion 1112h actually means Use 8 point typeface The only reason it ends up being 43 lines on an EGA is that the EGA is scanning 350 lines and 350 8 43 75 On a card with 400 scan lines VGA it would mean 50 lines of text and on one with 1024 lines it w
13. L z d compatible with any size of video dis play Especially after I told him how easy it was Something was also mentioned about an Ohwesstu version or something like that He didn t expand on that one but I m guessing it must be a special version for programming in some Central African pygmy dialect that uses all glottal stops and tongue clicking sounds and traverses the diagonally when written Personally I can t see much use in something so obscure as that but I sup pose Logitech sees a market in it other wise they wouldn t be wasting the time Or maybe it s part of one of those Live Aid assistance programs or something They should spend time working on development tools for that new operat ing system Microsoft released last fall instead That s what I think page Ohwesstu Being that I m getting interested in Central African dialects myself I just picked up a copy of See It and Say It in Ohwesstu at B Dalton s yesterday I ve been talking to a few people about it Not the drivel about Is it worthwhile or The OS 2 applica tions I ve seen are sludge or even Well they re a few years late I think I don t care about all that Regardless of how good or bad the stuff written for it is how late it is etc the fact is that OS 2 is here And we ve got to deal with it It does no good to bitch about operating systems develop ment lagging be
14. exec I m writing regarding Ron Miller s article in Micro Cornucopia Issue 38 Nov Dec 87 He seems to be confus ing the systemQ spawn and exec functions His exec function is a great space saver But it s really a spawn function exec s overlay the current process while spawn s run a new process and then return Some investigation of the Turbo C library code using by the way Microsoft CodeView shows that the spawn and exec functions do contain a lot of overhead One warning with the exec function as written it s a good idea to flush all buffers before starting a new process in case that process wants to access the same files system is a spawn of the command shell allowing redirection piping and the execution of batch files system re quires access to the COMSPEC environ ment variable to find the command shell If Ron s TSR code frees its as signed environment block before going resident as many TSRs do then it s quite possible that the original environ ment block has been destroyed So sys tem fails where his exec function does not Milton E Palmer III Glenn L Martin Wind Tunnel University of Maryland College Park MD 20742 more Micro Ads CIRCUIT BOARDS FROM YOUR SCHEMATIC aa L ACCURATE CAD LAYOUT ae PHOTOPLOTTED ARTWORK eume e PENPLOTTED SCHEMATICS ome e MULTILAYER AND SM SEEE m AQUARIUS GROUP INC 1450 VIEW
15. 10mhz with lock LED Reset amp Turboswitch 599 00 XT KIT W 20MB Hard Drive Includes K RAM Serial parallel and game ports clock calendar AT Style keyboard cabinet power supply mono graphics card and amber or green monitor Keyboard switchable turbo 8 mhz with lock LED Reset amp Turboswitch 10mhz with lock LED Reset amp Turboswitch For 30MB Miniscribe add 50 00 80386 KIT Includes 8 16 mhz 1MB RAM 1 360K floppy drive 1 1 2 MB FD 1 40MB HD Award bios switchable keyboard monochrome monitor mono graphics Serial parallel ports case power supply game port clock calendar Main board made in U S A 2675 00 80286 AT KIT Includes K RAM 1 2 MB FD 1 360K floppy drive and 40 MB Seagate St 251 hard drive 6 10mhz serial parallel and game ports clock calendar AT style keyboard cabinet power supply monographics card amber or green monitor keyboard switchable turbo 1495 00 Reader Service Number 2 KEYBOARDS 5339 Professional XT AT w 12 function key wna ese 5060 Keyboard AT Style KBIO1 Keytronic 0 0 06 Free Instructions with Each System HARD DRIVES amp CONTROLLERS AT 40 MB Seagate 251 1 AT ST 4053 HD AT MFM Hard Drive amp floppy controller WD 140 00 AT RLL HD amp FD controller 189 00 20 MB Miniscribe HD with controller 30 MB Mi
16. 138 Scotts Valley CA 95066 FROM ZORTECH INC The change to a pure language Now C programmers can move over to C with Zortech C the worlds first true C compiler for MS DOS machines Zortech C is a true compiler and fully conforms to Bjarne Stroustrup specification as outlined in his book The C Programming Language Previous implementations of C were actually translators only able to translate C source code into C Of course this was unacceptable due to the long trans lating and compiling times Now C comes of age with the introduction of the worlds first true C compiler from Zortech eoeere weve oot eevee eereeve e Osses eo oe eee e o ZORTEC BOSTON LONDON FRANKFURT GENEVA gl srac i To ZORTECH INC 361 Massachusetts Ave Arlington MA 02174 E Object Oriented Programming C is to C what Modula 2 is to Pascal C brings classes to C so you can create separate modules that contain their own data and data related operations These classes then become new types that can in turn be used to create further modules this allows you to practically create your own language E ANSI C Superset You don t have to throw away your existing C programs C is a superset of ANSI C Now you can take your Microsoft C or Turbo C compatible programs and easily migrate to C to take full advan tage of the new C
17. 60 Hz Higher density formats require up t 3 additional 2K x 8 6116 RAMS Uses N S INS 8250 BAUD Rate Gen and USART combo IC 3 Terminai Emulation Modes which are Dip Switch selectable These include the LSI ADM3A the Heath H 19 and the Beehive Composite or Split Video Any polarity of video or sync Inverse Video Capability Small Size 6 5 x 9 inches Upper amp lower case with descenders 7x 9 Character Matrix Requires Par ASCII keyboard FOR 8 IN SOURCE DISK OR PC XT FORMAT 5 IN ADD 10 ALL SALES SUBJECT TO THE TERMS OF OUR 90 DAY LIMITED WARRANTY FREE COPY UPON REQUEST Reader Service Number 32 CANON 80 COLUMN PRINTER 29 95 ORIGINALLY MANUFACTURED FOR THE PC JR BUT WITH OPTIONAL CONNECTOR WILL WORK WITH PC XT OR AT REQUIRES SERIAL 1 0 THIS THERMAL PRINTER IS QUIET AND USES EASY TO GET 8 IN ROLLS OF PAPER 50C P S UPPER AND LOWER CASE PLUS GRAPHICS ORIGINAL LIST PRICE 199 00 ADD 3 00 FOR PC XT THE NEW ZRT 80 CRT TERMINAL BOARD A LOW COST 2 80 BASED SINGLE BOARD THAT ONLY NEEDS AN ASCII KEYBOARD POWER SUPPLY AND VIDEO MONITOR TO MAKE A COMPLETE CRT TERMINAL USE AS A COMPUTER CONSOLE OR WITH A MODEM FOR USE WITH ANY OF THE PHONE LINE COMPUTER 8995 ZRT 80 COMPLETE KIT 2K VIDEO RAM OUR BEST SELLER Digital Research Computers P O BOX 381450 DUNCANVILLE TX 75138 214 225 2309 Call or write for a free catalog on Z 80 or 6809 Single Board Computers SS 5
18. 84 Kaypros for details on the modification he 256K mod for 83 Kaypros described in Micro Cornucopia issue 30 June July 1986 is inexpensive and hardware in stallation is easy But software installa tion can be tricky so read the following in con junction with the documentation Micro C Users Disk K47 or Micro C bulletin board 503 382 7643 I now have the mod running on my Kaypro II as a 191K RAMdisk with a Micro Cor nucopia Pro 8 version 3 3 monitor ROM and ZCPR1 from Micro C Users Disk K22 Here s what I learned CP M Version Early Kaypro Ils were delivered with a CP M version that had a two line sign on mes sage There s a big problem in using this CP M with the 256K mod you must use MOVCPM COM to generate a 63K CP M but the two line CP M s MOVCPM COM writes garbage characters into the numeric keypad table in the BIOS If you later try to change these characters so you can use the keypad the computer will crash Apparently the early CP M version uses the keypad table bytes for internal BIOS func tions if the CP M is less than 64K The CP M which supports the 256K mod has a single line signon message Kaypro II 64K CP M vers 2 2 Its MOVCPM COM resets the numeric keypad to the characters shown on the keytops You will lose keypad settings which you had programmed earlier but you can restore them see below MOVCPM COM works only with an un 84 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August
19. 86 pages ISSUE 24 6 85 C ing Into Turbo Pascal 8 Drives On The Kaypro 48 Lines On A BBI 68000 Versus 80x86 Soldering The First Steps 88 pages ISSUE 25 8 85 Why Wrote A Debugger The 32 Bit Super Chips Programming The 32032 Modula II RS 232C The Interface 104 pages ISSUE 26 10 85 Inside ZCPR3 Two Megabytes On DSI 32 SOG IV The Future Of Computing Graphics In Turbo Pascal 104 pages ISSUE 27 12 85 SOLD OUT ISSUE 28 2 86 Pascal Runoff Winners Rescuing Lost Text From Memory Introduction To Modula 2 First Look At Amiga Inside The PC 104 pages ISSUE 29 4 86 Speeding Up Your XT Importing Systems From Taiwan Prototyping In C C Interpreters Reviewed Benchmarking The PCs 104 pages ISSUE 30 6 86 PROLOG On The PC Expert Systems Logic Programming Building Your Own Logic Analyzer 256K RAM For Your 83 Kaypro PC DOS For Non Clones 104 pages ISSUE 31 8 86 RAM Resident PC Speedup Practical Programming In Modula 2 Unblinking The PC s Blinkin Cursor Game Theory In PROLOG and Cc 104 pages ISSUE 32 10 86 Public Domain 32000 Hardware And Software Writing A Printer Driver for MS DOS Recover A Directory By Reading amp Writing Disk Sectors 96 pages ISSUE 33 12 86 Controlling Stepper Motors From Your PC Introduction To Fractals The Secrets Of MS DOS From Boots To Device Drivers Poking About In The System With Turbo Pascal 96 pages I
20. Note Procomm is still shareware but Datastorm s new Procomm Plus is regular buyware from Zortech which generates native code This means you only need one compiler With translators you had to buy a regular C compiler usually Microsoft in addition and get the two to work together Not only is translating a hassle but you lose debugging information in the process Zortech C will work with CodeView With a price like that I m considering writing more of my project code in C The compiler was written by Walter Bright who created the Datalight C compiler I m helping to test a beta version and like what I ve seen so far mouse support for instance Advantage C has just released ver sion 1 2 with support for Microsoft Win dows OS 2 and source level debugging with Microsoft CodeView Sounds great though I haven t tested it In the minicomputer world the GNU project aka the Free Software Founda tion FSF has version 1 18 2 of their na tive code C and source level debugger out and being tested by everyone this is a real community project It was developed by Michael Tiemann a real nice guy and SMART on a Sun 3 but people are porting it to other machines but probably never a segmented ar chitecture machine Oregon Software sells a native code C for the Sun If you don t trust free software wait a bit I ll be trying it out I especially look forward to their debug ger
21. features A L 0s EIN C as shown below L L O Zortech C O C Book 99 95 29 95 VISA MC COD CHECK ACCEPTED Tel 617 646 6703 Fax 617 648 0603 af CALL THE ORDER HOTLINE 1 800 848 8408 Reader Service Number Exp Date E Codeview Compatible Zortech C is compatible with Codeview Microsoft s industry standard source code debugger E Improved Program Structure As stated in The C Programming Language by using C It would not be unreason able for a single person to cope with 25 000 lines of code E Other benefits Here s just a few Operator overloading overloading function names default arguments to functions and better type checking ESSENTIAL READING This 325 page book The C Programming Language by Bjarne Stroustrup contains the original definition of C All the examples shown in this book have been suc cessfully compiled and executed with the Zortech C Compiler Eureka Instant Answers Now solving scientific and engineering equations goes from agonizing to easy Eureka The Solver and your PC can handle any problem you can hand them instantly Just type in any linear or non linear equation select Solve and look at your answer But that s not all because Eureka can do a lot more Like evaluate your solution and plot a graph Or generate a complete report sending the output to your screen dis
22. minal emulation color console display auto relog COM path SAVE anywhere single key phrase recall built in ac cess to DOS drives SETDISK redefines a drive to any of over 80 CP M formats System disk with manual 129 Shipping Oa 118 SW First St Box G Warrenton OR 97146 503 861 1765 treated as an upgrades Keep It Confidential An important topic that needs to be discussed here is confidentiality You are going to be showing product proposals around at a very delicate stage If you show your product to the wrong person you might find your product on the market months before you re ready If someone really wants to steal your ideas there is very little that you can do about it But there are some simple steps you should take to protect your self Have all of the people you show your product to sign non disclosure agreements before you show them the product Don t leave a paper trail Be sure that you get back all of your copies before leaving a presentation Ask the participants not to take notes during the presentation If your product is in a highly com petitive field encode an identification into each manual or working document If you are concerned about the potential theft of your ideas by Xerox make sure that all documents that leave your office are printed on dark red paper It is al most impossible to reproduce dark red ICs OUTSIDE OKLAHOMA NO SALES TAX DYNAMIC RAM 100 ns 450 00
23. 199 95 plus shipping and handling and parts and labor plus ap plikabul Federal State and local taxes and refreshmints for th shippin clerk Now 199 95 may seem like a lot for a couple hunnerd words but we had to read a whole year s worth of grocery store magazines to gather them words and we need th money to pay for psycheatric treatments Got to go now th TellyType just spit out th shockin news TOKYO TOD DLER MAKES SUSHI OUT OF SIT TER a story which really piques this reporter s curiousity Sincerely Your Colleague amp Fellow Publishing Mogul P Leeward Sailors p s For all you folks with enquirin minds who want to see next month s hot news headlines in advance here s a sample run from the Tattler Tellytype Don t laugh I just saved you fifty cents These have been edited some so they d make sense but we don t usually bother pressure of deadlines you know PSYCHIC CARROT REVEALS SECRET OF ETERNAL YOUTH BERMUDA TRIANGLE MYSTERIOUSLY VANISHES N J GIRL BECOMES GREAT GRANDMA AT SIX PROOF MUTANT SPACE ALIENS CAUSE ACNE CHIMPS SECRETLY CONTROL WORLD POWERS PROOF OPRAH WINFREY PRINCESS DI SIAMESE TWINS BRAIN TRANSPLANT CAUSED PRESIDENTIAL FORGETFULNESS CANNIBAL PROWLS SOVIET SPACE STATION MAIMED FOR LIFE DOUBLE AMPUTEE FROG SUES RESTAURANT a eee ee ay Lette rs Continued from page 6 instructions generated are reduced
24. ADDRESS PISAV y Yo i 130 Alto Street CITY STATE ZIP EY LS 2 San Rafael CA 94901 A ie ae 415 456 2200 2 SERVICECO OEM O MANUFACTURER DEALER VAR VAD erg f3 PC Technician and WindsorPOST are trademarks of Windsor Q IN HOUSE SERVICE O USER OTHER H Technologies Inc and IBM PC PC XT PC AT are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation ae RAE re ee Dy Ne ee ee ae ON RT Tal eM aah Reader Service Number 99 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 17 Ray Tracing On The 1134010 Part 2 Dealing with Rays Reflections amp Registers Last issue Earl introduced you to 3 D graphics see Graphics In 3 D Micro C 41 Pg 8 15 and the fastest smartest most gung ho video controller ever devised at least by TI That introduction was quite general This time out he ll get down to the nitty gritty details of programming the 34010 then let s get on with it After all if we re going to be gadding about the screen with rays we d best get cracking So first off let s take a quick review of the 34010 Numbers are stored as 32 bit fixed point values Vectors and points are stored as three consecutive 32 bit num bers representing x y and z The 34010 assembler lacks the splen did structure constructs of MASM and C sO we use equates to build structures Note On the 34010 address offsets are in bits we re going to get down to grits 18 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August
25. Another C article is in the works for the object oriented programming issue Micro C 44 it will be a program ming project so you can see how to do it And I ll be talking about C at SOG VIL MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 35 My e mail Address For those of you on a mail network here s how you can reach me arpanet eckel sperm ocean washington edu UUCP uw beaver sperm ocean washington edu ec kel bitnet eckel sperm ocean washington edu UWAVM I try to answer all my mail promptly but bits are inevitably faster than paper Even though the addresses are longer And Finally A Book I often refer to introductory material in previous articles this can be a problem if you re a new subscriber The solution I ve put together a book of all my articles including some not published in Micro C and some material not published anywhere and a disk with all the source code from the articles To get it send a check for 30 plus 8 if you live in Washington State to Eisys 1009 N 36th Street Seattle WA 98103 Satisfaction Guaranteed or your money back The Pocket PC Organizer II offers e Lotus 1 2 3 compatibility Word Processing Data Base Finance Bar Code Readers RS 232 Interface e 32K Expandable to 320K Memory e Plugs into office systems e Excellent for Lawyers Doctors Salesmen etc e Weight 9 oz READ WRITE Psion Organizer II XP 249 95 16K
26. DIAL User definable script files allow use with many modems Send 49 95 plus 3 P amp H Also available STAGE2 PC the PC version of the mainframe macro processor STAGE2 Disk plus printed manual only 49 95 plus 3 P amp H Florida residents add sales tax Soft Tel Inc P O Box 5116 Lighthouse Pt FL 33074 305 942 6671 Reader Service Number 92 Periscope Debugging Systems for IBM Personal Computers FREE INFORMATION 800 722 7006 The 1197 PEACHTREE ST PERIS PLAZA LEVEL ATLANTA GA 30361 Company Inc 404 875 8080 Reader Service Number 94 Cross Assemblers Universal Linker Librarian PC MS DOS micro VAX VAX VMS VAX UNIX ULTRIX hosted on Targeting over 30 microprocessors Enertec inc 215 362 0966 19 Jenkins Ave Lansdale PA 19446 Reader Service Number 82 PC C SHELL A faithful implementation of the Berkeley Unix C Shell for MS DOS Full History Syntax Looping Statements while foreach Shell Variables and Arrays Cursor Key Command Line Editor Runs as default command processor WORKS ON ANY MS DOS 50 00 COMPUTER Omega MicroConsulting 722 Rundell Street Iowa City IA 52240 319 338 6053 Reader Service Number 77 8051 Z8 Super8 C COMPILER Call today for a FREE technical bulletin MICRO COMPUTER CONTROL P O Box 275 Hopewell NJ 08525 USA Telex 9102404881 MICRO UQ 609 466 1751 Reade
27. N N I eN A I N N N So I N R I 2 Programming Reflections The subroutine refLinePlane in Figure 5 will determine the reflection of a ray off a plane On input a8 points to the ray structure and a9 points to the plane structure al0 is the intersection point on ray parameter returned from the intersection subroutine a11 points to a memory area where the reflected ray will be built The structure at all holds the origin and direction of the reflected ray The origin of the reflected ray is simp ly the intersection of the incident ray and the plane The PointOnLine subroutine with the incident ray a8 and the time parameter t gives the origin The reflected direction is computed from the formula Ie N R I1I 2 N NeN The incident vector is part of the ray structure at a8 and the normal vector is part of the plane structure at a9 The reflection of a ray off a sphere is very similar to the reflections off a plane The refLineSphere routine Figure 6 will build the plane tangent to the sphere at the point of intersection between the sphere and the ray I ve taken some nasty shortcuts here First observe that in the refLinePlane routine the only information about the plane that is used is the normal vector So the normal vector is the only informa tion the refLineSphere routine supplies in the tangent plane structure Calculating the other information would be a waste 22 MICRO
28. We get a lot of correspondence here at Micro C letters from a pretty varied group of people But the most varied correspondent of all has to be P Leeward Here s his latest ear Editor All of us here look forward to readin the On Yer Own collum in Micro Cornucopia Me and Luther and LuBell have recently been inspired by it to become independent ontrayprenures Our first fling at a business of our own software sales was a flop remind me to tell you about that sometime but our current en devver shows a lot of promise It all started when I went out to cousin Luther s to see if th latest Micro C had arrived Cousin LuBell was at the kitchen table readin one of those grocery store magazines when I walked in She told me that the Cornucopia had just been delivered and Luther who had been waiting anxusly for some time grabbed th Cor nucopia and lit out for th readin room We all wish you d go monthly Well I was nearly excited enough to join Luther in th readin room but I remembered that Luther s library only has one seat and presumably he was usin that Beside the at mosphere in there tends to git a little close so I elected to stay and talk to Miz LuBell Look at this she said pointin to a big black headline on th tabloid GHOST OF ELVIS HAUNTS HONOLULU IN UFO it said Who could believe that kinda garbage asked LuBell I allowed as to how it ha
29. X Y in each plane corresponds to pixel X Y on the screen The binary value of the four X Y 42 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 bits in each plane is used to index into the color palette On the CGA amp HERC boards only 1 plane is used For the 720x348 HERC and 640x200 CGA modes each bit in the plane corresponds to a single pixel Using the 320x200 by 4 color CGA mode there is again only one plane but each pixel is made up of two adjacent bits It s possible to make a 1000x1000 by 2 color drawing which can be displayed on a CGA board 640x200 dots at a time then show it on a Hercules board 720x348 dots at a time but a picture isn t always so portable A 320x200 CGA pic ture has to be translated before it can be shown on another type of monitor Drawing the picture on the screen is easy all that s needed is a block move of each line of the picture to VRAM video RAM Of course there has to be some interpretation of the header infor mation and the pictures don t look quite the same from one type of video board to another because of differences in dot width and height The Header The structure for the header looks like this typedef struct unsigned char red green blue TRIPLET typedef struct char maker version code bpp int x1 yl x2 y2 hres vres TRIPLET triple 16 char vmode nplanes int bpl char __unused 128 68 PCXHDR The fields maker version code and
30. down to two MOV instructions The decision of which language to use for the development of a project is entirely dependent on a combination of design goals and some economic fac tors e Will the system be ported to more than one processor family e Are speed of execution and com pact size of utmost importance e Can the task be handled by a high level language e Does your staff currently have programmers skilled in both as sembly and high level languages Do you want to take advantage of the dozens of commercially avail able libraries for screen handling database management etc Please print a more balanced view of issues such as these in the future Tim Berens 3210 Ackerman Blvd Dayton OH 45429 Another C Defense I am writing in response to Eric Isaacson s article C vs Assembly Language in your March April issue Although I agree with him that most of what we hear about C is nothing more than marketing hype I must disagree strongly with many of the statements he makes He begins with a short history of the Apple Lisa and states Apple hired hundreds of programmers who dutiful ly wrote in Pascal the darling high level language of the day I don t know where he got this figure but let s assume for the moment that it s ac curate Such a large number of programmers is almost guaranteed to create havoc no matter what language they use Fred Brooks has written an entire book The
31. em into thinking they ve just been treated to the fastest printer in history I use a male 25 pin subminiature D plug solder type and put 1 8 Watt 1K Ohm resistors between pins 11 and 20 and between pins 12 and 21 Sticking a cover on the plug makes it easier to handle Win Wiencke Semi Custom Software 6807 Brennon Lane Chevy Chase MD 20815 Editor s note MicroSphere has seen a rash of bad parallel ports lately It appears that plugging a 86 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 parallel printer into a parallel port while the printer s running causes the problem even when both the printer and computer are plugged into the same power strip no major ground loops When the parallel port is on the graphics card the result is often no video as well as no parallel output When the port is on a multi I O card only the port dies They are now turning off both the computer and the printer before connecting same I ve not heard of any problems connecting together hot RS 232 ports Those little 1488s and 1489s that everyone s using for RS 232 buffers are really bulletproof Although Bruce did nail one when he accidentally connected the hot side of a 110VAC line directly to an RS 232 pin 360K Drives On An AT We get the occasional call from folks trying to run standard double side double density drives on an AT system The problem is that the AT can t tell a 1 2 meg drive from a 360K XTs ignore line 34 of
32. exter nal memory write Right away the RAS line for the appropriate bank of RAM goes true low RAS stands for row ad dress select The high order address bits select the proper bank of memory Then after a 60 ns delay to let the first address soak in the ADDRSEL line changes to make the other half of the ad dress available to the RAM 40 ns later the CAS line column address select for the same bank goes low telling the RAM to latch in the rest of the address Meanwhile the WE write enable line is low if we re writing to memory or high if we re reading from memory Parity Parity is simple Sorta We re dealing with 8 data bits and one parity bit The parity bit is used to make sure the total number of 1 bits is odd Let s say you write the following byte into memory 00000111 Okay that has three 1 s Three is odd so the parity bit would be 0 00000111 0 is 000001110 Now with parity we ve still got an odd number of 1 s Of course if you d writ ten 10010011 the parity circuit would have noticed that you had an even num ber of 1 s and set the parity bit to 1 Later when you re reading memory the parity circuit reads all nine bits If there s an odd number of 1 s it s happy Otherwise it drives the PCK parity check line high The heart of this circuit is the parity chip an S280 Its i input from the parity bit is forced low during a write
33. plane y x gt gt 3 amp 0x80 gt gt x amp 7 The global variable pcx_cpic is the pointer to a PCXPIC picture cpic cur rent picture It s used to tell the pixel routines what picture to work on For the HERC board or the 640x200x2 CGA mode you deal with one plane zero The 640x350x16 EGA mode forces you to repeat the operation with all four planes Since rows plane is a pointer to an array of rows rows planelly is a pointer to the y row All that s needed now is the byte to look at in the row and the bit in that byte The low order three bits of x x amp 7 select the bit and the remaining bits of x x gt gt 3 become the byte offset for the row The above expression would return 1 if the bit at x y is set or zero if it s not The 320x200x4 CGA mode is slightly more complicated since two adjacent bits are used to select a color The expression to return the color of the pixel at location x y in that mode would be i x amp 0x03 lt lt 1 color pcx gt rows 0 y x gt gt 2 amp OxcO0 gt gt i gt gt 6 i Since each byte represents 4 pixels x gt gt 2 is used as the byte offset for the row and x amp 0x03 is the number of the pixel in the byte Multiplying that num ber by 2 gives i the number of bits from bit 7 that we skip over to get to the first of the two bits that select the color of the pixel 0xc0 gt gt i makes a mask for those bits The big
34. process ret_val new_ved writing all types of programs and lengthy while ret_val EXIT_OK documents such as reports or ranuscripts INSERT Et sp 2 This shows how DEDIT PLUS can perforr if new_vedit amp amp table in windowing One window is used for uord printf crt sel processing a second for program if yesno setcrt ar development and the third for comnands else outcrIf Up to 48 windows are supported and you determine each window s size and color INDO DIRECTORY C VEDIT NEW COMPARE VDM CU203 UDM MAIL SORT VDM STRIPU VDM MENU VDM Z80 8086 VDM VDM PRINT VDM Stunning speed Unmatched performance Total flexibil ity Simple and intuitive operation The newest VEDIT PLUS defies comparison Try A Dazzling Demo Yourself The free demo disk is fully functional you can try all features yourself Best the demo includes a dazzling menu driven tutorial you experiment in one window while another gives instructions The powerful macro programming language helps you eliminate repetitive editing tasks The impressive demo tutorial is written entirely as a macro itshows that no other editor s macro language even comes close Go ahead Call for your free demo today You ll see why VEDIT PLUS has been the 1 choice of programmers writers and engineers since 1980 Available for IBM PC Tandy 2000 DEC Rainbow MS DOS CP M 86 and CP M 80 Yes We support
35. so the 8 data bits determine whether its EVEN output goes high If there is an even number of 1 s then even goes to 1 and that 1 gets written into the parity bit Thus the total number of 1 s written into memory is always odd During a read XMEMR not a typo we have both active low and active high XMEMRs in this circuit goes high letting the parity bit reach the 280 s i input A correct byte and parity bit will be odd forcing the 280 s odd pin high Other wise odd goes low and passes in verted through an LS27 where it gets clocked out as an error by XMEMR Editor s Note Schematics are available from IBM Or at least they used to be I ve heard from several folks that their copies of the XT technical reference package did not con tain schematics In case you can t get schematics from IBM or don t have a spare 100 kicking around we re finishing up a single sheet wall sized schematic of the XT s main board The schematic will be 15 postpaid Sandy s entering my drawings into Autocad as I write this How easy it ll be to use will depend a bit on how closely your system matches the original XT The basic circuit should be nearly identical otherwise the IBM ROM BIOS wouldn t run in the clones You will however find that board layout often differs a bit from clone to clone with some appearing identical to the original Major signal lines will nearly a
36. with his shareware menu prog Merrill Lynch oops they belong in the next section Micro Cornucopia Micro who Paul Mace And the technical types there were pretty well disguised as otherwise sane hackers who donned dark suits and ties The Micro C booth was probably the only one entirely unsuited for the oc casion Think about it i 1l come to you The first three days Gary Entsminger Larry Fogg and Bruce Eckel played the three musketeers while I wandered the show floor looking for likely techies ill fitting shoulders uncomfortable col Jars It turned out that those three were so out of control Thursday Friday and Saturday that by Sunday when they left me to man the booth alone people were coming by just to catch the act You can come to SOG and catch them at their best used to be the West Coast Com 40 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 The Swap Meet The rest of the Faire was a swap meet I d be the last to complain about a swap meet you wouldn t believe what I paid for this genuine diamond It was even manufactured in the U S But I don t confuse swap meets with Faires PC SIG PC SIG was showing its new market ing idea It s packaging shareware just like commercial software complete with color packages hanging on racks I un derstand that Sears will be displaying the racks Just plunk down your Sears card and you can purchase jeans wrenches tires and PC SIG s
37. 1988 Point px equ 0000H py equ 0020H pz equ 0040H A ray has an origin and a direction and is stored in memory as two consecu tive vectors Ray rox equ 0000H origin roy equ 0020H roz equ 0040H rdx equ 0060H direction rdy equ 0080H rdz equ OOA0H We define a plane by a point on the plane and a normal vector The test for whether a point lies on a plane is Pe N c where c O N is a constant The plane structure consists of the normal vector a point on the plane and the computed constant c O N a equ 0000H equ 0020H equ 0040H equ 0060H ppy equ 0080H ppz equ 00A0H pc equ 00COH normal vector ppx point on the plane constant for quicker computations 7 point normal A rectangle will use the structure for a plane but with two additional vectors the X extent and the Y extent Rectangle rx equ 00EO0H X extent ry equ 0140H Y extent We represent a sphere by a center and a radius The test for whether a point lies on a sphere uses the square of the radius So to simplify calculations we store the square of the radius not the radius in the sphere structure Ta S a O a Figure 1 Find a Point of Intersection text PointOnLine jin ry i a8 Ray a9 Time parameter al0 Point a8 rdx a0 a9 al fxMultiply a8 rox al al ad a0 a10 px a8 r
38. 42 July August 1988 half looking for zeros The starting ad dress of the zero and which bit contains the zero tells you which chip and which address pin are defective I fixed the address pin and disabled the chip by bending out pin 15 CAS Windsor didn t miss this one However according to markings on the circuit board Id zapped bit 7 in bank 0 Windsor told me I had a defective bit 0 and a defective parity bit Both in bank 0 It got the bank right However it s possible the board was marked wrong and of course the system would generate a parity error if there were a Single bit failure Windsor should have been smart enough to expect a parity error when it saw the single er roneous bit so it shouldn t have reported a problem with the parity chip In fact it should have reported a parity problem if it didn t receive a parity error I also tried a dead board one which had succumbed to a power supply failure I had checked a few obvious things earlier I d replaced the 8088 and I knew the processor was getting a clock signal However Windsor didn t so much as beep Ah well probably not their fault I m going to let MicroSphere use this diagnostic ROM for a while to see how helpful it is in real life They were very anxious to try it I ll keep you posted Editor s Suggestions As long as I ve gotten off on this tan gent I have some suggestions for those of you who are writing RAM diagnostic
39. Box 2249 Davis CA 95617 2249 916 756 4866 Indexing Magazines Finding An Article The Easy Way Those who have seen it and survived the ex perience say that Tony s home is decorated by towering stacks of books and magazines When Microsoft chairman Bill Gates visited Sacramento last year he was surprised to see a 1984 TIME magazine that featured him on the cover Tony had found it on the floor of his study How do you im prove information retrieval from a collection like that evoted computer users collect magazines just about as fast as they collect floppy disks After all you never can tell when you might need that little assembly language routine from the Power User s column tucked away in the back of now what issue was that Trouble is magazines are harder to search for information than floppies PC Magazine for example used to make it even harder by not publishing an index So how do you find that article you almost remember I have tried both sequential access page turning and random access flipping the magazine open but neither technique has much to recommend it Especial ly since I usually found myself looking through the wrong issue Let Your PC Do The Walking Early on I realized that my computer might be of help I started a small database in which I would note articles that looked interesting By entering the title author magazine issue and page number I had an electronic index
40. COPPER RD SANTA CLARA CA 95051 MAIL ORDERS Engineering Tool Education PCL 714 Super Lab 14 Bit A D D A DIO Counter PCL 714 Super Lab is a valuable single board solution to your data acquisition and control requirements Analog Input A D converter 16 differential channels 14 bit 25 000 samples sec Input range 5V to 5V 0 to 8 2V or Oto 5V Analog Output D A converter D A Channels 1 standard 1 optional 14 bit t5V or 8 2V range Digital I O Input patible Output 16 channels TTL com patible Counter 3 channels of timer counter 495 00 PCL 720 Digital I O and Counter Card 16 channels TTL com 32 Oigtta l Input Channels TTL compatible Low loading 0 2 mA at 0 4V 32 Digital Output Channels TTL compatible Driving capacity Sink 24 mA Source 15mA Timer Counter INTEL 8253 chip Breadboard area for flexible user configuration 1602 Relay Output Board 16 CHh e PC LABDAS Level 1 cssee iiime e PC LABDAS Level 1 amp 2 ennennssessssseses e UNKELSCOPE Level 1 cccsscesscesees e UNKELSCOPE Level 1 amp 2 folactivots WE SHIP C O D Store Hours Mon Fri 8 00 7 00 Saturday 9 00 5 00 RA 707 792 2277 g9 Mmmm 916 338 2545 d T j VSA gt ae 4 TEAMS Minimum order 10 00 California residents add 7 sales tax Prepaid orders sent treight C O D or call
41. CP M NorthStar Macintosh Apple Il MS DOS and PS 2 Don t let incompatible diskette Formats get you down read them all with your PC UniForm PC by MicroSolutions How often have you wished you could use your CP M diskettes on your PC Now you can access your CP M disks and programs on your MS DOS computer just as you would a standard MS DOS diskette Once the UniForm driver is installed you can use standard DOS commands and programs right on your original diskette without modifying or copying your files UniForm PC allows you to read write format and copy diskettes from over 275 CP M and MS DOS computers on your PC XT or AT With UniForm PC and the Compaticard you can use 5 high density 96TPI dual format 3 720k 1 44 meg PS 2 and even 8 drives UniForm PC by MicroSolutions Uniform for Kaypro and other machines CompatiCard by MicroSolutions Meet the CompatiCard THE universal disk drive controller card This half card will let you run up to 16 disk drives 4 per Compati Card on your PC or XT including standard 360K 96 TPI high density 1 2 meg dual speed 8 single or double sided SD or DD and dual format 31 2 drives 720k 1 44 PS 2 The combi nations are almost unlimited Comes with its own MS DOS driver and format program for high density and 31 2 diskettes Use it with UniForm PC for maximum versitility 8 adaptor and addi tional cabling available CompatiCard Board 169 95 Co
42. D PARITY gs MD2 1 MD3 11 EVEN 74LS245 743280 MEMORY DATA BUS ro A MAO oOo ww gt PARITY CHECK INTERNAL DATA BUS PCK CONTROL BUS INTERNAL DATA BUS INTERNAL ADDRESS BUS MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 27 bus Let s look at chip selection on the system board for example how the DMA Controller is selected Active low chip selects for the four smart system board chips come from an LS138 decoder The LS138 decodes XA5 XA7 and must see lows on XA8 XAQ and a high on AEN to turn on its out puts It doesn t connect to any higher order address bits so the only significant addresses are those we can make with XA7 and lower That s FFh and less just like we wanted Any address in this range with all of the select inputs XA5 XA7 low will cause the LS138 to generate a DMA chip select That s any address from 0 1Fh This addressing in combination with an active XIOW allows for programming of the DMA controller Expansion boards must generate their own chip selects in response to addresses on the expansion bus Direct Memory Access The DMA Controller 8237 handles data transfers for example disk I O without the intervention of the processor Of the four sets of control signals for the DMA channels DREQ1 DACK1 etc three connect directly to the expansion bus for use by peripheral cards The fourth channe
43. I asked what was the cause of the delay I was told There are a lot of drives being repaired All things con MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 77 Letters sidered it s still a good deal Thirty five bucks is more better than collecting broken puppies Mike Rutkoski 13523 Westwind Dr Silver Spring MD 20904 Editor s note We gave Seagate a call and yes indeed they are offering the flat rate exchange on the drives mentioned above However this only applies to drives still within the one year warranty Use the date stamped on the drive itself not the date of purchase For out of warranty drives Seagate of fers the following flat rates for rebuilds ST 225 170 ST 238 180 ST 251 290 Foreign Subscriptions I subscribe to and enjoy very much Micro C However the cost of a foreign subscription really hurts mainly due to the air mail postage I subscribe to PC Magazine and it costs me only about 2 50 an issue The reason PC Mag is so cheap apart from its mass production is because it s sent surface mail I know it may get over here a bit a lot later than air mail but it sure saves a lot of money I don t really get Micro C for its topical content so does it mat ter if it gets to England in one week or one month I certainly wouldn t mind especially if it brought the subscription price down to near the US amount Is there any special reason you don t offer this opti
44. Mythical Man Month on this very subject If the idea of hundreds of programmers writing in Pascal frightens you then the sight of hundreds of people coding in assembler would be a vision from hell Mr Isaacson goes on to describe two assemblers he has written one while he was at Intel and another he wrote on his own The Intel assembler was writ ten in PL M by a team of three people and took eleven months to complete 33 man months The other assembler was written by himself and took six months to complete Several questions need to be answered before we can make a mean ingful comparison Had these program mers ever used PL M before How much of the eleven months was spent learning the compiler writing memos attending staff meetings and doing all the other things employees of a large corporation do One month Two How much time was spent developing the re quirements definition Another month How much design time did Mr Isaac son save on his second project by reus ing ideas from the first project This 6 to 33 ratio he quotes doesn t tell the whole story When it comes to debugging Mr Isaacson seems to be a little behind the times I know of at least three C inter preters Safe C Run C C terp that run under MS DOS and Xenix not to men tion symbolic debuggers like CodeView If you are a software developer in today s market you owe it to yourself to stay informed on the latest tools and methods You can
45. Processor Option 1 Meg RAM On Board Phoenix Bios 200 Watt Power Supply Hercules Compat Video Board Parallel Board 2 Serial Ports Active Game Port Clock Calendar Hard Disk amp Floppy Controller 20M Hard Drive 1 2M 5 Floppy Drive 360K 51 Floppy Drive 5061 Keyboard Mini AT Case with Turbo amp Reset Hard Drive Light and Keyboard Disable Switch Amber Graphics Monitor 1531 EGA ADD 449 40M HD ADD 150 8280 Clairemont Mesa Blivd Suite 117 San Diego California 92111 619 569 1864 XT TURBO Motherboard 5 amp 8 MHz Switchable 8088 V20 Optional Optional Co processor 8 Expansion Slots ERSO or Bison Bios 640K RAM 150 Watt Power Supply Hercules Compat Video Board Parallel Board 2 Serial Ports Active Game Port Clock Calendar Hard Disk and Floppy Controller 20M 5 Hard Drive 2 ea 360K 5 Floppy Drive AT Style Keyboard Standard Slide Case Amber Graphics Monitor 999 EGA ADD 429 40M HD ADD 150 5 amp 10MHz ADD 21 UNINTERRUPTIBLE POWER SUPPLY 149 ELGAR MODEL SPR401 THESE SUPPLIES MAY HAVE SOME MINOR COSMETIC DAMAGE BUT ARE ELECTRICALLY SOUND 400VA SQUAREWAVE WAVEFORM RUN ON INTERNAL OR EXTERNAL 24VDC BATTERY WHEN LINE GOES DOWN TYPICAL TRANSFER TIME Battery Supplied Not Guaranteed KAYPRO EQUIPMENT 9 Green Monitor Hard Disk Cable Set 4 PRO 8 Mod to your board Host Interface Board KAYPRO IC S 81 189 Video Pal
46. advanced design hardware along with applications and technical support all at prices competitive with imports Why settle for less Rack amp Desk PC AT Chassis Rack amp Desk Models Accepts PC XT AT Motherboards and Passive Backplanes Doesn t Look Like IBM Rugged Modular Construction Excellent Air Flow amp Cooling Optional Card Cage Fan Designed to meet FCC 204 Watt Supply UL Recognized 145W amp 85W also available Reasonably Priced Reader Service Number 22 Call or write for descriptive brochure and prices 8620 Roosevelt Ave Visalia CA 93291 209 651 1203 TELEX 5106012830 INTEGRAND UD EZLINK 62926572 We accept BankAmericard VISA and MasterCard IBM PC XT AT trademarks of International Business Machines Drives and computer boards not included MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 23 XT Theory Of Operation Putting All those Smart Chips Together Larry s been researching and writing the pieces on the XT s LSI chips the processor timer DMA controller so it was natural that he take the lead in this final piece This is the theory of operation the how all those fancy ICs work together as a computer We re also finishing up one of our famous wall sized schematics for the XT If you have a hankering to really see what we re talking about then check the end of this article for details kay folks here it is pretty near QO the whole circuit in one place We re using dev
47. adventures during our month long expedition on as many Turkish rivers as possible in one month or Midnight Deliverance One good thing about it they don t even have pigs in Turkey It s against the religion How will I compute you ask Well I have some plans First I still have the Zenith 181 portable that I bought last fall While it isn t much on computing power it does have a nice screen and it can run four hours on its batteries I can also run it off a car s cigarette lighter a much better use of cigarette lighters if you ask me My three months at PC Tech haven t left me unscarred however As the weeks here in Lake City have slipped by I ve found myself more and more addicted to high speed machinery But whatever machine I have must be very small and light easy to carry easy to smuggle and look like a portable radio or tire pump I looked around and found that what I needed 80286 at least 10 MHz 2 MB of RAM 20 MB winchester wasn t available in battery powered form so I started looking around for the smallest AC powered machine I could find and afford What I ended up with isn t my idea of the perfect machine after all it doesn t work on the beach in the car or on the river but it is just about as close as I could come First the cabinet You ve no doubt been noticing those McTek ads the last few months featuring the portable case Well McTek has foun
48. and the TLC532 A D converter chip I suggest ribbon cable with a clamp on male DB 25 connector to get the signals to your breadboard for circuit building techni ques check my articles in previous issues of Micro C The chip is a complete package I ve done two other projects with A D con verters and the circuitry for this is the simplest because the chip has a built in multiplexer so we can sample up to 11 input channels Plus it uses the system clock and 6 of the lines can be used as analog or digital inputs You can buy the chip in single quan tities for around 8 from your local Mar shall Electronics office Note minimum order is 25 This chip was originally manufac tured by National and Motorola but Texas Instruments TI increased the speed quite a bit The TI data sheets don t contain quite as much information National and Intel usually have the best data sheets Voltage References The chip has a positive and a negative voltage reference The positive reference may be from 2 5 volts up to the supply voltage 5 volts The negative reference By Bruce Eckel Eisys Consulting 1009 N 36th Street Seattle WA 98103 may be between ground and 2 5 volts I ve shown the most common configura tion Figure 2 The A D takes the analog input volt age and turns it into a number between 0 and 255 Oxff hex which represents the voltage of the input relative to the nega tive and positive references The
49. as bare board or assembled amp tested e Kaypro 84 host board also available Winchester Connection by MICROCode Consulting The most simple and comprehensive hard disk software package available for CP M Designed for use with the WD1002 05 controller board Works with one or two hard disks 5 to 64 meg e Menu installed no software to assemble e Complete hardware tests and error handling e Automatic swap for warm boots from hard drive Software drivers install above or below CP M e Allows custom partition sizes and mixed drive types Independent block and directory sizes on each partition e Includes manual format test park and swap utilities Winchester Connection Software only HDS Board with Winchester Connection Software HDS Bare Board with software HDS Board WD1002 05 and software Call or write for other pricing options WD1002 05 HARD DISK CONTROLLER BOARD by Western Digital Standard ST506 drive interface Same size as standard 5 drive e 40 pin interface to host computer e WD2797 floppy disk controller interface on board e Can control up to three hard drives Direct replacement for Kaypro 10 controller WD1002 05 Controller Board Other Western Digital boards available 79 95 Prices subject to change without notice VISA and Mastercard accepted Include 5 00 shipping and handling 7 50 for COD UPS Biue or RED Label additional according to weight Please include your phone number with all co
50. attempt to convince you that this standard is the ideal standard I even think that it is a bad standard and that it could be done much better But I didn t make the standard I m just reporting on it I have no idea why NumColumns is a word and BottomLine a byte I don t have the foggiest why NumColumns is represented as 1 to n and BottomLine is 0 to n 1 That s not within my jurisdic tion I can merely tell you that they are and how to use them Details Okay Let s say you have a program that s going to be doing a lot of screen output Maybe a few windows that you want to move around Lots of text You want to be able to use as much screen real estate as you can get your hands on What to do First don t hard code anything Not even array bounds If you do have any array that s dependent on screen size allocate it at run time and maybe even be prepared to change its size This really isn t as hard as it seems In stead of putting 25s and 80s all over your program just reference a variable What variable BottomLine of course Bottomline is a byte stored in the EGA BIOS scratch RAM area at 0040 0084h It is set equal to the number of lines on the display minus one So if your display has 43 lines it will say 42 65 means 66 etc Many times the 1 is what you want anyway Just declare BottomLine as a variable in your program and use it instead of a con stant See the examples in Fi
51. backlit 80 column by bled with our one year parts amp 3 01 bios 640k turbo indicator 25 line LCD with adjustable intensity and labor guarantee and sells for LCD amp mouse interface The screen angle Its as readable as a CRT an amazing com 799 screen is a fantastically readable You can also plug in a digital or analog plete price of only D 3 MB On Board AT Our Mc Tek 286A is the most integrated AT compatible to date It utilizes the highly regarded Chips amp Technology chip set and includes memory upgradable on board to 3 megabytes No more worries about speed compatibility with expanded memory cards The 8 10MHz wait state McTek 286A runs at 11 5 Norton SI and an effective 13 2MHz on the Landmark test Serial parallel amp game ports are all standard on board With Award 3 01 bios 640k 200W power supply Samsung amber monitor with Hercules compatible controller locking case AT style keyboard 1 2MB drive 20MB Seagate Assembled amp fully tested with a full one year warranty Get in on the most advanced AT compatible on the market at the lowest price ever offered 1 3 9 9 XT Turbos amp Supers 640k 4 77 8MHz and 4 77 10 switchable XT turboboards two 360k floppy disk drives with controller one parallel one serial and one game port AT style keyboard clock FCC approved slide case eight slots Hercules compatible graphics card amber monitor w base fully assembled and tested one year parts and lab
52. bet your competitors do It is evident that Mr Isaacson doesn t really understand why a C compiler generates code the way it does The design of the language simply prohibits certain kinds of code from being produced We need to remember two facts about C All functions are poten tially recursive and functions may be called with a variable number of parameters Recursion demands that all parameters and variables be kept on the stack so they won t be destroyed by a subsequent activation of the same func tion And having varying numbers of parameters means the RET n instruc tion can t be used since the compiler has no way of knowing what the values of n should be This is also why the call ing function is responsible for removing the parameters from the stack One point deserves particular atten tion Mr Isaacson tells us his assembler contains an error handling mechanism similar to Ada s exception handling and claims it could not have been done in any of the high level languages avail able at the time This is simply not true Any conceivable control structure can be implemented through the proper combination of sequential execution branching and looping This was for mally proven by Bohm and Jacopini over 20 years ago In fact all the Ada compilers I am familiar with Alsys Meridian R amp R are themselves written in Ada In each case the compiler writers have found a way to implement
53. complex text processing formatting conversions and translations e Complete TECO capability e Free macros Full screen file compare merge Sort mailing lists e Print Formatter e Menu driven tutorial CompuView 1955 Pauline Blvd Ann Arbor MI 48103 313 996 1299 TELEX 701821 Reader Service Number 7 Demo Disk is fully functional but does not readily write large files Reader Service Number 7 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 45 and you can download the files from one of the following sources The file PCX ARC will be on the Micro C RBBS long before you see this and on the Micro C Issue 42 disk and I ll put it in one of the IBM forums on Compu Serve in thanks to the many people who put together the EGA ARC file see ref 2 Finally there ll be a copy in the LIST INGS IBM ARC section of BIX The Functions Basically the functions can be divided into three groups The lowest level con tains the board level driver modules There s one each for the HERC EGA and CGA boards The PCX module is set up as just another video board Each module has the same collection of func tions each function name prefixed with the board name The next level up contains what I call the VGR modules Video GRaphics It s a simple interface between the driver modules and the next higher level This level contains a bunch of macros to allow access to the driver level while still being able to switch
54. difference between this ex pression and the previous one is that we need a two bit result so we can t use the operator to clean up after the bit wise AND Shifting to the right 6 i bits does the job The only difference between the two expressions above and the ones used in the EGA and CGA modules is that there aren t any planes The EGA board uses a plane register to select each plane and all four planes use the same memory loca tions The HERC board has two pages which can be thought of as unrelated planes I visualized each horizontal row of pixels as being an array of columns so the arrays are called columns instead of rows The array of pointers to each row is dynamically allocated The pointers are initialized with sequential row addresses for the EGA board and scattered addres ses for the HERC and CGA boards Although the pointer operations and bit twiddling never get more complicated than that some of the expressions aren t much fun to read Fortunately all the low level operations are ready to go You can just throw them into your library and use them With that said let s get down to function names and parameter lists Using The Functions Note that the declarations here don t match the ones in the modules Many functions that don t return anything are declared as returning int Most parameters to most of the functions are not range checked void allocf char p void map_not int map int len
55. does for numbers ACT helps you manage your contacts with the important people in your life Call today for more information or send a 10 refundable deposit to receive a copy of the ACT video demo tape Your deposit will be refunded whether you purchase ACT or not when the video is returned in good condition RON ANGERT S IC RO M t SOLUTIONS WE SHIP WORLDWIDE Dealers Supported Drawer B Riner VA 24149 1 800 323 4829 703 382 6624 Call 24 hours 7 days a week Reader Service Number 24 38 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 gt ponversiod Oxtx n analog amp i ORE prints digital values Pee Finary digital values o gt gt 10 a 3 i getch get the character from whit 7 if i 27 break quit on an ESC o f i lt 19 66 i gt z OL or convert ascii af o af 2 lt f s gt a i a 10 a f gt mar amp Oxf other chars get masked Yo 8 raor ont cua cursor back on when finished a END OF LISTING ae 3 Make File For Compiling Bruce s Code ae a oe Rafting msi Barbeque i r e in a Renee o j E 28 Si ae pe oe Computer tech talk 4 where to look for the Aras files Tera turboe the theget file is adc exe and it depsads on the ob tiles July 14 g July 16 econd line tells how to make the target from tha 9 files eo a Bend Oregon exe adc obj driver obj
56. each individual system component Infor belied mation about the testing and the results are presented via text and graphics im UA f on the system s display PC Technician provides on line help displays and X information about the system s configuration il PC Technician is ideal for service personnel manufacturers OEM s and users PG lt a who need detailed information about the status of their computer s hardware ie P PC Technician is available in the following configurations dag Product Code T01 for PC PC XT 195 00 Ye Product Code T51 for PC AT 245 00 KEA mS Product Code T90 for PC PC XT PC AT Piste T01 and T51 in the same carrying case 395 00 SUNY A FREE Evaluation Diskette is available see the coupon below NEA 3s SN WindsorPOST Personal Computer Diagnostic ROM Module WindsorPOST is designed to be used when the system is malfunctioning such that its power on self test commonly called POST does not complete satisfactorily and a diskette based diagnostic product such as PC Technician cannot be loaded and used for troubleshooting WindsorPOST temporarily replaces the system s BIOS ROM module When installed its LED indicates if the proper amount of power is at the BIOS ROM socket It then performs 36 tests on the circuits and electrical components on the system board the system memory up to 640K and the color or mono chrome video display memory Errors are identified down to
57. geometric interpretation Earlier we derived a quadratic equa tion for computing the intersection If both roots are imaginary then the ray completely misses the sphere If both roots are negative then the ray is point ing away from the sphere If one root is positive and one is negative then the ray starts inside of the sphere If both roots are positive then the ray begins outside the sphere and goes through the sphere Our routine will return a negative value if the ray doesn t intersect the sphere If the ray intersects the sphere twice the routine will return the time of the earliest intersection Some extra precaution is necessary in these calculations The multiplication division and square root routines intro duce some round off errors These errors are far less than the theoretical distance between pixels So these errors never cause something to be displayed that shouldn t be However when we look at a reflected ray the ray starts right on the circle In a perfect world the computer routine will return a zero But because of round off error we may see a small positive num ber Without some adjustment the com puter will decide that the reflected ray immediately intersects the circle again and again and again and again To avoid this situation the program will test against a small positive number rather than 0 This number was deter mined by experimentation Reflection Ray tracing images really b
58. if XYZ has a com petitive advantage through use of the product If XYZ is not a competitor the customer will feel reassured that he is not the first If your beta site is happy with the product definitely ask for an endorse ment A positive letter from a customer can go a long way toward breaking down barriers for new prospects How do you convince a company to become a test site There are no defini tive answers to this question I can though offer some definite don ts Foremost don t expect the beta site to purchase the product at retail A charge for media cost may be ap propriate but be prepared to swallow all of the cost Once the company makes the commitment to act as a beta site you can feel fairly comfortable that they So Help Me anew anD POWERFUL TOOL FOR CREATING POP UP WINDOWS NEW_VERSION So Help Me is a windowing tool that greatly simplifies adding pop up help screens light bar menus and error messages to your custom software Create text for the windows in your program or place it in one or more ASCII files and then use So Help Me s Application Program Interface API to display them FEATURES Up to four scrollable windows displayed simultaneously with full video attribute control e Control returned to your program after a defined time period when a predefined key is pressed or when any key is pressed the key value is passed back for processing When messages and menu
59. instructions You may use CON FIG83 COM with the same limitations listed above To configure your keypad and cursor keys I told you we d get to this use DDT to modify the CPM63 COM file which you saved when generating your 63K CP M Type DDT CPM63 COM then use the DDT s set com mand to change the bytes from 1FB5H to 1FC6H These correspond to the four cursor keys then the numeric keypad in the order lt up gt lt dn gt lt L gt lt R gt 012345678 9 lt CR gt Adding ZCPR1 For your 63K CP M even on a Kaypro II you need a 63K Kaypro 4 version of ZCPR1 such as the one on Micro C Users Disk K22 The programs from disk K22 which work with 83 Kaypros are 4INSTALL SUB and ZCPR4S HEX After completing all of your modifications and enhancements use SYSGEN COM to write your CPM63 COM file onto your disk s sys tem tracks Questions Some application programs recon figure the cursor for example NULU12 COM and IMP245 COM make it into a 0 I m not sure whether this oddity has to do with ZCPR1 the Pro 8 monitor or the RAMdisk software since I installed them all at nearly the same time Does anyone know a way around this problem EX 1 4 won t run in the modified CP M It seems to be incompatible with ZCPR1 I m stuck with kludgy slow SUBMIT COM I have occasionally received NO DIRECTORY SPACE messages from the RAMdisk after running the CBIOSR automatic RAMdisk initiali
60. interrupts things grind toa halt connects to the TEST input of the 8088 caused by an exception such as divide This lets the 8088 know when the 8087 by zero can generate a non maskable in 8087 has finished a task terrupt But NMIs travel a tortuous path of logic gates They have to pass through gates controlled by one of the system board parallel ports Then the NMI gets ANDed with the latched contents of an LS74 NMI Mask Register x gt N N Om ELE a9 oa lee T ajo NN gt gt oy gt A WwW Oo gt gt gt p D gt INTERNAL ADDRESS BUS CONTROL BUS EXTERNAL ADDRESS BUS The 8088 has two Request Grant lines that can be used to coordinate the ac tivities of coprocessors The XT only uses one RQ GT1 This connects directly to RQ GTO of the 8087 and allows the 8087 to request use of the bus and the 8088 to XT RAM Circuit Me MULTIPLEXED ADDRESS BUS VE v MA2 6 ee MA4 11 MA5 12 MAB 13 MA7 9 MAB 1 2 14 2 14 o70 2 0 Q 2 T O Space I O addresses can be broken into two groups As mentioned above the lower FFh I O ports belong to the system board 100h and up live on the expansion NOTE RAM DIAGRAM SHOWS 4 BANKS OF 9 STACKED CHIPS WITH THE PARITY CHIP ON THE BOTTOM 74LS158 WW oO J es A oy ee 3 D Q 3 lf ewe 4 D Q 4 sna p a_8 a EE D Q 6 D A 7 D Q 8 D PARITY D PARITY ne
61. intersection return negative number if miss ald Figure 4 Intersection of Ray with a Sphere intLineSphere a8 Ray a9 Sphere a0 intersection parameter a0 lt 0 if no intersection sp a4 a5 a6 a7 a8 a9 a10 a8 a4 a9 a5 vTemp0 rdx a8 a8 a9 vDot ad a6 ald a9 vDot ad a0 a6 al fxDivide ad a7 jxrderd 7 a in quadratic equation 7 b in quadratic equation ald ag vDot a5 sr2 al 1 radius squared sub al a0 c in quadratic equation move a6 al calla fxDivide sll 2 a0 move a0 a6 point of intersection is a point on the tan gent plane The normal and the intersec tion point define the plane So only the case of reflection of a ray off of a plane will be considered in detail I started with the rule Angle of in cidence angle of reflection The angle a between two vectors U and V can be computed by move a7 a0 move a7 al calla fxMultiply b 2 sub a6 a0 b 2 4ac jrlt is_00 no intersection if negative calla fxSqRoot sqrt b 2 4ac move a7 al b Ue V cos a IUI Ivi Originally I developed reflections using this idea However some algebraic simplification leads to a much simpler subroutine It turns out that the algebraic simplification has a nice geometric inter pretation I ve presented the simplified approach here Let I denote the incoming or incident vector and let R denote the reflected vec to
62. locations and functions and gives the same information as issue 38 except for the addition of the PBUS DIRECT bit which controls the direction of the bi directional port we just created I ll call it the printer bus I changed my board s I O BASE ad dress to 238 hex described in issue 38 so it can t possibly conflict with normal printer boards Bus Limitations To put multiple chips on the same data bus the chips must be well behaved In other words when they aren t talking they must release the bus so other chips can talk on it To release it a chip puts its bus out puts into high impedance or Tri state a trademark of National Semi This means they no longer force the bus lines high or low it s as if they d discon nected themselves Both the printer card and the A D chip can be tri stated When we want to read the printer bus we set the printer 32 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 card to input so it s listening not talking and let the A D talk on the bus To write to the printer bus we do the reverse Some chips can drive a bus harder than other chips In our case the printer card has lots of drive since it s designed to send information over 12 foot cables But the A D chip doesn t have much drive at all it s designed for a simple local bus This caused me problems I was using an eight foot ribbon cable between my DB 25 connector at the printer ca
63. monitor serial and parallel ports on board in this case and keyboard was 1 399 If you really cut corners get two 360K floppies skip the hard drive get a 74 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 CGA and less RAM you could do it for well under 1 000 The lowest advertised complete 80386 system I found was 2 675 16 MHz CPU 1 megabyte DRAM 2 flop pies 1 40 megabyte hard disk monochrome monitor and graphics serial and parallel ports No single company at the West Coast Computer Faire had the best prices on all equipment But many of the best system and board prices I found were at McTek the Sky High of my December 86 article in Berkeley California MicroSphere had the lowest priced 80386 kit The name 80286 and 80386 sys tems PC Limited Compaq Wyse CCST Wells American etc in 10 12 or 16 MHz versions are considerably more expensive starting at 2 000 for 80286 systems and 4 000 for 80386 systems and going higher quickly The Compaq Deskpro 386 tops the list at about 6 500 There are a few published reports of compatibility problems with the faster systems particularly with 80386 software but the 10 12 and 16 MHz 286s I saw seemed to run everything The Rabbit So what did I buy I bought a Rab bit No not the cute furry kind or the funny German car but the quick sleeker than a Kaypro 2 portable lunch box variety Despite the arguments I couldn t give up my trie
64. pin to choose internal register 0 or 1 the chip select pin to tell the chip yes we are talking to you and the clock pin which is used not only for the logic inter face but also to drive the analog to digi tal conversion process Figure 2 shows 34 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 16 bit Transfers Figure 3 shows the registers for the A D chip We write to the control register to select the analog input channel and to tell the chip to start a conversion We can read two result registers dif ferentiated by the register select line one for the analog result and one for the digital result and the address of the pin we last performed an A D conversion on Surprise These are 16 bit registers To transfer data we must do the equivalent of a 16 bit transfer from an 8 bit microprocessor or in the case of the 8088 a 16 bit processor with an 8 bit Software Listing 1 shows all the functions necessary to set up and drive the con verter A driver program See Listing 2 turns off the cursor and repeatedly dis plays the digital and analog values on the screen There s also a makefile See Listing 3 so you can build the whole thing includ ing the in line assembly if you own MASM just by typing make I ve included debugging code which can be turned on by putting define DEBUG_FLAG at the beginning of the file After each I O step the program will wait for you to press a key You ca
65. product by leading members of the business community Explain that you will not take a lot of their time and in fact that your presen tation takes less than forty five minutes But be prepared to spend several hours talking When the presentation comes to an end be sure and ask if you can come back at a later time and discuss the en hancements you are incorporating as a result of the interviews If your audience was impressed you should have no problem scheduling a second presentation After each presentation you need to evaluate your results Did someone sug gest a new feature or change that you should incorporate If so make the change before your next presentation After three or four presentations to different individuals or groups you will start to get a feeling for the features im portant to your potential user base You can now make an intelligent decision on what features need to be in the first release and which features can be 68 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 AN Sre ethods Inc ZRP M creates Z280 CP M 2 2 compatible IBM PC ZRP M is an operating system combined with a Z280 emula tor Either standalone or with DOS present ZRP M provides the solid base of a genuine operating system reliably distinct from the facade created by an MSDOS interface All 2 2 system and CBIOS calls are supported 56 5k TPA file date and time stamping fast virtual disk iobyte redirection ter
66. routines Be sure to check for bent pins especially address pins Turn off refresh write to RAM and then read at ever longer intervals Remember a read is a refresh The length of time a RAM remembers its data is one test of RAM quality Some RAM chips can remember their data as long as 1 second without refresh If you have a flaky RAM chip hopefully it ll be the first one to forget Of course you ll also want to include the standard tests such as alternately writing and reading 5555 hex and AAAA hex to check for stuck bits and cross talk Finally if you have servicing tips or recommendations on diagnostics please write Micro C or call our RBBS Techtips are the most popular part of the magazine though it hurts to admit it J i a PERRE ANETA AARUN YSAIA OUSA EN SAGE ON AR WAN A EAE oL n Ee ITAN ZA hire ae SAAS JEU OAAR for Personal Computers A TLS from Windsor Technologies VRIES Windsor Technologies offers a family of diagnostic products for IBM PC PC XT PC AT and compatible ars computers Originally designed for and used by service industry professionals Windsor s products are well suited for anyone involved in the management and maintenance of personal computers PC Technician VEN Professional Level Personal Computer Diagnostic System G el PC Technician is an advanced type diskette based diagnostic system that ht provides comprehensive testing for
67. screens a data dictionary of all user entered variables and a laser printed manual with no spelling errors and no gross deviations from commonly ac cepted English grammar The next step is to practice your presentation Just because you wrote the demo packages don t assume that you can demo it Practice on a friend wife husband or a schoolmate While you are practicing and refin ing your presentation identify who should see your demo If you are developing a specialized package you probably already know several people in the field who would be happy to look at your ideas Software Developers We need your program Do you have a program that s good enough to sell but don t want the problems or financial risk of producing typesetting printing packaging warehousing marketing distributing and sup Why start your own software house is now accepting submissions of micro computer e to spend your time programming But we can t help you if you don t submit Call or write today for our submission guideline kit PUBLISHING GROUP 1240 Johnson Ferry Place Suite A10 Marietta GA 30068 404 977 6034 P S See us in Atlanta at COMDEX Spring 88 s 5 10 nonUS A a kia Contact these people and be up front and honest about why you want to talk with them Make it clear that your in tent is not to sell them anything You are simply looking for evaluations of your
68. software Hold on a minute this isn t PC SIG s software this is shareware Purchasers haven t paid for the program just for the rack the packaging and the paper bag Will those people pony up another 50 if they like it Would they send Calvin Klein a 10 sharewear fee if the jeans fit Classy Vendors Meanwhile busy vendors sold watches get your watches here best price in the show and jewelry our gold plating is real gold plating Hey that s almost as outlandish as airline ads in BYTE You say there are airline ads in BYTE You could purchase encyclopedias Fill out a card for a chance on a set of books And a guarantee on a sales man Or you could purchase stocks I told you Merrill Lynch belonged down here Way down here There must have been 20 booths ped dling cheap floppy disks 27 cents each for 5 1 4 1 10 for 3 1 2 30 showing XT AT 386 boards another 30 selling disks of shareware PC SIG was the highest priced of the bunch and a dozen others moving heavily discounted com mercial software Save 90 on the latest and greatest Don t you dare pass up this booth These are deals you ll never see again Sealed boxes The freshest programs Freshest my eye they were old ver sions or remaindered no longer marketed or supported titles Still I bought some Let s see three Infocom games Xor s Thoth action list manager Blu Chip a portf
69. subroutine Supports most lan guages and filetypes including Btrieve and dBase Unlimited filesizes multiple keys and much more MS DOS 149 XENIX 249 702 588 3737 Opt Tech Data Processing P O Box 678 Zephyr Cove NV 89448 Reader Service Number 64 8051 SIMULATOR Superb full function debugger simulator supports all 8051 modes of interrupt just like the real thing Full disassembler and many unique features ONLY 150 00 CROSS ASSEMBLERS For Z80 8080 8085 8048 8051 and 8096 still 75 00 each LEAR COM COMPANY 2440 KIPLING ST SUITE 201 LAKEWOOD CO 80215 303 232 2226 Reader Service Number 84 CASINO CARD GAME PAC POPUP VT100 EMULATOR POPUP TIME amp BILLING DES SECURE ENCRYPTION BBS amp REMOT ACCESS 99 STOCK TRADING SYSTEM Demo 49 IBM PC Compatibles GUARANTEED SATISFACTION or your Money Back Don t Delay Get Our Free Catalogue Today Box 1400 OLDSMAR FLORIDA 33557 Hawkeye Grafix Inc i Dial 813 855 5846 RAM DISK S 100 2 Meg Port I O New Warranteed 775 S Lugert 439 Peck Slip or call NY NY 10272 718 622 0654 Reader Service Number 52 CROSS ASSEMBLERS PseudoCode releases version 2 of its cross assemblers Assemblers for the 8048 8051 8096 8085 Z80 6502 1802 6800 6805 6809 68000 and 32000 microprocessor families are available Macros Conditional Assembly include Files plus extensive expression hand ling Virtually no limi
70. t make chicken soup from chicken drop pings In his example a careful use of the sizeof operator eliminates the need for the strlen function that Eric thought was necessary For the one line of code that Eric s example focused on the 153 Continued on page 77 Stuff Dreams are made of Quality 80386 based motherboard 1 Megabyte 80 ns on board RAM 2 Parallel ports and 2 serial ports 640 x 480 on board EGA VGA card 1 2 Megabyte 5 25 floppy drive Western Digital WA 2 hard floppy controller card Professional enhanced 101 key keyboard Case UL and FCC approved reset switch power and turbo LEDs keyboard lock 2295 AT 6 10 MHz 0 wait state motherboard 1 Megabyte of on board RAM 1 5 25 TEAC 1 2M floppy drive 40 Mb Seagate ST 251 hard drive Hard floppy disk controller card 12 amber Samsung monitor tilt swivel Hercules compatible mono graphics card AT style keyboard AT case UL and FCC approved 1495 Complete Ss oa eee HSER AAT ETTET EEEN Shh Complete The Dream 88 XT 10 MHz Turbo motherboard 640 K of on board RAM 1 5 25 360K Fujitsu floppy drive 30 Mb Seagate ST 238 Hard drive Floppy controller card controls 2 Networks Taylored to your exact needs Call for more information Hard disk controller card 12 amber Samsung monitor tilt swivel Hercules compatible mono graphics card AT style keyboard XT slide case UL and FCC approved Hard Drives mplete Se
71. that text is normal and emphasized text is dim On my monitor neither is accept able To see the dim the bright must be so bright as to bloom and is just a bit out of focus while the dim is still dim Since the video brightness is a func tion of the hardware a hardware fix is required This turns out to be a simple thing and is probably worthwhile even if you don t get the upgrade Video to the CRT is buffered through U1 a 7406 open collector inverter with R5 150 ohms as the pull up To get half intensity another inverter in U1 acts as a clamp through R6 300 ohms to give about 2 3 of full intensity drive to the CRT 300 ohms is somewhat low On my old Kaypro the difference was just tolerable But on the new one it wasn t The solution is to change the value of R6 Larger values make the half inten sity mode brighter and do not affect the normal video You can either replace R6 with about 360 ohms or with a 1K pot and have a contrast control I chose the latter and did the installation differently on each computer On one I removed U1 and bent pin 4 out I then soldered a tiny 1K pot be tween U1 s pin 4 and pin 6 I reinstalled the chip and now can set the level of half intensity from full to none at all On the other system I installed the pot on the back of the cabinet where my reset switch used to reside You might wonder why I didn t simply remove R6 and solder the pot there I thought about it and wh
72. the sphere This point is also calculated by refLinePlane So refLineSphere jumps to the middle of refLinePlane to a place after the point of intersection calculation This avoids calculating the point of inter section twice Generally the execution time saved by tricks like these won t offset the program maintenance headaches created by the tricks Wrap Up I ll close with a description of the remainder of the ray tracing program I ll only show you the algorithm skipping the details of the 34010 implementation We begin by building a list of objects in memory These objects can be any thing we ve discussed so far planes rectangles and spheres In addition to the location and size information we also specify a color for each object Call this table the Universe We imagine an eye somewhere in this computer universe The location of our eye is stored in a point structure called Eye The computer display screen is mapped to a rectangle in space We use a rectangle data structure called Screen to describe the display screen location Every pixel on the screen will be colored The main part of the program is a loop The program loop picks a pixel on the display screen This pixel is trans lated to a point in the display rectangle A ray is built which starts at the eye and goes through the point on the dis play screen We determine the first object this ray intersects the color of that object is used to color the pi
73. the Iranian Revolution on a military C 130 returned to the States and found myself in the PC Revolution Two years in Iran had not prepared me for computer stores or the latest in beach fashions But I pulled myself together and got a sales job with 0B1 one of the original Apple Com puter distributors I was a somewhat technical salesperson and over time I acquired a reputation for technical sup port This reputation was largely buoyed by an understanding of three of four failures very common to the Apple Jl and a little common sense The most common failure the tenden cy of the Apple to lose data because of dust or corrosion on the language card s edge connector made me a hero with friends neighbors teachers and the Apple dealer The fix turn off the machine take out the RAM card clean the contacts with a pencil eraser and put the card back The company Dan and I now work for National Advancement Corporation NAC trains technicians in the fine art of maintaining IBM personal computers and compatibles One way to improve troubleshooting logic is with flow charts We ve spent thousands of man hours developing ours But we ve also found two other very effective methods One we call fre quent failures watching for common symptoms to common problems The other method requires a diagnostic ROM Br in early 1979 I escaped from 14 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 No matter which method you us
74. the editors get really touched As for sullied Third thanks for the comments on MicroSphere I know the president of MicroSphere and he s really not too bad as brothers go The MicroSphere staff knows that when I show up I m probably looking for Techtips a weird part or lunch As for the funny looking guy he originally appeared in Punch many many years ago Sandy found him in a clip art book and we ve both really enjoyed his com pany We ve had three illustrators try to modify him sitting lying down etc Only one was able to even approximate the original feel of the character C Defended In his article C vs Assembly Language Micro C issue 40 Eric Isaacson raised some interesting issues But his article reminded me of the sort of one handed arguing one hears from a politician trying to gather votes It was by no means a balanced discussion of the merits of C and Assembly lan guages Perhaps this is because Mr Isaacson is somewhat misinformed about C and its capabilities But he does have an ex cellent point when he states All those easily accessed library functions can be very seductive the programmer stops bothering to find the most efficient way to perform a task He then demonstrates this point with several lines of poorly written C He went to great lengths to attempt to prove that C is inherently inefficient What he did prove was that bad C com piles into bad assembler Eric you can
75. throw them away This part is available from Computer Parts Exchange CPX Chatsworth California phone 818 709 4003 CPX also has a facility in New Jersey phone 201 389 8333 Another source for this part is Acetron Dataproducts Van Nuys California phone 818 786 9789 Sympton Solution 2 Full brightness unaffected by the brightness control This indicates a bad resistor location R515 its value is 180K ohms at 1 2 watt Sympton Solution 3 The symptom of the third frequent failure on the 5151 is a horizontal line across the screen This indicates a bad chip location IC401 it is a TDA1170 IC Floppy Disk Drives Sympton Solution Read write fail ures are most often caused by the drive being out of alignment It is not our in tent to teach drive alignment in this ar ticle That kind of instruction is better left for a hands on situation Editor s note Allyn Franklin has been teaching floppy alignment at SOG he ll be back this year to talk about floppies and hard drives Technicians often tell us they throw away bad drives so we ve asked them to toss them our way We ve found that about 35 work perfectly About 50 need only three to five minutes of attention to clean up alignment About 15 need a read write head motor or chip usually a preamp or stepper driver IC Dead PC Or XT Sympton Solution System appears dead There is no display no beep and no error message when power is turned on R
76. tor charges shipping will be added to credit card and C O D orders Prepaid orders over 100 00 use money order or certified check Piease do not send cash Some stems limited lo stock on hand Prices subject to change Reader Service Number 11 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 31 Simulating A Bus A D Conversion Through The Printer Port Okay all you couch potatoes who ve been following Bruce s hardware exploits I know you ve been dreaming of monitoring every thing but the dog but you haven t so much as stuck the soldering iron in the microwave Well here s your chance to show your stuff Break out the solder and warm up your irons this is a full blown watch it on the screen your specialty project First you ll build a bus and then you ll drive it over about 10 feet of ribbon Bet the neighbors ll respect you after they see you do that et ready I m going to show you G how to turn the 8 bit output only port into an input output bus by modifying a 21 parallel printer card Then we ll connect the bus to a nifty 8 bit 11 channel analog to digital con verter A D chip and measure the real world The wiring is simple but the software is tricky because we have to make the printer card look like a microprocessor bus To speed things up I ll exploit some of the amazing in line assembly code abilities of Turbo C Printer Board Modification It will be helpful if you have issue 38 handy Micro C Nov De
77. vmode have fixed values 10 5 1 amp 0 They represent the code for the program that generated the picture its version number and the type of compression that was applied to the picture planes vmode is currently ignored and _ unused is reserved for future expansion hres and vres represent the number of horizontal and vertical dots on the video board nplanes is the number of picture planes bpp is the number of bits per pixel and bpl is the number of bytes to store a horizontal line of the picture x1 y1 and x2 y2 refer to the upper left and lower right corners of the picture For a standard 640x350x16 EGA picture we would get the following hres 640 vres 350 x1 0 y1 0 x2 639 y2 349 nplanes 4 bpp 1 and bpl 80 PC Paintbrush takes these numbers very seriously If you create a graphic file with Paintbrush installed for a HERC board and then reinstall Paintbrush for an EGA board it will no longer recog nize the graphic file That s a bit picky considering that a HERC picture is black and white and an EGA board supports those colors So if you plan to use the pictures that you generate with a commercial graphics program be sure to specify one of the common video boards To enlarge or reduce a picture you only need to change x2 y2 and bpl The easiest way to add colors is to add planes Although the software that I ve written only supports a few of the stand ard configurations you shouldn t have t
78. wandered the show floor for three full days I found that it s often easier to discuss the answer to the age old ques tions see above when exhibitors aren t defending themselves from heavyweight questions Do you supply MS DOS programs on 3 1 2 so I can run them on my Mac Are clones really compatible If I plug this 8088 into the Z80 sock et can I run PC software on my Kaypro Ts this real Copy II PC While the crowds were pretty thin no heavyweight programmers I sidled up to one of those discount booths and pur chased a Copy II PC Deluxe Option Board Of course you re thinking I got it so I could duplicate almost every piece of copy protected software in the office For the record let me state that s a false and malicious thought Shame on you I ve had one of Central Point s ear lier boards for a couple of years and I ve already duplicated almost every piece of copy protected software in the office Companies give me software to review and then they copy protect it to keep me By David Thompson from testing it on different systems Boo In addition to copying the uncopy able this new board was supposed to read write and format 400K and 800K Macintosh disks Macintosh disks The instructions said that all I needed was the board a standard IBM 720K 3 1 2 drive and a clone to plug the whole mess into Sure folks There s more to reading and writing Mac
79. window for menu driven functions 3 allows you to drop out of the program into DOS do what you want then EXIT back to the terminal mode without losing the screen information Til next time Editor s note John s code and the rest of the code in this issue are available on the issue 42 disk 6 postpaid add 2 foreign for postage and the Micro C RBBS 503 382 7643 24hrs 300 1200 2400 8 N 1 Affordable Intelligence TINY EINSTEIN The Expert System Shell e Create your own expert systems in minutes With pulldown menus and windows Context sensitive online help Free example expert systems Tutorial Interactive full screen text editor DOS access from shell Turbo Fast execution Cluster Trace Explain For Diagnosing Simulating Predicting Planning Classifying Training and Monitoring systems Only 49 95 Plus 5 S H Designed amp implemented by Gary Entsminger amp Larry Fogg La ss ACQUIRED INTELLIGENCE P O BOX 2091 DAVIS CA 95617 916 753 4704 Reader Service Number 72 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 71 By Gary Entsminger 1912 Haussler Dr Davis CA 95616 Building Fast AT Clones And Faster Rabbits When Gary told me he was planning to build something I had no idea he was planning something this big about something so small Ah well he car ries it off well ne late Bend summer night in 86 I as sem
80. 0 Boards and other S 100 products TERMS Add 3 00 postage We pay balance Orders under 15 add 75 handling No C O D We accept Visa and MasterCard Texas Res add 6 1 4 Tax Foreign orders except Canada add 20 P amp H Orders over 50 add 85 for insurance board and tries to display it on that adapter If it s invoked with a board name fol lowed by a file name the picture is saved using the specified file name after it s been displayed PCXSHOW EXE the slide show program is in need of some upgrading it was written before the latest im provements to the PCX VGR modules It ll be ready before you see this and will be included with the other files Figure 3 Picture Generated by the PCX EXE test routine Bibliography 1 The IBM Personal Computer XT Technical Reference Manual April 1983 revision Part Number 1502237 e 2 The file EGA ARC which was found somewhere on Compu Serve probably in one of the IBM forums e 3 ZSoft Technical Reference Manual ZSoft Corporation 1950Spectrum Circle Suite A 495 Marietta GA 30067 Tel 404 428 0008 Many thanks to Shannon e 4 A Hercules Primer by Larry Fogg Micro Cornucopia Issue 39 Jan Feb 88 page 26 e 5 Tidbits by Gary Entsminger Micro Cornucopia Issue 39 Jan Feb 88 page 84 e 6 Language Connections by Gary Entsminger Turbo Technix Jan Feb 88 page 136 7 MicroEMACS by Dan Laurence am
81. 00 60 00 RED LION MOTEL PILOT BUTTE MOTOR INN 382 1411 BEST W BTERN RATES 2 20 00 24 00 baa RED LION MOTEL 382 8384 RATES 2 44 00 56 00 BEST WESTERN 382 1515 WOODSTONE INN RATES 2 38 00 48 00 LARA HOUSE B amp B 388 4064 RATES 2 45 00 60 00 Z MT BACHELOR VILLAGE Quick Review of Days and Activities Thursday July 14th the Fun Begins Rafting Short Trip 2 1 2 hrs with 3 miles of Class I Ill rapids Ticket includes BBQ din ner Check in at Pinckney Center COCC by 11 am Thurs July 14 Long Trip All day with Class I IV rapids Ticket includes lunch and BBQ dinner Check in at Pinckney Center COCC Wed afternoon or by 7 am Thurs Intro to Desktop Seminar Seminar covers Scanning Ventura ing and PageMakering Lunch and BBQ are included space limited See page 39 for details Old Fashioned BBQ Located in Shevlin Park great food Friday and Saturday July 15 16 Speakers Seminars amp Workshops Build your own System With plenty of help from Microshpere 8088 based XT 80286 based AT 80386 Contact Cindy at 503 388 1194 to sign up Saturday Night Banquet Keynote Speaker Jim Warren Founder West Coast Computer Faire Price Adults 12 Child 7 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 91 Micro Cornucopia Back Issues Is There A Gap In Your Info Fill in your Back Issues of Micro C today ISSUE 1 8 81 Power Supply RAM Protection Video Wiggle 1 2 PFM PRN 16 p
82. 1988 C CODE FOR THE PC source code of course Bluestreak Plus Communications owe ports programmer s interface terminal emulation 400 CQL Query System SQL retrievals plus windows s e 1 eee ee ee 325 GraphiC 4 1 high resolution DISSPLA style scientific plots in color amp hardcopy 325 Barcode Generator specify Code 39 alphanumeric Interleaved 2 of 5 numeric or UPC 300 NEW Vmem C virtual memory manager least recently used pager dynamic expansion of swap file 250 Aspen Software PC Curses System V compatible extensive documentation SS a nda 1 Sa E 250 Greenleaf Data Windows windows menus data entry interactive form design 250 Vitamin C MacWindows 2 6 ee ee ee ee ee ee ae ee oe e 200 NEW TurboTpX TRIP certified HP PS dot drivers CM fonts LaTpX 2 2 170 Essential resident C TSRify C programs DOS shared libraries 1 tee tee te 165 Essential C Utility Library 400 useful C functions 160 Essential Communications Library C functions for RS 232 based communication systems 160 Greenleaf Communications Library interrupt mode modem control XKON XOFF 150 Greenleaf Functions 296 useful C functions all DOS services oo ws 0 a 150 ee U x like operating system many tools cross development from MS DOS OE oe ae ae 150 Version 2 0 programmer s editor with C like macro language by Magm
83. 1988 modified 64K CP M of the correct version no ZCPR or custom BIOS thank you If you run MOVCPM COM on a different or enhanced CP M the message SYNCRONIZATION ERROR will grace your screen As you may have noticed the message is spelled wrong ad ding insult to injury But it need not defeat you Pile on the enhancements after you have created your 63K CP M Configuring Without CONFIG Once you ve created your 63K CP M you may run the RAMDRIVE COM program in the 256K package to bring up the RAMdisk You must use the RAMINIT COM program as well to format the directory whenever you power up the computer You need not use RAMINIT COM after a reset Files in the RAMdrive will survive a reset as long as you do not run RAMINIT COM Do not use the Kaypro II CONFIG COM program with a 63K CP M It will trash the system tracks You may run the CON FIG83 COM program which comes with the Micro C Pro 8 monitor ROM but you must avoid CONFIG83 COM options which alter the BIOS such as changing the keypad settings You can change the cursor The block cursor installed by pressing the Return key gets high marks for visibility in a field of text But to avoid nasty mistakes erase CONFIG83 COM from your system disks once you ve set it up the way you like If you want your RAMdisk to come up every time you boot CP M install the CBIOSR HEX file in the 256K software pack age using DDT COM as described in the 256K package s
84. 3 5 format PC SIG 1030D East Duane Avenue Sunnyvale CA 94086 Toll free phone order line 800 245 6717 800 222 2996 in California For information or local orders 408 730 9291 SCHEMATIC DRAWINGS PCB Edit creates multi layered PCB s with ease The program includes solder mask and legend ink support plotter and printer output and one of the fastest CAD artwork layout packages for the IBM Features include 1 mil resolution over 20 different pad styles unlimited trace widths plot traces at any angle CGA and EGA support ASCII netlist input text support much more ONLY 99 95 After you have created your circuit board layout send your data files to us and we will make your double sided plated thru holes circuit boards for only 1 00 per square inch in single quanity No set up charges for PCB Edit files 25 00 set up charge for other artwork Silk screening and gold plating available for additional charge provided LOGIC ANALYZER PCB Scem the CAD package for drawing scematics on Big Blue s machines Supports full component libraries rubber banding auto part numbering output to printer or plotter Netlist support for PCB Edit ONLY 99 95 STEPPER LOGATEST 32 channel logic analyzer for the IBM BUILT 399 95 16 bit trigger word 80 nano second sample time BARE BOARD 99 95 STEPPER 3 axis stepper motor controller Plugs into your parallel printer port BUILT
85. 42 July August 1988 two pieces Then you feed those two pieces very precisely one at a time to the RAM Then you supply data and tell it to read Okay that s one added step Not so bad But now let s read our data back First address second address read It s gone It instantly well almost forgot everything we told it Dynamic RAM will remember data for up to 100 ms Maybe Unless you rewrite the data or reread it which interestingly enough rewrites the data back into the cells it goes away Refreshing is a special kind of reread ing So every say 2 ms you do a refresh Right Well yes and no Actually you have to do 128 refreshes every 2 ms Someone has to put an address on the bus and say REFRESH On the PC Jr that someone was the processor On the XT as we ve already mentioned it s the DMA controller Why 128 It turns out that most 64K and 256K dynamics are divided up into 128 groups of cells You can read refresh a whole group with one command Dividing An Address In Half Let s look at how the address is divided in half The LS158 is called an 8 to 4 multiplexer For each two inputs it has one output The output is determined by one of the inputs A select signal called ADDRSEL selects which of the two inputs will be connected to the out put But let s back up a bit The processor or DMA controller puts an address on the bus and punches either XMEMR ex ternal memory read or KMEMW
86. AT 5 IN ADD 10 Digital Research Computers P O BOX 381450 e DUNCANVILLE TX 75138 o 214 225 2309 Call or write for a free catalog on Z 80 or 6809 Single Board Computers SS 50 Boards and other S 100 products TERMS Add 3 00 postage We pay balance Orders under 15 add 75 handling No C O D We accept Visa and MasterCard Texas Res add 6 1 4 Tax Foreign orders except Canada add 20 P amp H Orders over 50 add 85 for insurance ALL SALES SUBJECT TO THE TERMS OF OUR 90 DAY LIMITED WARRANTY FREE COPY UPON REQUEST Reader Service Number 32 82 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 I needed to strip all spaces between the last printable charac ter in a line and the lt CR gt lt LF gt I opened the manual Okay w is white space any amount of white space so if I replace white space followed by lt CR gt lt LF gt with just the lt CR gt lt LF gt I d be set Now back to the top of the file and I can search for three car riage returns in a row and replace them with two Then back up two lines and search for three again After the returns I looked for an symbol at the beginning of a line means it s a Ventura tag just to make sure it was preceded by two sets of lt CR gt lt LF gt If there s only one set then I d add another I used IF THEN for the test Hey they did a Z80 assembly to 8088 assembly translator using a single com mand file Once I d dug through the manual enough to get
87. ATORS Surround amp intergrate your DOS software with The Weiner Shell The high level TSR language e Does telecommunications windows menus and over 130 functions in the background of any application e Supports dBASE files From Gryphon Microproducts 301 384 6868 301 384 7238 BBS Reader Service Number 97 FUTURES86 THE LANGUAGE Variable level extensible rommable lan guage gives complete control Including 80186 88 Simple syntax Easy program ming Compact code Easily optimized for speed or size Interactive debugging facili ties Library source available Investigative FUTURE86 world classs Used in thou sands of applications Prices start at 349 Development Associates 1520 S Lyon Santa Ana CA 92705 714 835 9512 TurboGeometry Library Source amp Manual Turbo Pascal 4 0 C Mac amp Microsoft C Over 150 2 amp 3 dimensional routines including Intersections Transforma tions Equations Hidden Lines Per spective Curves Areas Volumes Clip ping Planes Matrices Vectors Distance Poly Decomp IBM PC amp Comp Mac 99 95 S amp H Visa MC AE DISK SOFTWARE INC 2116 E Arapaho No 487 Richardson TX 75081 214 423 7288 Reader Service Number 80 DEVELOPERS NOW AVAILABLE Sof Tel Inc in their goal to provide innovative Software Solutions now has ready for you two new IBM PC software packages Do you need Modem dialing and interrupt Comm port support Get AUTO
88. ATTERY 75 SWITCHERS 5V 9 5A 12V 3 8A 12V 8A BVISA 12V 2A 12V 4A 5V 6A 12V 2A 12V 1A 0 SVIBA 24V 1 A 12V 6A MISCELLANEOUS Z80 Controller w 8 bit A D Conv 15 95 Nicd Pack 12V 5AH i cocci aaia es 6 50 Joystick 4 Switches 1 Knob 5 50 TEST EQUIPMENT OSCILLOSCOPES TEK 7403N 7A18N 7B50A 60 MHz 695 TEK 455 50 MHz Dual Trace 595 00 ANALYZERS TEK 491 10MHz 40 GHz Nicolet 500A 1 Hz 0 100 KHz 1800 Biomation 805 Waveform Anlyzr 259 00 4500 00 HP1600A 1607A Logic Anlyzr 1000 00 DBASE BOOK OF BUSINESS APPLICATIONS by Michael J Clifford Reg 19 95 NOWoNLy 3 95 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 59 on the day that product was an nounced Wouldn t you especially like it if this support were compatible with existing standards as well and was just as easy to implement easier even than the hardcoded method I humbly submit my method for sup porting variable screen sizes in applica tion programs The techniques used comply with the standards implied by the Enhanced Graphics Adapter Techni cal Manual They will work under any version of MS DOS using any IBM standard card CGA MDA EGA VGA as well as any other that follows the simple rule of keeping its NumColumns variable in the IBM ROM BIOS dictated location and the BottomLine variable in the location used by the EGA ROM BIOS Before I describe this a misclaimer I do not
89. As the first start bit enters the LS322 it gets latched into the first of eight single bit latches As each following bit enters the LS322 the first bit shifts to latch 2 then latch 3 and so on KBDCLK a clock signal generated in the keyboard times these shifts When the first of the start bits shifts into the least significant eighth latch the following happens Although the register s outputs have not officially been enabled output QH does reflect the con tents of latch 8 bit 0 This signal QH clocks through an S74 flip flop and generates both IRQ1 and the register enable input for the LS322 By the time the register enable hits the LS322 the last two bits of data have Performance and versatility For your CP M or MS DOS computer QP M QP M by MICROCode Consulting Fed up with the message BDOS error R O With QP M you ll never lose another file because you changed a diskette QP M offers full CP M 2 2 compatibility with outstanding performance and more commands WITHOUT eating up precious program space Get such features as automatic disk relogging simple drive user selection using either a colon or semi colon 31 user areas drive search path multiple program commandline archive bit maintanence and transparent time date stamping all in the same space as CP M 2 2 Installs from a convenient customization menu no software assembly required Bootable disks available with CBIOS for Kaypro Xerox 8 o
90. CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 Figure 5 Reflection of Ray Off Plane refLinePlane zIn a8 Ray a9 Plane F al0 intersection point on line parameter ali reflection sp a4 a5 a6 a8 a4 a9 a5 ald a9 all aid PointOnLine rdx a4 a4 a8 a5 a9 vDot 1 a0 a0 a7 a5 a8 vDot a0 al a7 a0 fxDivide a0 a9 vTemp0 al10 vScale a4 a8 al0 a9 all aid addi rdx al10 calla vSub mmfm sp a4 a5 a6 rets END OF LISTING a7 a8 a9 al0 ail Line Plane point distance build reflective line here origin jline direction plane normal jldepn 72 1ldepn ipn 72 1depn pnepn 2 1depn pnepn pn zld reflection direction 31d 2 1depn pnepn pn a7 a8 a9 a10 all Figure 6 Reflection of Ray Off Sphere refLineSphere In a8 Line a9 Sphere al0 intersection point on line parameter ail reflection sp a4 a5 a6 a8 a4 a9 a5 move al0 a9 move all ald calla PointOnLine move aid a8 move a5 a9 movi vTempl1 ai0 calla vSub move ald a5 jruc ip 01 END OF LISTING a7 a8 a9 al0 all Line Sphere point distance build reflective line here origin create tangent plane 7normal intersect pt sphere center only need normal continue in line plane intersection of time And while constructing the tangent plane refLineSphere first must calculate the point where the ray intersects
91. CRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 screen Each word consists of a character and an attribute byte Lines are NumColumns words apart where NumColumns is usually 80 but some times 40 and could really be any size up to 65535 depending on the hardware Using this standard as a base allows these high performance video adapters to work with software supporting only CGA or MDA Since most display adapters in the past were either CGA or MDA and since software developers myself in cluded were lazy most programs as sume the presence of one of these cards and that ugly number 25 spread like an unchecked plague across hundreds of thousands of lines of code Now that many people have screens capable of displaying more lines the EGA for example can display 43 lines the VGA 50 the PC Tech 66 the MDS Genius 66 the Moniterm Viking they re happy But wait There is an ugly spectre in the shadows That elusive computer version of 666 The computing world s Number of the Programmers being the machine hogs they are saw this problem And many of them when they got their shiny new EGA card decided to do something about it Since the EGA had a 43 line mode we were treated with a few programs that could work in 25 line mode and 43 line mode Nothing else VGA has now become popular With this popularity comes the expected wave of programs with 25 line 43 line and yes all new made for VGA 50
92. D ONE 1 2 FLOPPY ONE YEAR WARRANTY ON SYSTEM KRREEKKKKKRKEKEKREKKRREKEREEKKRKKRKEKEKEKEKEKKSEZIQS 00 286 286 286 286 286 286 286 286 286 286 286 AT TURBO SYSTEM AT COMPATIBLE MOTHER BOARD WITH BIOS 8 MEG AND 12 MEG SWITCHABLE SPEED 512K RAM INSTALLED UP TO 1024 ON BOARD WA2 HARD DISK FLOPPY DISK CONTROLLER MONOCHROME GRAPHICS VIDEO WITH PRINTER 40 MEG HARD DRIVE AND ONE 1 2 MEG FDD 200 WATT POWER SUPPLY AT CASE AMBER MONITOR KEYBOARD ONE YEAR WARRANTY ON SYSTEM KREKEKKKEKEKEREKEKRKEKEKRKEREKRKKKRKKERERERKKS 695 00 XT CLONE SYSTEMS PLEASE CALL FOR CURRENT PRICE HARD DRIVES FOR XT AND AT ST 225 KIT FOR XT 20 MEG 259 00 ST 238 KIT FOR XT RLL 30 MEG 279 00 ST 251 FOR AT 40 MEG 359 00 MONITORS Color Monitor RGB CGA 255 00 Color Monitor RGB EGA 355 00 Monochrome TTL Green 95 00 Monochrome TTL Amber 105 00 EGA Color Video Card 129 00 CITIZEN PRINTERS MODEL 120D 120 CPS 9 179 00 MODEL 180D 180 CPS 9 199 00 MODEL MSP 15E 160 CPS 15 359 00 MODEL MSP 40 240 CPS 9 319 00 MODEL MSP 45 240 CPS 15 439 00 MODEL MSP 50 300 CPS 9 419 00 MODEL MSP 55 300 CPS 15 499 00 CASCADE ELECTRONICS INC ROUTE 1 BOX 8 RANDOLPH MN 55065 507 645 7997 Please ADD Shipping on all Orders COD Add 3 00 Credit Cards ADD 5 Limited to Stock on Hand Subject to change 76 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 200 word vocabluary of all the major tabloids is available from us for the small fee of
93. Datapak 20 95 FORMAT DUPLICATE 32 Datapak 49 95 GAK Dataher no Disks from over 300 other micros 128 Datapak 149 96 32K Ram Pak 89 95 Finance Pack 49 95 Maths Pack 49 95 ious versions m previou Pocket Spreadsheet 79 95 Upgrades availabe trom p Authorization Spelling Checker 49 95 for only 25 00 Call for Word Processor 49 95 Data Base 59 95 To Order Contact RS232 Lead Comms Link 99 95 soni os XENGSOET 3 00 shipping and handling 3 surcharge on credit card orders 2210 SIXTH ST BERKELEY CA 94710 Sharp s Inc Rt 10 Box 459 paket 41 5 644 9366 Mechanicsville VA 23111 x 804 746 1664 9am 4pm s Reader Service Number 39 36 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 37 UNINTERRUPTABLE POWER SOURCE MICRO SOLUTIONS protects your equipment and your data from power outages and brownouts Our power systems provide the fastest switching speed in the in dustry 2 ms 1 EMI RFI filtering and surge spike protec tion all in one affordable unit 1 year war ranty on all units Available in a size to suit your needs 200 watts 290 00 350 watts 360 00 550 watts 410 00 800 watts 710 00 1000 watts 810 00 Includes shipping to your door in the con tinental U S As specialists in overseas systems we can supply 220 volt units Call or write for details SOFTWARE SPECIAL CT See what qualifies as GREAT SOFTWARE ACT does for people what 1 2 3
94. ICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 95 By Gary Entsminger 1912 Haussler Dr Davis CA 95616 Short Takes C Power Users Guide A C book the Turbo Prolog Users Group and a hint at puzzle results Gary obviously has trouble sticking to one subject t seems C threatens to finally unseat Pascal as the hacker s language of choice Former assembly language programmers who jumped to Turbo Pascal to check out the fuss no doubt think C is a step BACK in the right direction Consequently C also seems to be the book publishers language of choice I see more books to let us in on the tricks of C than most any thing else Most unfortunately aren t that interesting Recently though I stumbled over one C Power User s Guide by Herbert Schildt that takes on some dear subjects pop up and pulldown menus e pop up windows e terminate and stay resident pop ups e language interpreters e the mouse interface e graphics routines e video games e poor man s networks The graphics routines include functions for saving and restoring graphics screens The language interpreter routines include an expression parser and a small BASIC inter preter And in one chapter after detailing the basics of serial port operation Schildt goes on to develop a file transfer program which performs software handshaking Schildt s description in C pseudocode is clear concise send while there are bytes to send
95. Micro C s Issue 42 disk for 6 Microsoft In February Microsoft announced new ver sions of all of their programming languages in cluding C Microsoft Optimizing C 5 1 not only fixes the bugs from version 5 0 but adds OS 2 compatibility and a faster library By the time you read this it should be shipping The powerful Microsoft Editor is included Extensions can be added to the editor by writ ing new functions in C It can handle multiple files and allows the user to run programs in cluding compilers from within it The editor like most of the other utilities has a version which runs under OS 2 and a version which runs under MS DOS Version 5 1 produces faster programs than before Display output has really been im proved the Display benchmark compiled with 5 1 is 30 faster than it was when compiled with 5 0 All of the proposed ANSI standard pre defined macros such as _TIME_ and __DATE_ are available Several pragmas compiler directives are new with 5 1 Most of these control the output of program listings QuickC has undergone a minor revision to version 1 01 which includes the faster 5 1 libraries Unfortunately most of the other 5 1 enhancements the new pragmas and pre defined macros are not available in QuickC The problem I mentioned last issue with a specific Western Digital disk controller has 50 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 been fixed The new QuickC is not compatible with OS 2 Zo
96. No 42 yo 1988 TRE be ae eer Lose your hard drive and you re losing a lot more than 500 You re losing data Finding the defective IC is usually easy if you know what you re looking for It s a lot easier to make sense out of a problem if you know how the circuit works Once we have the system running we may as well observe something with it Ray Tracing Part 2 West Coast Computer Faire Inside PCX Graphics Files Testing Your Product Idea f i i sy a N7 44t0 0 IPS WHAT S UNDER THE HOOD THAT COUNTS CASES amp POWER SUPPLY 150 Watt Power Supply XT 200 Watt Power Supply AT XT Slide Case EIEE XT Flip Top or XT Slide with Lock amp LED AT with Lock amp LED MONITORS EGA CGA Auto Switch VGA EGA CGA Color CGA Color oie bee oe Ea Amber 12 TTL a Green 12 TTL VIDEO CARDS Color Graphics Parallel 256K EGA Graphies Mono Graphics Parallel ATI Graphics Solution Mono Herc Color Emulation on Mono CGA List 299 125 00 ATI Wonder Auto Switch Mono Herc CGA EGA VGA Any monitor Any software Auto conversion Re E List 499 299 00 EGA CGA VGA 640x480 185 00 EXPANSION CARDS Clock Cate usd h ents iodwlain ni Dual Floppy Disk Controller Joysti k oh neo ences ae ea ae tia Gravis Analog Joystick
97. O CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 85 Technical Tips Parallel Problems I have two trivial but useful items for folks doing computer support First A 2 IC 74LS374 will fix most IBM type parallel port boards fried by contact with a serial printer I ve fixed Compags and IBM Monochrome Adapters more times than I d care to admit when a user decides they re a computer genius because they discovered that funny little plug is for a printer Editors s note Even though the funny little plugs look the same for serial and paral lel ports the 5 V parallel port will definitely choke on 12 V of serial Most adapter cards are single layer boards So it s just a matter of breaking out the old IC it s the only 74LS374 on the board blowing the solder pad holes open heat a hole and then blow air through or use a solder sucker and then soldering the new one in Second A convenient dummy parallel printer can be made by grounding the BUSY and PE aka out of paper pins through about 1K Ohms unscientifically determined resistance that s worked on a lot of different machines This can be useful for debugging when you want to exercise a print function but don t want to waste the time ribbon or paper The other use is with accounting packages that insist on running reams of detail before doing the close out you need in MBA school I learned how to get to the bottom line fast Stick the dummy printer in and fool
98. O line makes sure that line is low when it s tri stated The reset line must be low for three clock cycles after power up to put the chip in a known state see the reset function in Listing 1 bus The high byte is transferred on the first clock cycle and the low byte on the second If you actually connect this to a processor bus connect address line 1 in stead of 0 to the register select line This way the processor will think it s writing two successive memory locations when it s actually making two writes to one location which is what we want The functions digital_data and con version in Listing 1 demonstrate how to do the bus reads and writes a Ger use it uhere risestall tines s are critical A AlL inputs are TTL compatible except for the clock which is CMOS AUTO FEED has a pull up on its output so it uorks OK You can do a test conversion on pin 28 A1 Tes saua 4a the reference voita gt Iran out of output lines froa the printer port so T had to simulate one see text gt The resin keepe MATAO pulled to 0 70 shen tis biw is ti statad o Simulating A Bus This A D is designed to be directly interfaced to a microprocessor bus We ve got the data bus coordinated with our new printer bus but we need to add control lines The printer card has four more output lines which connect to the read write pin to tell the chip whether it s being read from or written to the register select
99. POKEB either call movmem peekb amp pokeb or cga_movmem cga_peekb Q amp cga_pokeb depending on the driver module you re using void vgr_fill int x int y int color void vgr_line int x1l int yl int x2 int y2 int color void vgr_rectangle int x1l int yl int x2 int y2 int color void vgr_point int x2 int y2 int color ver_line _rectangle and _fill do what they sound like vgr point does one of two things If color is 1 the values x2 y2 are copied to the local static values x1 y1 If color is not 1 vger_point calls vgr lineQ then copies x2 y2 to x1 y1 This makes it possible to draw lines between a series of points int vgr_get_board void int vgr_mode char mode ver_get_board tries to figure out what kind of video graphics board is in use The return value is one of TYPE UNKNOWN TYPE_EGA TYPE CGA TYPE MDA or TYPE_HERC These values are defined in vgr h vgr_mode calls the BIOS set graphic mode function INT 0x10 AH 0 See ref 2 page A 46 for more info on that BIOS call PCXPIC pex_init_pic int hres int vres int nplanes void pex_free pic PCXPIC pic void pex_invert pic PCXPIC pic pcx_init_pic dynamically allocates space for a PCXPIC structure and returns a pointer to it hres amp vres are the number of dots horizontally and vertical ly nplanes is the number of planes in the picture It dynamically allocates arrays returning pointer
100. Pe tee oadc exe t CaS TELTE adc obj driver bj H l obj files depend on c files In the case of ado c wa o Reg ister by July 1 st need to invoke the Cie mead with the neni TEN option a7 S ade obj adeo Se See you there oe tec c B ade c Te detver obj driver e tec e att TCLIB driver c At SOG a Desktop Publishing Seminar as This is a one day hands on seminar that should give you a good idea what it takes to get into PC desktop publishing in a big way or a small way We ll show you how Publisher s Paintbrush works with a scanner to digitize and edit pixel im ages You ll see Designer in action This is a vector drawing package so you ll get maximum quality from your laser printer or typesetter Especially when you re resizing an image substantially But working with vectors is quite different from working with pixels and there ll be times when the ease of working with Paintbrush will make it the best choice We ll talk about text editors covering some of the reasons you would and wouldn t want to use a formatting text editor like Wordstar or Wordperfect for creating your original text files vs using straight ASCII We ll talk about the little things that make a big difference in final quality Typesetters vs laser printers Screened photos vs scanned photos Quality printing vs quick printing It s quite a list Finally we ll take the images and the text that we ve created right befor
101. RNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 order to get the routine to tinker with the palette registers I didn t bother much with the palette for a number of reasons the first one being that the palette is automatically set each time a graphics mode is selected another being that Ven tura Publisher ignores it Compressing A Plane When in a file each plane in the pic ture is compressed The compression is very simple designed simply to take ad vantage of the fact that a byte value will often repeat The read byte algorithm works like this Read a byte If the two high order bits are not set byte amp OxcO Oxc0 then return the byte If the two high order bits are set byte amp Oxc0 Oxc0 then the remaining bits represent a repeat count count byte amp 0x3f and the next byte is the value that repeats As such the repeat count can never be greater than Ox3f or 63 The write byte algorithm is obviously the opposite operation The Software Originally what I wanted to do was ORES copy schematics into Ventura I sat in front of the system for many sleepless nights decoding DXF files only to find in the end that the GEM files Ventura creates from the DXF files don t properly scale text To make a long story short I wrote most of a DXF to PCX converter then balking at the prospect of having to write a font editor create fonts and write the code to scale them scrapped the idea it was l
102. S DOS it doesn t work in all of them Some ver sions store zero in the environment pointer effectively hiding where COM MAND COM keeps the global environ ment Now what At this point we re down to brute force By carefully examining the MS DOS memory map I ve found that ver sions of MS DOS which zero the en vironment pointer keep the environ ment in the memory block immediately following COMMAND COM Since we know the format of MS DOS memory control blocks see issue 41 and can leapfrog through the chain of them we can find the global environment GLOBENV C This issue s module works with MS DOS versions 2 1 through 3 30 in clusive Named GLOBENV C it s a stand alone unit which you can link with programs so that they can manipu late the global environment I have suc cessfully compiled and used it with Microsoft Borland and Zortech Datalight compilers Scott s code is available on the Micro C RBBS or on the Issue 42 disk GLOBENV defines three public func tions getgenv putgenv and del genv The first three retrieve store and delete variable definitions from the global environment Findgenv is an in ternal function which is called by the first invocation of any of the public functions It locates the global environ ment using the methods listed above You should be able to understand how the module works by following the comments Wrap Up Well tha
103. SCII files double triple and quadruple spaces between words and whole paragraphs indented by whatever happened to be lying around I started manually deleting spaces removing carriage returns locating tags An hour later I realized that the Faire would be history before I finished this 72K file And there were more many more files coming Fortunately Vedit has an incredibly powerful command mode It s so powerful and complex that I hadn t used more than 1 of it Best of all its command mode accepts whole files of instructions C like in their power brevity and opacity C FULL COMPILER not a preprocessor Complete software development system a Selectable AT amp T C ANSI C K amp R C m Based on proven Oregon Software technology m Generates extremely fast compact code Comprehensive error checking Backed by responsive support engineers m Strongly typed language DATA ABSTRACTION FACILITY classes w Operator overloading m Information hiding sharing m Constructors destructors VE S want top performance s atan affordable price To order or for more information call 1 800 874 8501 6915 SW MACADAM SUITE 200 PORTLAND OR 97219 BZ OREGON i SOFTWARE X Professional Products for Software Development Q R Reader Service Number 85 New from MSC 99 99 NanoLISP A Common LISP Interpreter for MS DOS NanoLISP contains a large useful subset of the Common LISP standar
104. SIMM 1Mbit 51258 41256 41256 41256 41256 41256 41264 E 27C1000 128kx8 200 ns 27C512 64Kx8 200 ns 27256 32Kx8 250 ns 27128 16Kx8 250 ns STATIC RAM 43256L 12 32Kx8 120 ns 6264LP 12 8kx8 120 ns 1048Kx8 1048Kx1 256Kx1 256Kx1 256Kx1 256Kx1 256Kx1 256Kx1 100 ns 100 ns 60 ns 80 ns 100 ns 120 ns 150 ns e v N u Qa lt x em O a D Q a lem Ww r e O x i tT wo IBM PC XT Compaq Portable amp Plus hp Vectra OPEN 61 2 DAYS 7 30 am 10 pm SHIP VIA FED EX ON SAT MasterCard VISA or UPS CASH COD Factory New Prime Parts uPoo MICROPROCESSORS UNLIMITED INC eoria Ave BEGGS OK 74421 918 267 4961 No minimum order Please note that prices are subject to change Shipping amp insurance extra amp up to 1 for packing materials Orders received by 9 PM CST can usually be delivered the next morning via Federal Express Standard Air 6 00 or guaranteed next day Priority One 10 25 SAT DELIVERY INCLUDED ON FED EX ORDERS RECEIVED BY Th Std Air 6 3 ib Fr P 1 10 25 1 ib Reader Service Number 37 masters Following these simple steps will decrease the chances of someone using your ideas and increase your chances of winning any possible litigation that might develop Alpha Release We will refer to the first release of your product as the alpha release what would we have done without the Greeks This is the first working release that you wi
105. SSUE 34 2 87 SOLD OUT ISSUE 35 4 87 SOLD OUT ISSUE 36 6 87 Build A Midi Interface For Your PC Designing A Database Part 2 Interrupts On The PC Hacker s View of MS DOS Vs 3 X Digita To Analog Conversion A Designer s View 96 pages ISSUE 37 9 87 Desktop Publishing On A PC Build Your Own Hi Res Graphics Scanner For 6 Part 1 Designing A Database Part 3 Controlling AC Power From Your PC Expanded Memory On The PC XT AT Uninterruptable Power Supply For RAM Disks 96 pages To Order Phone Mail PO Box 223 United States Issues 1 34 Issues 35 current Canada amp Mexico All issues All Issues 1 800 888 8087 Bend Oregon 97709 Foreign air mail ISSUE 38 11 87 Parallel Processing Laser Printers Typesetters And Page Definition Languages Magic In The Real World Build A Graphics Scanner For 6 Part 2 Writing A Resident Program Extractor In C 96 pages ISSUE 39 1 88 PC Graphics Drawing The Mandelbrot And Julia Sets Desktop Graphics Designing A PC Work station Board Around the TMS 3410 96 pages ISSUE 40 3 88 The Great C Issue 11 C Compilers Writing A Simple Parser In C C An Object Oriented C Source Level Debugger For Turbo C 96 pages ISSUE 41 5 88 Artificial Intelligence 3 D Graphics Neural Networks Logic Of Programming Languages Applying Information Theory 96 pages 3 00 each ppd 3 95 each pp
106. Service Number 60 CANON 80 COLUMN PRINTER 29 95 ORIGINALLY MANUFACTURED FOR THE PC JR BUT WITH OPTIONAL CONNECTOR WILL WORK WITH PC XT OR AT REQUIRES SERIAL I O THIS THERMAL PRINTER IS QUIET AND USES EASY TO GET 8 IN ROLLS OF PAPER 50C P S UPPER AND LOWER CASE PLUS GRAPHICS ORIGINAL LIST PRICE 199 00 ADD 3 00 FOR PC XT CONNECTOR ADD 5 00 UPS THE NEW ZRT 80 CRT TERMINAL BOARD A LOW COST 2 80 BASED SINGLE BOARD THAT ONLY NEEDS AN ASCII KEYBOARD POWER SUPPLY AND VIDEO MONITOR TO MAKE A COMPLETE CRT TERMINAL USE AS A COMPUTER CONSOLE OR WITH A MODEM FOR USE WITH ANY OF THE PHONE LINE COMPUTER SERVICES _ FEATURES Uses a Z80A and 6845 CRT Controller for powerful video capabilities RS232 at 16 BAUD Rates from 75 to 19 200 24 x 80 standard format 60 Hz Optional formats from 24 x 80 50 Hz to 64 lines x 96 characters 60 Hz Higher density formats require up to 3 additional 2K x 8 6116 RAMS Uses N S INS 8250 BAUD Rate Gen and USART combo IC 3 Terminal Emulation Modes which are Dip Switch selectable These include the LSI ADM3A the Heath H 19 and the Beehive Composite or Split Video Any polarity of video or sync A amp T 8 9 SS ra pe COMPLETE KIT 2K VIDEO RAM OUR BEST SELLER Inverse Video Capability Small Size 6 5 x 9 inches Upper amp lower case with descenders 7 x 9 Character Matrix Requires Par ASCII keyboard FOR 8 IN SOURCE DISK OR PC XT FORM
107. TOP DRIVE m CLEARWATER FLORIDA 34624 613 531 5464 Reader Service Number 102 Want to Throw Out your U P S Log Book Now You Can Here s what EASY SHIP can do for you Automatic U P S Shipping to all of U S amp Canada Fast Easy Multiple Shipments with All Options U P S Approved Shipping Labels amp C O D tags Access to your ASCII Customer Data File U P S Approved Reports and Manifest Summary Approved Nationally by United Parcel Service NO MORE MANUAL LOGGING And more For all IBM PC AT OS 2 Systems Only 365 3 S H Stat Supply Company 20214 Brondesbury Katy TX 77450 800 666 4567 or 713 492 1931 CBASIC CB80 CB86 USERS Convert your Cbasic and Cbasic compiler programs into C with MB86 MB86 supports Access Manager Display Manager and allows your new C programs to use existing CB86 data files MB86 breaks CB86 file size and record number limits and enables network support MB86 enhan ces the Chasic language with new features as well as fixing many old CB86 problems Versions of MB86 are available for Microsoft C Turbo C Aztec C and Microport Unix Call orwrite for more information We also carry a complete line of enhancements for CB86 and Pascal MT Minnow Bear Computers P O Box 2233 Station A Champaign IL 61820 8233 217 344 1113 Reader Service Number 83 OPT TECH SORT MERGE Extremely fast Sort Merge Select utility Run as an MS DOS command or CALL as a
108. We Stock The e For motors rated 1 7 12 0 Parts And SORI Isolation EA upio i Hardware e solatio a CA Control De M061 FD02 forward reverse step a int 1 4 Shaft rate stop a 35 oz wou e Industry standard 22 pin edge card connector 29 95 Need torque y 2 1A 5VDC AUTOMATION CENTER Use your computer to provide automation 8 seperate driver ports per card 8 TTL Cmos inputs 1 user defined sense switch e 6 24 VDC 4 Amps driver max current 29 95 REPLACEMENT WALL TRANSFORMERS 45 753 Universal Out Put 8 40 3 volt 4 5 volt 6 volt 7 5 volt 9 volt 12 volt 500ma DC 45 773 16 volt 1 1A AC 8 40 E 54749 4 5 volt 265ma DC 2 49 WP 410608 8 volt 750ma AC 2 49 YS 4510 Nicad Charger 1 5 Volt 400ma DC 2 49 Lasers gt MW Laser Tube 89 95 Power Supply Kit I5VAC 69 95 Power Supply wired 2VDO 119 95 EMW Laser Tube 119 95 united cis tion 30 PIECE Power Supply Bat Pwrd 99 95 prods CK PIONS 7 MW Laser Tube 149 95 SCREWDRIVER BIT SET Power Supply 22 VDC 119 95 DISTRIBUTORS OF ELECTRONICS SINCE 1968 These lasers are brand new and guaranteed to have a cosmetic detect or not meet manutactures full specifications All are tested in our lab to insure vour satistaction 1123 VALLEY STREET SEATTLE WA 98109 4425 Includes PHONE FAX
109. WindsorPOST ROM not much of the system needs to be run ning The WindsorPOST tests include the 8088 Microprocessor first 16K of RAM 8237 DMA Controller 8259 Interrupt Controller 8253 Timer Counter 8255 PPI Read and Display Switch settings Cassette Relay PC Only speaker and related circuitry the IBM PC ROM full system RAM to 704K plus video at By Dan Evans with Don Doerr National Advancement Corp 17985 Sky Park Circle Ste E Irvine CA 92714 tributes and RAM on the Monochrome or Color Monitor Adapter We received one of the first WindsorPOST units about a year ago and have used it to locate failures on system boards video display adapters and memory expansion units Our graduates tell us they can isolate about 70 of all system board failures to the chip with the WindsorPOST module All without the use of an oscilloscope or logic probe Another fifteen percent 15 of failures can be attributed to the clock cir cuit Non Maskable Interrupt NMI cir cuit or a Data Address Line failure These problems can often be isolated with an oscilloscope via the following 1 Jumper pin 10 to pin 20 on the DMA Controller location U35 on PC U28 on XT and turn on the system If this solves the problem replace the DMA Controller 2 Check for a 4 77 MHz clock on pin 8 of the clock chip location U11 on PC U1 on XT If there s no clock check the clock chip and the crystal 3 Check for 4 77 MHz clock a
110. a Software 140 Turbo G Graphics Library all popular adapters hidden line removal 135 American Software Resident C TSRify C programs Si tas Seas A Me IG Se Se Sah ee dh ay wa 130 PC Curses Package full System V menu and data entry examples 120 CBTree B tree ISAM driver multiple variable length keys 5 7 ee eee eee 115 Minix Operating System U x like operating system includes manual 105 A IP A MU MIT TCP IP implementation for PCs pa aie Te an Sd NSO ORY es Seem Uk 100 ibrary amp ISAM Driver file system utilities by Softfocus 2 100 The Profiler program uy e profile tool s i soin a a oe ute ae a a ae ae Sy wae BE a 100 Entelekon C Function Library screen grap ics keyboard string printer ete 100 Entelekon Power Windows mi enus overlays messages alarms file handling ete 100 Wendin Operating System onstruction Kit or PCNX PCVMS O S Shells 2 95 C Windows Toolkit pop up pull down spreadsheet CGA POA ercules oroe urm ee ee oo OBO Professional C Windows windows and keyboard functions E ee EE 1 0 JATE Async Terminal Emulator includes file transfer and menu subsystem _ TE E ee ok 80 MultiDOS Plus DOS based multitasking intertask messaging semaphores 80 WKS Library C program interface to Lotus 1 2 3 program amp files 2 22 80 Professional C Windows l
111. ack at it again I ve been stocking up in preparation for my latest Turkish trip and my bedroom looks like a sporting goods store Having the tent down and bagged up helps but there s still that stack of orange life jackets in the corner And the Therma Rest mattress rolled up next to the six rolls of Ektachrome 200 The bed was banished to the living room weeks ago Now if my new fiberglass shaft paddles would just show up I leave in four days and I m starting to get anxious And as Dean Klein and Earl Hinrichs have both told me I don t want to be up the creek without a Those guys They re also the ones who sent a letter to me one Thanksgiving when I was living in Ankara saying that was the only time of year they thought about me Right around dinner time as a matter of fact Just as they were carv ing up the A note added Monday morning the pad dles have arrived Hooray Now I can start figuring how to pack them I received an updated letter today from Rich one of my partners in crime who is al ready in Turkey Along with asking me to pick up a pole for his tent from REI he informed me that both of the other two crew members he has recruited are journalists so is Rich Looks like we ll be fighting over the National Geographic credits By the time this gets printed the trip will be over or aborted Look forward to an account 56 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 of our hopeful
112. agate 20 MB ST 225 compile 895 Seagate 30 MB ST 238 Seagate 40 MB ST 251 395 Communications Laptops Micropolis 71MB Hard Disk 695 Sharp 4051 ccsecseeee 795 Seagate 80 MB ST 4096 750 1200 Baud internal 95 NEC EL enon 1685 2400 Baud internal 185 NEC EL HD 9495 Floppy Drives 1200 Baud external w cable 99 0007 00 O CUTTUTTTUNTY 2400 Baud external w cable 235 Software Fujitsu 360K 5 25 79 PC FAX card amp software 415 Fujitsu 1 2 MB 5 25 99 Borland Turbo C 79 Fujitsu 720K 3 50 115 Accessories Borland Turbo Pascal 69 Fujitsu 1 44 MB 3 50 ATE 145 BO Mose Vipa Mi eeun 115 ae alin Basic ae Floppy drives come with mounts M 8 Logitech mouse Gg eee rete Ope Kraft IBM Apple Joystick 25 Borland Sidekick 49 Citizen Printers Microsoft Works 149 Microsoft Windows v2 03 69 180 D 180 cps 9 pin 189 Microsoft DOS 3 21 69 MSP 40 260 cps 9 pin 339 DreamTech Microsoft DOS 3 30 uu 99 MSP 45 wide carriage 489 5175 Moorpark Avenue Norton Utilities Advanced 89 Tribute 124 200 cps 24 pin 545 San Jose CA 95129 Norton Commander 45 Tribute 224 wide carriage 689 Open Monday Saturday Stella Business Graphics II 99 Premiere 35 dais
113. ages ISSUE 2 10 81 Parallel Print Driver Drive Motor Control Shugart Jumpers Program Storage Above PFM 1 2 PFM PRN 16 pages ISSUE 12 81 4 MHz Mods Configuring Modem 7 Safer Formatter Reverse Video Cursor FORTHwords Begins 16 pages ISSUE 4 2 82 Keyboard Translation More 4 MHz Mods Modems Lync and S10s Undoing CP M ERASE Keyboard Encoder 20 pages ISSUE 5 4 82 Word Processing Two Great Spelis Two Text Editors Double Density Review Scribble A Formatter 20 pages ISSUE 6 6 82 BBI EPROM Programmer Customize Your Chars Double Density Update Terminal in FORTH 24 pages ISSUE 7 8 82 6 Reviews Of C Adding 6K Of RAM Viewing 50 Hz On Your Own Begins 24 pages ISSUE 8 10 82 SOLD OUT ISSUE 9 12 82 BBI EPROM Program Relocating Your CP M Serial Print Driver Big Board Fixes Bringing Up WordStar Cheap RAM Disk 32 pages ISSUE 10 2 83 SOLD OUT ISSUE 11 4 83 SOLD OUT ISSUE 12 6 83 256K for BBI Bringing Up BBII dBase Il Look at WordStar Double Sided Drives for BBI Packet Radio 5 MHz for Kaypro 40 pages ISSUE 13 8 83 CP M Disk Directory More 256K for BBI Mini Front Panel Cheap Fast Modem Nevada COBOL Review BBI Printer Interface Kaypro Reverse Video Mod 44 pages ISSUE 14 10 83 BBH Installation The Perfect Terminal interface To Electronic Typewriter BBI Video Size Video Jitter Fix Slicer Column Begins Kaypro Color Gra
114. allel chip s port B bit 1 in an S08 The result is buf fered through the open collector 75477 to drive the XT s speaker Also Port B bit 0 provides a gate for channel 2 So this bit must be high before the channel will count Since square waves have an irritating rasp there s a low pass filter a resistor capacitor network which blocks the high frequency associated with the rise and fall of a square wave which combined with the inductance of the speaker turns the square wave into a sorta sine wave Much gentler on the ears Interrupts The 8259 Interrupt Controller accepts eight hardware Interrupt Requests IRQ2 IRQ7 come from the expansion bus and deal with disk drives printers and serial ports IRQO sees the time of day clock ticks from channel 0 of the 8253 Timer The 8259 s INT output goes directly to the processors Interrupt Request INTR input The 8088 responds through its status outputs and the bus controller with an Interrupt Acknowledge INTA In response to a second INTA the 8259 releases a pointer to the appropriate interrupt handler vector through its DO D7 pins These data pins connect to the external data bus The last request IRQ1 comes from the keyboard Keyboard Interface The scan code from a keystroke comes into the system board as a stream of eight serial data bits with two start bits An LS322 shift register takes care of con verting that serial stream into a parallel byte
115. an I do to keep my drive from failing Use an autopark program Leave your system on Use a program that parks the heads after 30 seconds You can have a power line spike that comes through causing the head to write over 10 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 a FAT file Does a spiral write Spiral write Drives would sometimes start writ ing wherever the head was during a brown out Now there s circuitry to prevent that but you should still park the heads The spindle motors aren t a problem Heat s not a problem when you let them run forever You have most of the problems when you turn the system on and off Of course if you leave it running you have to watch the vents so the system can cool and you have to dust it out so it can breath Keep your computer in a clean en vironment otherwise the filter on the hard drive will clog especially if you have a lot of smokers Smoking is really bad around computers What else contributes to drive problems It s not what people are doing it s poorly manufactured drives We see very few drives that are actually blown up Most problems we see are with the 225 the stepper circuitry You start worrying about your Seagates when you hear the clicking noise when the head steps out On boot the head steps in increments of eight tracks watching for the data burst on track 1 If it doesn t find it it keeps going and burns up the step
116. ance their heads floating on air just above the disk surface At least that s what they re supposed to be doing I got out the old Tektronix 547 oscil loscope and looked at the data coming from the heads on a standard floppy drive You talk about gibberish this stuff was little better than static The fact that the drive was reading CP M files had nothing to do with it Really it didn t Anyway if you saw the kind of junk a drive gets when reading a perfectly good disk you d realize just how easily a drive can get confused when things deteriorate A Magnetic History Four score and 2 000 eons ago when man was first discovering tools a large club Borland s Graphics Toolbox he kept data on magnetic tape giant spools of magnetic tape Unfortunately mag netic tape was susceptible to magnetic fields surprise and those magnetic fields included the information written onto the magnetic tape even bigger surprise So even though the tape was care fully stored in a dust free humidity controlled flux free tiger free every thing but rent free cave data written on part of the tape would migrate to the tape surfaces pressed tightly above and below it Which explains why we have so little data from that period Sometime after the Pleistocene era scientists discovered they could stop the migration of data by writing the stuff onto disks Later native worshippers of high tech dumpboxes were credite
117. and will write about them if they work well A growing number of us own large screens and we re looking for software that supports them Why do you think we bought big screens in the first place A partial list by the way of programs that I know to support large screens at least up to 66 x 80 is Brief 2 0 WordStar 4 0 WordPerfect 4 2 Turbo Pascal 3 02 use patch in Fig 2 Some other programs work in large screen modes but only for a selected few cards i e Microsoft WORD Good Luck and Happy Program ming See you on the river COMING SOON MASM 5 1 and The Joy of CodeView lf You Don t Have WindowDOS 2 0 You re Wasting Time When Baba Ram Dass said Be here now remember designers of hard disk utilities should have paid heed A powerful manager like XTREE can track files and subdirectories and execute DOS commands but it isn t mem ory resident Handy pop up DOS commanders like PopDOS may be here now but they lack the power of a full fledged disk manager After much meditation the developers of WindowDOS 2 0 have come up with the best answer yet to the guru s paradox Until now the closest thing to a real RAM resident disk manager was version 1 0 of WindowDOS lf offered a full screen pop up menu and could rename copy and delete files But it couldn t move files format disks or rename subdirectories which XTREE can Now version 2 0 is here and its a winner Its RAM resident u
118. anoid and switched back to the standard old Western Digital 1002 WA2 or whatever it is that big ugly slow controller that whatever faults it has is fully com patible with OS 2 OMTI is rumored to be making a new version of their AT controller and Western Digital has promised a prototype of their new RLL AT control ler to Dean But in the meantime I m stuck with 20 Megs on a 30 Meg drive And that s just one example of what s been happening to people all over the country What s my advice I won t give any pitches about brands or the like here I ll just say Be careful And get a guaran tee It s not a happy day when you find out that your two grand is down the tubes just because some engineer cut a corner somewhere on the design of your motherboard RLL Drives And Controllers Talk of RLL brings me to the subject of the reliability factor of RLL drives I have heard rumors that others writing in this issue will attempt to badmouth RLL technology so I thought I should put in my opinion too Like I ve said so many times before Everyone s en titled to my opinion When RLL drives were first released I thought they were too good to be true After all you can t get vodka from a water buffalo in Des Moines geez I love making up sayings I was kind of like the guys who thought that Orbel and Wilver Wright were doomed to failure If God had meant 611 track drives to hav
119. arren founder of the West Coast Computer Faire and wearer of the skates will be joining us in Bend this summer for SOG VII You too can join him for rafting desktop publishing info sessions on how to ser vice drives and systems AI C SCSI the latest from Intel compiler writers a technical book author and of course much much more Sign up for the Saturday evening banquet and you ll hear Jim ask the burning question When are we going to do something useful with microcomputers Don t wait to send in your registration We re look ing forward to seeing you in Bend July 14 16 for what s going to be the biggest most informative most laid back Semi Official Get together SOG ever Held again at the Central Oregon Community College campus Last year s attendees told us they d gotten ten times as much out of SOG as they got out of those 300 con ferences their employers were sending them to At SOG they not only learned much more they and their families enjoyed it immensely Added Attractions During SOG Bend will be hosting the Cascade Cy cling Classic The Classic has been on the bicycling tour for many years and attracts the top professional teams On Sunday July 17 they ll be winding up the competi tion with a criterium in downtown Bend In addition to the competition there ll be brunches beer gardens concessions the works It s a great way to relax after all the mental strain of white water
120. ations Check the SOG registration info in this issue for a list of our recommendations Bend has some 300 new motel rooms since last summer You can tent or trailer camp at Tumalo State Park it has solar heated showers They don t accept reservations so your best bet is to arrive around noon and get a spot as someone leaves By 3 p m it s usually full The park is in the community of Tumalo just northwest of Bend Or you can sleep in your car trailer or motor home in the COCC campus parking lot If you re flying in commercial you can come as far as Red mond Oregon and catch a shuttle into Bend or rent a car at the airport Or you can save money by flying into Portland and renting a car there The drive from Portland is about 3 hours The scenery is great Flying your own plane You can join the SOG fly in at the Bend Airport Call Bill Davidson at PC Tech 612 345 4555 for information on the fly in The Bend FBO will have a car for par ticipants Are RAM Prices On The Up And Up If you ve purchased a system in the recent past you ve probably been surprised by the price for the RAM During the third week in April for instance the price of a 150ns 256K dynamic RAM rose from 6 50 per piece to 9 50 Twelve months ago they were 2 That means that memory is ap proaching 360 for a meg up a bit from 72 per meg a year ago What s causing this I don t know for sure but I ll let you in on the facts I v
121. atitude of 32 000 U S cities and 6 000 state boundary points 35 The World Digitized 100 000 longitude latitude of world country boundaries Odie ee Fie G2 RO Bed 30 KST Fonts 13 200 characters in 139 mixed fonts specify TeX or bitmap format 30 USNO Floppy Almanac high precision moon sun planet amp star e She ah it e urana e ks LU NBS Hershey Fonts 1 377 stroke characters in 14 fonts States ae wah N MG 15 U S Map 15 701 points of state boundaries Ghd Sts Seas ae SPS 15 The Austin Code Works Voici 512 2 258 0785 11100 Leafwood Lane acwlinfoQuunet uu net BBS 512 258 8881 Austin Texas 78750 8409 USA Reader Service Number 04 FidoNet 1 382 12 Free shipping on prepaid orders For delivery in Texas add 7 MasterCard VISA By Laine Stump Redhouse Press Merkez PK 142 34432 Sirkeci Istanbul Turkey Rafting And Large Screens Carrying It Off When You re Up In The Air Laine packs up the tent and prepares to return to Turkey for white water rafting Unbeknownst to the editors he also discusses RLL hard drives OS 2 and large screens Anything to make a splash I suppose he scenery is changing once again Last night I finally tore down the free stand ing dome tent in my bedroom I had set it up last Saturday after I bought it from REI in the Twin Cities but gave in and dis mantled it after calling Pan Am to reconfirm my reservation for next Thursday That s right I m b
122. aven t yet discussed PB2 was originally intended to disable the keyboard by zapping the serial data stream before it got to the LS322 But it s not implemented on the XT so you can use this bit for your own hardware projects PB3 controls which 4 out of the 8 sys tem configuration switches SW 1 the system is reading via the 8255 s pins PCO PC3 When PB3 is low the system reads switches 1 4 When it s high the system can read 5 8 Of course the switches are read right after power up or a reset and then ignored so PB3 is avail able for any other system control tasks e g speed selection after the initial boot PB6 feeds a 7407 hex buffer whose output is tied to KBDCLK A low on the open collector output of the 7407 ensures that nothing connected to it will be able to go high Since the output of the 7407 connects to KBDCLK a low on PB6 shorts the KBDCLK line to ground Set ting PB6 high allows KBDCLK to reach the shift register So making PB6 low does a very nice job of shutting off the keyboard RAM Random access memory can be very simple or very complex Static RAM is very simple You give it an address any address data and tell it to read Later assuming you haven t turned the power off you can give it the same address and i ll give you back the same data Unfortunately there is no static RAM in an XT Dynamic RAM is not very simple First you have to divide the address into 30 MICRO CORNUCOPIA
123. ber 88 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 47 void ega_set_palette char reg char red char green char blue Sets one of the 16 EGA palette registers reg can have a value of from 0 to 15 red green and blue set the inten sities for each color gun Values range from 0 to 3 int herc_set_page int page The HERC driver will default to page 0 but it will let you select either of the pages int pex_init void ega_init void ega_init void herc_ init void int VGR_HRES VGR_VRES VGR_NCOLORS VGR_NBPL bytes per line The _init routines initialize all static local variables allocate space if it hasn t been allocated by a previous _init call and tell the VGR module to use the module that was INITed The VGR module among other things holds the four ints shown above The HERC and EGA modules always set these values since they re constants The PCX module will set them only if pcx_cpic is not null therefore pointing to a valid PCXPIC pic ture The CGA module sets them after a VGR_MODEO call The _init functions each return OK or ERROR with ERROR usually resulting from an out of memory condition int VGR_MODE int m Once the VGR module has been set up using the appropriate _init you must set the mode Since the _init call set up the array of pointers to functions in the VGR module you can use the defined macros in vgr h VGR_MODE is one of those macros m must be on
124. bled my first XT clone and wrote about it in the December 86 Fast And Cheap issue of Micro C 33 That bare bones clone cost me about 800 with 2 floppies 256K RAM serial port parallel port Hercules compatible graphics card and monitor I was tickled that so much power was so cheap and still am as a matter of fact In the two years or so since I ve learned more ways to use my clone and more about it And with only a few well calculated fair priced Id say upgrades a 20 megabyte Seagate ST225 hard drive a faster main board PC Tech X16 80186 CPU and a cosmetic ad dition an EGA adapter and monitor it s served me well And yet I m thinking about moving up a computing notch Consider my arguments First I depend more on larger programs I never thought I d succumb but I m facing it a few of those BIG programs are niftier than a night heron in a sunset I m computing better even programming better thanks to some fairly major productions like Paradox Super Calc Statgraphics and PROLOG I ve also gotten into the very addic tive habit of suspending one program to run another one But this kind of pleasure takes memory 640K hasn t felt like quite enough for several months now The West Coast Computer Faire So I was in the mood and heading west I met Dave and the Boys at the West Coast Com puter Faire in San Francisco There I saw and heard the flair and scream of flying ATs an
125. bout The Micro Technical Journal is it hasn t offended anyone I ve nosed around for something better slightly offensive by asking some of our regular writers what they thought Bruce Eckel feels our readers are cheap Of course he doesn t really mean that because that s more than slightly of fensive And he s a reader too What he really means is that we know a bargain when we see it and we ll risk life savings and limb to get it For us happiness is making our way through the dumpsters of life and coming away with a real treasure A group at SOG VI figured they could hand a Micro C reader any computer ever manufactured and by the end of the day he d be doing something useful with it Heck that s bet ter than DEC could do with the Rainbow Compuview s Vedit Twas the day before the Faire and all through the office not a creature was stirring except me I was working on a solid case of memory block trying to get everything together for the booth When what should my hypertense ear behold but a quiet little voice singing a four letter word Help It was Carol trying to Ventura a giant text file It isn t working she said pointing to the screen full of garbage I loaded up Vedit and started scrolling through the text file I found incredible numbers of spaces at the ends of lines sometimes over 100 anywhere from one to six carriage returns between paragraphs Ventura requires two in A
126. c 1988 that s where I fully analyzed and diagrammed my cheap printer board I got mine from MicroSphere but I suspect most low cost ones are similar The board was manufactured in Taiwan by dtk P11 109 copyright 1985 If you re in doubt about compatibility compare the schematics of your board to the schematics in issue 38 If they match you re home free Okay 21 isn t quite free The card s 8 bit data port is wired for output but this project requires WRIT ING AND READING an 8 bit bus The A D chip I m using is designed to run on a microprocessor bus so we re going to simulate the bus using the printer card To do this we need to make a simple modification the one I men tioned in issue 38 page 31 Find pin 1 on the LS374 this pin is the output enable and is tied to ground Take an X acto knife and cut a small sec tion out of the trace to this pin remove the section so you re sure the connection has been broken test it with a continuity checker Now find pin 7 of the LS174 the out put of an unused J K flip flop Connect a small piece of wire between this pin and pin 1 of the LS374 It s best to do the con nection on the circuit side the side op posite the component side I tin get solder on the ends of the wires first then just touch the wire to the pin with the soldering iron Now we have a bi directional 8 bit port Figure 1 shows port
127. cally Trilogy takes advan tage of logic constraints they constrain the search to possible solutions which either eliminate backtracking or reduce millions of backtracks to a very few SYNTAX Trilogy uses an intuitive Pascal like pro gram structure INTEGRATION Trilogy is complete It s the only language you need for writing Pascal style routines database handlers and Prolog style programs MODULARITY Trilogy is modular language very similar to Modula 2 ENVIRONMENT A complete programming envi ronment you get editor library linker loader error handling automatic make and contextual help Plus you get modules for math string handling file manipu lation windows COMPLETE LOGIC SYSTEMS 604 986 3234 741 Blueridge Ave North Vancouver BC Canada V7R 2J5 A TRUE COMPILER Trilogy is an interactive compiler which produces native code for the 8086 8087 LOGICAL PURITY Trilogy was designed from scratch as a simple language with a completely logical foundation Trilogy s speed results from its design not from added commands Prolog s assert cut var and retract are not logical parts of that language They were added to improve performance DATABASE SUPPORT Trilogy supports varia ble size records records with arbitrary values lists re cursive trees plus record insertion deletion and modif ication Anywhere in the file Files are relations and can be queried f
128. ce Eckel Micro C Writer C Grows Up Bill Davidson PC Tech All About SCSI Saturday July 16 Mike Donovan Pseudo Concurrency Using Probablistic Technique Greg Wolfson Intel Corp Starlan Ethernet amp Cheapernet Don Doerr National Advancement Corp Diagnostic Software for XT amp AT Paul Voda Complete Logic Systems Trilogy Designing A New Language Dean Klein PC Tech Advanced Graphics Processors Tom Ochs Scientific Software Inc Numerical Applications Scott Ladd i C Compilers and C Tools Bill Davidson PC Tech Lorraine Systems Andy Bakkers Michael Vore Packet Radio To be announced Gregg Tolleson Inte Corp Micro Channel Architecture Oregon Software SOFTWARE FORUM Saturday Night Banquet Keynote Speaker Jim Warren When are we Going to do Something Useful with Microcomputers If you re not registered yet use registration form in Issue 41 or call us at 503 382 8048 with visa or master card 90 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 1988 SOG SOG Potpourri City Map with Motel and Hotel Locations Here are some Micro C suggestions for motel choices Other extremes in price and luxury are available also BEND RIVERSIDE MOTEL 389 BEND RATES 28 00 44 00 DUNES MOTEL 382 6811 RATES 2 31 00 39 00 PLAZA MOTEL 382 1621 puot eurre J i E RATES 2 21 00 24 00 e THunDeReInO morer THUNDERBIRD MOTEL 389 7011 GREENWOOD AvE RATES 2 35
129. compiler They provide a special program called SETENV which patches COM MAND COM so that it installs a larger environment However if you have version 3 10 or greater add the following line to your CONFIG SYS file SHELL d path COMMAND COM P E nnn where d path is the drive and direc tory where you keep COM MAND COM and nnn is the size of the environment you want Under DOS 3 1 nnn is the number of paragraphs of environment space you want a paragraph being 16 bytes When using DOS 3 2 or later nnn is the actual size of the environment in bytes and will be rounded up by the system to the nearest 16 bytes The maximum size of the environ ment is 32K bytes which is far more than you ll ever need I set mine at 512 bytes 32 paragraphs and use a num ber of environment hungry programs without running out of room I gave the format for the Program Segment Prefix PSP last issue 41 May June 1988 This is the 256 byte area DOS builds in memory immediate ly before it loads your program referred to hereafter as the application When the application is executed a copy of the environment is made and a pointer to this copy is stored in the program s PSP at offset 0x2C We ll call this the environment pointer The copy is made from the environment of the parent program which is normally the COMMAND COM loaded at boot time Most MS DOS C compilers have a library function called getenv which ca
130. connec tion shown allows analog input voltages between 0 and 5V If you want to use a smaller input range or condition the analog input sig nals using an op amp see issue 35 April May 1987 you can adjust the positive and negative references to within 1 volt of each other as long as neither crosses the 2 5V mid point If you tions for Modified oe ter Po 170 Set to 0 for iout 140 Set to 1 for input Vo Set to 0 for input MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 33 want better accuracy you ll need to add a voltage reference issue 34 Feb March 1987 Editor s note Issues 34 and 35 are now sold out at Micro C see end of article for Bruce s alternative Sample and hold This chip has a sample and hold which takes a snapshot of an analog input signal Thus the chip is not fooled by changes in the signal during conver sion from analog to digital The sampling and holding happen automatically when you request a conversion a H B ssazeRes AO P ES 2 r a Ela 10i ui m Tie D 119 F Notes or This line has a capacitor on it the connections There s also a reset line But we re out of output lines from the printer card This worried me until I realized we d never put data on the bus and have the chip select line high at the same time I took a data line NANDed it with the chip select line and used the result to drive the reset pin the 1K resistor on the DATA
131. consecutive memory accesses to the same bank So the sys tem can maintain 0 wait states When there are consecutive accesses to the same bank the system adds a wait state The Tandy 4000 an 80386 based AT the Wyse 386 and the McTek 286 AT use this interleaved method to get 16 MHz using 100 ns SIMM DRAM Another way around wait states is to use another more expensive kind of memory static RAM or SRAM On the early PCs and XTs all RAM was just DRAM dynamic random ac cess memory On the AT engineers have designed around DIP DRAM SIMM DRAM and SIMM SRAM Most 10 MHz ATs at the West Coast Computer Faire went with tried and true old fashioned DIP DRAM But some 12 MHz and all the 16 MHz ATs I saw were using SIMM DRAMs The 386s I saw were using either SIMM DRAMs or SIMM SRAMs SRAMs are usually 100 ns parts on 80386 computers Each megabyte of SRAM consists of 4 SIMMS that mount perpendicular to the board Each SIMM contains eight 32K by 8 bit chips The tradeoffs seem straightforward You can get static RAM that s faster than the best dynamic but bit for bit it s a lot more expensive One other item of note I ve heard of three AT boards that are designed around a passive backplane The CPU and memory boards sit in expansion slots The Wyse 386 the PC Tech X24 and the CCI ST 286 12 use this design This design permits at least in theory a designer to more easily upgrade a board for faster p
132. course they also couldn t agree whether the drives supporting RLL needed to have plated media or if oxide was sufficient These were heated discussions Note The only thing that creates a readable signal pulse on magnetic media is a current reversal in the write head That reversal shows up as a spike during a read The quality of the media and the head deter mine how close together those reversals can be and still be read later as distinct pulses Also the knowing distance between pulses is very important to recreating the data MFM Modified Frequency Modula tion is the standard encoding method for floppies and hard drives It manages to encode data and clock information and put it on the disk with about half the reversals for the same bit rate as FM or the other early schemes RLL Run Length Limited is a newer encoding scheme which requires about 25 fewer reversals Where MFM requires at least one transition for clocking purposes every X bits RLL re quires a transition every X Y bits As I ative worshippers of high tech dumpboxes were credited with inventing the wheel understand it to get the 50 greater bit density RLL needs higher reversal den sity thus the suggestions about plated media and more precise positioning of those reversals Perhaps someone would like to do a quick piece on RLL It s becoming the new standard problems or not Meanwhile Back At The Interview What c
133. ctive ROMADDRSEL high on the first LS245 input means the processor wants to read the ROM Just right The ROM lives on the external bus and the processor of course hangs out on the in ternal bus The Interrupt Acknowledge INTA taff s and Card Selected CARDSLCTD sig nals connect to an LS00 positive NAND gate which provides the second input to the LS245 When either is active the LS245 sees a high from the LS00 and sets the direction of data from external to in ternal bus During an INTA the interrupt con troller writes data a pointer to an inter rupt handler vector on the external bus This has to be read by the processor on the internal bus so the LS245 sets the direction accordingly Slot J8 has tighter timing characteris tics and also is the only socket using the CARDSLCTD signal The system expects any card in J8 to respond via this signal line whenever the card is selected shades of the new PS 2 system where every card is expected to respond An active CARDSLCTD sets the data direc tion from external to internal But that means that whenever we select a card in J8 all we can do is read No problem Or at least not much of a problem J8 was designed for extra ROM cards and you re not going to be writing very much into the ROMs Try to put a floppy controller in J8 it wouldn t be smart enough to respond with a CARDSLCTD and even if it did we wouldn t be able to write data to it The ultimate i
134. d 5 00 each ppd 7 00 each ppd Advertisers Index Service Acquired Intelligence Austin Codeworks Blaise Computing Borland Int l Brown Bag Software 49 65 85 Capital Software Cascade Electronics CC Software Complete Logic Systems CompuView Dair Computer Systems Datadesk Int l Digital Research Comp 49 78 82 Dreamtech 7 Ecosoft Inc E M Enterprise Emerald Microware Erac Company Issue 42 Halted Specialties Integrand Koala Computers Logitech Inc Manx Software Systems McTek Systems Merlin Publishing Micro Cornucopia Microcomputer Systems Consultants MicroMethods Microprocessors Unlmtd microSOLUTIONS Microsphere National Advancement Corp 85 Oregon Software 03 PCTech Inside Front Cover 20 Peacock Systems 60 Scientific Software Solutions 27 Serengeti Software Sharp s Inc 19 SlicerControl Computer 40 Star K Software Systems United Products 62 V Communications 14 WindowDOS Associates 99 Windsor Technologies 39 Xenosoft 70 Zortech Inc Inside Back Cover Contact Advertiser Directly Tell the world Wear the Micro C T shirt Choose a blue shirt with the classic Micro C Mutt or a silver grey shirt with the Micro C logo 8 95 each ppd 10 95 each ppd Canadian amp Foreign orders Available in S M L or XL MICRO CORNUCOPIA P O Box 223 Bend Oregon 97709 1 800 888 8087 M
135. d AT 386s A little more speed I said aloud Maybe then Micro C could go monthly Editor s note 72 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 Subversive talk Gary Or should I get by with the power I have Maybe add a little memory Maybe just forget the pleasures of suspending and pseudo multi tasking Maybe wait another year or two for an improved OS 2 After all my system has been as faithful as a Kaypro 2 It works as well now as it did in 1986 gemlike almost except for a half crazed power supply that loves to blink Also don t you just hate giving up some thing that works even if it is no longer the cat s meow Maybe this could be the BUT I KNOW IT WORKS ARGUMENT I countered quickly But all my friends computers are faster than mine Even Dean Klein the designer of my XT drives an AT Call this THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN A little more speed I said aloud And let s get on with the story Are you interested in upgrading your sys tem to an AT or building one from scratch Here s what s out there in the cheap high powered computing arena Cheap And High Powered Details If you re starting from scratch you ll be as sembling a system which consists of 1 Main board 2 Drives amp Controller 3 Video amp Controller 4 Case amp Power 5 Serial and Parallel Ports 6 Keyboard Of these the most subtle differences occur in the main board AT clones come in a variety of spee
136. d including most Common LISP operations and adheres precisely to the specifications of the standard e Helpful Features extremely thorough error checking explicit error messages excellent debugging facilities e Advanced Features lexical and dynamic scoping closures lambda list keywords structures bit arrays generic sequence functions transcendental functions output formatting e UnCommon Features graphics low level DOS access customization Sample AI application programs e Fully indexed 150 page reference manual e Unlimited free technical support Free shipping on prepatd orders Microcomputer Systems MSC Consultants P O Box 747 Santa Barbara CA 93102 805 963 3412 Reader Service Number 36 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 81 SCIENTIFIC GRAPHICS ce one ite Screen Graphs for Fast Previews Curve Smoothing Interpolations i i I Legends Placed Anywhere Built In Editor Auto Manual Scaling Log Lin SemiLog An Indespensible Tool For Technical Professionals GQrapla Star rs Introductory 79 Price System Requirements IBM PC XT AT or Compatible running DOS 2 0 or higher Screen graphs require CGA Printer Graphs require Epson EX FX JX RX HS Star Gemini Radix SD SG SR IBM Graphics or compatibility with one of the above Plotter graphs require HP GL compatibility PO Box 956 Dept C Valley Forge PA 19482 For Technical Information 215 269 0198 Reader
137. d with inventing the wheel Anyway floppies were the perfect solution to data migration at least until man in vented the double sided floppy ight out of ten times if we get a 225 it has the same problem It s usually the stepper driver transistor More Recently So we arrive at the 20th century Oh we re still losing data but that s okay we ve got plenty And backing up data just makes more of it to lose which is no doubt why many people studiously avoid backing up So I ll do my best to help you protect your data without overwhelming you with the B Back up word First Backup Your Data Backup your data but don t use BACKUP Folks I ve talked to recom mend using Fastback from Fifth Genera tion Systems or Corefast from Core In ternational I ve found that Backit is also reliable though its menus are a bit overwhelming and obscure Second The Drive Controller If you re going to be slovenly about backing up you may as well get the most reliable hard drive and controller you can The more I investigate the drive marketplace the more I m convinced that hard drives are very very good With a few exceptions it s hard to go wrong Unfortunately there s little agreement about which drives are the current exceptions By David J Thompson The problem is change Ask a manufacturer about life expectancy and he ll tell you 20 000 hours And he s right That s what he e
138. d a new case that they re selling for the same price as the case in the ad but it has a much nicer larger screen Except for the difference in display color it looks identical to the Compaq 386 portable The McTek cabinet has an LCD display of 640 x 400 dots but in text mode those dots are doubled and use the standard ugly CGA character font 8 x 8 instead of an EGA character font 8 x 16 or something I m sure the video controller can handle it the desig ners just weren t thinking Oh and while it has a contrast control it doesn t have one for brightness The screen is generally too bright I d like to tone it down It s still the best I ve seen though Gary Entsminger turned me on to this cabinet and I m forever grateful Well at least until a newer model hits the streets And for brains do you think I could get away with putting anything other than a PC Tech board in this thing I d never make it out of Lake City alive So instead of forfeiting my chance at collecting Social Security I installed a passive backplane board devoid of anything except sockets and power con nectors in the cabinet Then I stuffed in a prototype of one of those new 286 on an expansion card boards that people keep whispering about but can t openly announce for fear of being reprimanded or having a dirty sock stuffed in their mouth Pssst It s called the X24 Pass it on Th
139. d and true X16 desktop ll wait until it gives up on me but I could rationalize a new portable system The key was a new supertwisted electro luminescent back lit LCD screen case and power supply called I mean it the Rabbit The Rabbit has a 640 by 400 pixel screen and is CGA compatible and Hercules workable It s the next best thing to a Compaq portable screen which makes it to my eyes the next best LCD screen on the market And it comes at a much better price Buy a case at 799 and build up your own system or buy a fully equipped and tested Rabbit e case with a 640 by 400 LCD amp power supply e 1 44 megabyte 3 1 2 drive e 20 megabyte Seagate hard disk 28 ms e anda mainboard 10 MHz 0 wait state 80286 with 640K RAM on board for 1 799 It s a few hundred more than the cheapest desktops but a few thousand less than the cheapest Compags But note the Rabbit like the Compaq isn t a laptop it s a portable you have to plug it in But you can carry it around It weighs 19 pounds or so with a 20 megabyte hard drive and it has a hand le The Rabbit case wasn t made to handle 5 1 4 floppies so if you need 5 1 4 capability you ll have to put it outside or buy a Compaq Portable 3 I couldn t resist hot rodding been talkin with Laine Stump too long I guess so I bought the Rabbit case drive etc and then dropped in a 16 MHz 0 1 wait state depending on how t
140. d to be true else they couldn t print it in th paper Anyhow lots of people must believe it cause they sell mil liuns of those magazines ever week for fifty or seventy five cents apiece I noted Well that display of logic really got LuBell to thinkin Just then Luther flushed you might say with exitment came into the kitchen wavin the Cornucopia it was all about Desktop Publishin and tellin us how we could use those com puters out in the barn to do our own typesettin and such All we d have to buy Luther said is a lazier printer I would have thought the one we had was lazy enough but that s what the artickle said Hummm says LuBell Maybe we could start our own checkout line newspaper She took out a pencil Might sell milliuns a week Lessee she said figurin furiously at fifty cents apiece that s Even befor she finished Luther and me caught on to the fact that that would add up to a signifycant sum so we decided to start our own shopping cart weekly We made LuBell Editor n Chief because of her weighty jour nalistic experience LuBell anchored the six o clock Nigh Witless News on the local TV sta tion for a while until the tube in the transmit ter burnt out Beside the whole thing was her idea At first I was goin to hire Caleb the under taker to help He s famous for his layout work He declined sayin he already had his hands full at the mo
141. d to help you recover it The recovery we re talking about is primarily from FAT and directory problems But then FATs and direc tories seem to get the most abuse Have you run any fun trojans lately If you get the Mace package before you have a problem the routines will copy your FAT and directories onto the drive s innermost tracks Right where Disk Technician likes to lock out sectors Fortunately they know how to get along Assuming your directory structure gets eaten Mace copies everything back At least that s the theory After backing up my hard disk and removing the only copy protected program I ran RXBAK which copies the FAT boot directory and subdirec tory data into the inner sectors Then I tried deleting a large group of files figuring that unformat would restore the directories to the point where I ran RXBAK Unfortunately the unformatter which does the restoration got weird when it found an unformatted locked out sector The whole track was unfor matted by the controller to keep MS DOS from using it There are some 40 000 sectors on a 20 meg drive After finding the first unfor matted sector it began a cycle of rehom ing and retrying which slowed the sec tor reads down from blindingly fast to about 1 per minute And it continued this slow pace even after it had finished the locked out track At about 1 minute per good sector the final 38 000 sectors would take I reset the syste
142. disks than under standing the data format After all Apple increases spindle speed as the head ap proaches the center so the velocity of the media under the head doesn t drop so drastically But the option board is deal ing with a single speed drive so it s got to understand more than a single data rate Can it really do that Yep Their little half length board works like gangbusters It reads Mac files writes Mac files creates directories I mean folders removes directories dis plays directories diskcopies from one Mac disk to another and copies files be tween Mac and MS DOS disks Of course the files may need a little futzing You have to turn the lt CR gt s in the Mac text files into lt CR gt lt LF gt s for the PC editors and vice versa But Vedit can handle that no sweat They are offering upgrades for those who already own the older boards Send in your older board or your master software disk or your registration card and they ll send you one of the new boards for 59 plus 5 s h Or they ll sell you one outright for 159 plus 5 s h Discount price was 99 95 Copy II PC Deluxe Option Board Central Point Software 9700 SW Capitol Highway Portland OR 97219 503 244 5782 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 41 Working With PCX Files Inside the Most Popular Graphics File Format This article began several months ago with a conversation Sam was looking for information o
143. dling graph ics routines memory management program control DOS file support andr m For MS Pascal ASYNCH MANAGER S175 00 Full featured interrupt driven support forthe o gt COM ports 1 0 buffers up 10 64K XON XOFF up to 9600 baud modem control ane ee me XMODEM For MS Pascal oes KeyPilot c 20 98 ay Super batch program Create batch files which can invoke programs and provid input to them runany program unattended create demonstration programs gt Sonra usage a EXEC _ 2 lessthan 2K of overhead RUNOFF Text formatter for all programmers flexi lt printer control user defined variables ind generation general macro facilit Craft ie Turbo rascal 800 333 8087 9600 baud XON XOFF protocol modem con oe trol and XMODEM file transfer are among ae e prime ac CoP products the many features supported andis priced at T Yost Send E ia manon OB Y g add 4 00 FoF Blaise Coi Inc hasa full line of support 4 o redents ts adi ae iN Oh BLAISECOMPUTINGINC Vga MC A Pat On The Back Well done on the new look of the cover although there was something nice about the magazine in the brown paper wrapping look of old A person needed to appreciate the merit of the product to see past the veneer Anyone subscribing to such a non glossy magazine was demonstrating in telligence and uncommon good sense To be a subscriber was to be one of
144. drivers at run time Using these macros you can write object draw functions which are inde pendent of the low level drivers So far I ve put in Bresenham s line drawing al gorithm and an inefficient but functional irregular polygon fill A circle drawing algorithm from the May 83 issue of Doc tor Dobbs Journal is likely to go in next The Picture level is the highest The functions at this level operate on the fol lowing picture structure typedef struct PCXHDR hdr char rows 4 PCXPIC I should warn you that the following few paragraphs will be particularly boring If you re not interested in how I chose to handle the pointer and bit twid dling details skip to the next heading The PCXHDR is obvious enough but the rows array deserves some explana tion Figure 2 shows how I visualize it when drawing a 640x350x16 EGA type picture A plane is a pointer to an array of rows each of which is a pointer to an array of characters That array of charac ters contains the bits which will become a horizontal line of pixels This approach is inefficient because it uses several 32 bit pointer operations but it s easy to work with As you can see I ve hardwired a limit of 4 planes and the arrays are dynamically allocated 46 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 For all but the 320x200x4 CGA modes we can read the bit at position x y on a plane using the following expression pex_cpic gt rows
145. ds and packages They have everything from lowly 6 MHz 80286 CPUs to lordly 16 and 20 MHz 80286 and 80386 CPUs Inside them there s memory packaged either as common dual inline packages DIPs or as single in line memory modules SIMMs The SIMMs take up much less board space than DIPs and generally SIMMs are soldered in place which precludes problems with sockets The current crop of 80386 based clones in cluding the Compaq Deskpro are little more than glorified ATs so TIl treat them as such for now But the 80386 CPU has the clear long term advantage of a 32 bit data bus and more flexible and efficient multi tasking By comparing the combination of RAM type RAM speed CPU speed and wait states you can get a pretty good indication of the overall execution speed of a system Wait States And RAM A wait state is an extra clock cycle that the CPU can add during RAM or I O access For instance the CPU says hey out there I want the byte you just received from the keyboard If the device that s holding the byte is slow then the data won t be available on the data bus right away So the processor pauses for a clock cycle a wait state or two while the slow device gets its data together The 8086 bus cycle for instance a memory access takes 4 clock cycles Adding 1 wait state makes that 5 clock cycles a 25 performance penalty Ad ding 2 wait states cuts performance by 50 The 80386 uses only 2 cl
146. dy ad a9 al calla fxMultiply a8 roy al al a0 ad ald0 py t 2 a8 rdz a0 1 a9 al fxMultiply aB roz al al a0 a0 al0 pz fetch x direction scale by time parameter jadd x starting value 7 store result irepeat for y Figure 2 Intersection of Ray with Plane intLinePlane In Out mmtm a8 Ray a9 Plane a0 intersection parameter a0 lt 0 if no intersection sp a4 a5 a6 calla vDot move addi a0 a4 rdx a8 calla vDot move move sub mmfm a0 al a9 pc ad 1 a4 a0 fxDivide sp a4 a5 a6 a7 a8 a9 zroepn ray origin dot plane normal xrdepn ray direction dot plane normal a7 a8 a9 pe roepn rd pn By Earl Hinrichs PC Tech P O Box 128 Lake City MN 55041 Sphere scx equ 0000H center scy equ 0020H scz equ 0040H sr2 equ 0060H radius squared Intersection Routines The intersection routines will answer the question when does the ray intersect the object rather than where does the ray intersect the object Often when is all we need to know The subroutine in Figure 1 computes where from when for those instan ces when we need the actual position On input a8 points to a ray structure a9 is the time parameter and a10 points to an empty point structure The routine fills the point structure at a10 with the position of our moving point at time a9 The s
147. e Pre C Windows for C Windows for Data C terp db_Vista Phact Plink86Plus C tree C Prime PC MS DOS Macintosh Apple Il TRS 80 CP M These C development systems are unbeatable for the price They are earlier versions of Aztec that originally sold for as much as 500 Each system includes C compiler scarier linker librarian UNIX routines and more Special discounts are available for use as course material Manx Software Systems One Industrial Way Eatontown NJ 07724 Aztec ROM Systems 6502 65C02 8080 Z80 8086 80x86 680x0 An IBM or Macintosh is not only a less expensive way to develop ROM code it s better Targets include the 6502 65C02 8080 Z80 8086 80x86 and 680x0 Aztec C has an excellent reputation for producing compact high performance code Our systems for under 1 000 outperform systems priced at over 10 000 initial Host Plus Target 750 Additional Targets ROM Support Package 500 Vax Sun PDP 11 ROM HOSTS Call for information on Vax PDP 11 Sun and other host environments Cross Development Most Aztec C systems are available as cross development systems Hosts include PC MS DOS Macintosh CP M Vax PDP 11 Sun and others Call for information and pricing CP M 8080 Z80 ROM C compiler 8080 Z80 assembler linker librarian UNIX libraries and specialized utilities Aztec C ll c CP M amp ROM 349 Aztec C Il d CP M 199 How To Bec
148. e don t set out to do a component level fix unless you re pretty sure you can find the problem quickly Our rule is the ten minute limit If we don t think we can find a problem within ten minutes we usually send it out There s no percentage in trying to work on an unfamiliar unit or to identify an unusual problem It s too easy to waste many hours Frequent Drive Failures I wouldn t like to admit how many Seagate 225s 238s and 213s we sent out for repair before we discovered how to fix a frequent failure Symptom Drive loses data and for mat more noticeable with temperature changes Solution The problem is caused by expansion of the chassis as the drive warms up The circuit board mounted on the underside does not allow the case to expand normally as it heats up and the drive loses its alignment Three screws hold the circuit board to the drive hous ing Loosen the screw nearest the front of the drive Editor s note You ll need to loosen all three screws if the holes on the board and the housing don t line up Line up the front hole then tighten down the back screws and leave the front screw just finger tight It s the way Seagate is currently shipping 225s Then reformat the drive low level fdisk and DOS format Be sure you have an up to date backup of the drive before loosening anything IBM Monochrome Monitor 5151 Symptony Solution 1 A blank screen indicates a bad fuse probably ca
149. e 1988 Letus disks is 125 the same as it was in 1987 A prodigious amount of work goes into this disk based magazine index Writers researchers and magazine junkies like me are the target audience For those of us who need this kind of reference tool it s an incredible bargain Letus A B C 3790 El Camino Real Ste 2006 Palo Alto CA 94306 Laser Blast How would you like to use a laser to get the most complete access imaginable to the vast hoard of shareware It s now possible in the form of a CD ROM WELL NOW YOU CAN HAVE IT The MASTERFUL source code from program files EXE or COM And the files are labeled and commented so they become USEABLE MD86 is an interactive disassembler with an easy to use word processor like interface this is crucial for the REAL programs you want to disassemble With its built in help screens you won t have to constantly refer to the manual either although there are valuable discus sions on the ins and outs Y of disassembling which t you won t want to miss 7 J The Code Beaters i MD86 is a professionally supported product and yet costs no more than shareware And of course it s not copy protected MD86 IS ONLY 47 50 1 50 s h plus tax C C Software 1907 Alvarado Ave Wainut Creek CA 94596 415 939 8153 SHAREWARE DISK AVAILABLE FOR 10 00 Reader Service Number 87 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 65 laser disk from PC SIG i
150. e 30 megabytes he would have given them 6 heads I took the attitude of wait and see Or maybe point and laugh Matter of fact I nearly openly called my brother a fool when he went out and bought a Seagate 238 RLL drive That was almost a year ago now and Cecil s 238 is still going fine last I heard Working at PC Tech I got my first introduction to RLL on a daily basis My home system has a Miniscribe 8438 3 5 inch 30 Meg RLL drive and an OMTI 3527 controller SCSI bus RLL controller Neither has given me any problems and PC Tech is recommend ing that drive controller combination to its customers along with the OMTI 5527 for those who want a controller to plug into the PC bus In the three months I ve been here I haven t heard of a single problem with these drives Of course Miniscribe isn t exactly the cheapest drive on the market And OMTI 3527 s don t go for a song either This is what I think There is nothing wrong with RLL drives and controllers just like there is nothing wrong with 3 5 inch floppy drives or 9600 bps modems You just have to be careful about quality If you get a good brand from a reliable distributor it s going to be as solid as any MFM hard disk But if you buy from a bargain basement watch out And it s not just the drives you have to be careful about Watch the control lers too I don t know much about other brands of controllers but t
151. e Microsoft C Version 5 0 and QuickC compilers requires DOS 2 00 or later and is just 129 00 ASYNCH MANAGER Version 2 0 IMPROVED C ASYNCH MANAGER is a library of functions designed to help you incorporate asynchronous communication capabilities into your application programs Version 2 0 has been rewritten especially for Microsoft C Version 5 0 and Borland s Turbo C Simultaneous buffered input and output to both COM ports at speeds up to products for both Pascal and C Call today for your i CSS shippine free information packet 1 Name 2560 Ninth Street Suite 316 Berkeley CA 94710 415 540 5441 Leo oe eader Service Number 5 TOOLS PLUS 5 0 ows ISR ntio handling and EGA tine tex direct screen access DOS fi more For Turbo C Turbo POWER SCREEN NEW General screen manage screens block mode data entry field control with instant screen for Turbo Pascal 4 0 soon for Turbo POWER TOOLS S NEW VERSION Now supports Turbo Pasc 4 0 Screen window and menu management including EGA support DOS memory con _ _ trol ISRs scheduled imervantion code a d much more Turbo ASYNCH PLUS 129 00 z lt NEW VERSION Now supports Turbo Pascal 4 0 Interrupt driven support for the COM ports I O buffers up to 64K XON XOFF up gt to 19 2K baud modem control and MODEM file transfer PASCAL TOOLS TOOLS 2 175 00 Expanded string and screen han
152. e discovered and the rumors I ve heard only the best rumors of course Fact Last spring the U S put import restrictions on such luxuries as 256K dynamic RAMs laptop computers and power tools limits on quantities and a 100 duty As far as I can recall the restrictions on RAM were pushed through Congress by Micron Technology the only U S manufacturer of the little darlings Intel is buying theirs from Korea TI is getting them from Hyundai Fact The Japanese have been changing 256K production lines into 1 meg production lines The 1 meg parts which have been designed into the new 386 systems are selling for 35 to 40 each Fact A majority of the chips currently produced are already spoken for IBM Compaq Apple have contracted for 80 of the current production Contract prices reflect the going rate at the time the contract was written so they are generally much lower Parts houses with long term contracts are no doubt making out like bandits Fact Computer sales are very strong Apple sales are up 50 Compaq up the same percentage The only ones doing lower volume than last year are IBM and Kaypro as far as I know When sales are stronger than expected companies have to pur chase the extra chips on the open market When sales are weaker than expected they sell their extra parts usually for less than they paid Fact Most of the new software needs lots of memory MS DOS 3 3 requires 256K just to load the ope
153. e industry standard B tree access method and is proven in applications since 1984 Get first Get previous e Get less than Get greater than e Get sequential block Get all partial matches Insert key and record Delete key and record Change record location Get last e Get next e Get less than or equal e Get greater than or equal Get partial key match Get all keys and locations Insert key Delete key Increase your implementation productivity CBTREE is over 6 000 lines of tightly written commented C source code The driver module is only 20K and links into your programs Port your applications to other machine environments The C source code that you receive can be compiled on all popular C compilers for the IBM PC and also under Unix Xenix and AmigaDos No royalties on your applications that use CBTREE CBTREE supports multi user and network applications CBTREE IS TROUBLE FREE BUT IF YOU NEED HELP WE PROVIDE FREE PHONE SUPPORT ONE CALL GETS YOU THE ANSWER TO ANY QUESTION PEACOCK SYSTEMS INC CBTREE compares favorably with other software selling at 2 3 and 4 times our price Sold on unconditional money back guarantee YOU PAY ONLY 159 00 A MONEY SAVING PRICE TO ORDER OR FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION CALL 703 356 7029 or 703 847 1743 OR WRITE Peacock Systems Inc 2108 C Gallows Road Vienna VA 22180 Reader Service Number 20 54 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August
154. e large libraries written in FORTRAN are cer tainly an incentive for using it in the scientific setting But other important factors include speed of compilation ex ecution speed simplicity and some times availability it s the only decent compiler in some environments FORTRAN certainly has its limita tions So does virtually every other programming language yes including assembly As a result I spend about equal amounts of time with FORTRAN Modula 2 and C I use FORTRAN for number mangling C to treat streams of characters and Modula for data basing The point is use the best and best suited tools available A colleague recently voiced a wish for Turbo FORTRAN The idea of a simple fast FORTRAN in an interactive environment is a good one I think a let ter writing campaign is in order here Let Mr Kahn know that there s a need for that unique Borland touch in the FORTRAN market This should not be construed as a criticism of C In fact I think it is an exciting and positive development I seriously doubt that it will make much of a dent in the laboratory environment though until it s available on standard lab computers like Perkin Elmers and DEC Rainbows yeah I saw a whole lab full of Rainbows the other day James W Albert 1500 W William Cannon Dr 183 Austin TX 78745 Around the Bend continued from page 4 Housing shouldn t be a problem if you ll call early for reser v
155. e month surface mail delivery time to forward mail from the UK to Australia meant that I had no idea if the product was in the mail or not I had kissed that money goodbye So it was a very pleasant surprise when I noted in March this year a credit into my credit card account from PC Network So I suppose PC Network is doing the correct thing and there might be hope for other creditors One advertiser in Micro C which I must comment upon is MicroSphere I can only praise their service and friend ly help I purchased an XT clone in pieces and found the assistance in processing the order to be above average A good company to deal with And Cindy is nice to talk to I asked in my last letter to you about two years ago whether you really look like the Around The Bend column characature I didn t get an answer Whatever please bring back the full frontal The dismembered head looks a little lost What is his history Bevin J Pettitt Officers Mess RAAF Glenbrook NSW 2773 Australia Editor s note Everyone in the office said I had to write a great Editor s note for your letter First we re thinking of bringing back the brown paper wrapper It will be a jacket that ll slip over the fancy new covers so you can fool those impressionable people Second if you think the contents are untouched and unsullied you should hang around here at final edit time The ar ticles get touched the columns get touched and
156. e of the following MODE_TEXTO text 80x25 MODE_APAO APA 640x350x16 MODE_APAl APA 720x348x2 MODE_APA2 APA 640x200x2 MODE_APA3 APA 320x200x4 When drawing on a PCX picture the mode is used to tell the PCX module whether it s producing a one or two bit per pixel picture so available PCX modes are effectively MODE_APAO or 48 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 MODE_APA3 Available EGA modes are MODE_TEXTO or MODE_APAO for the CGA its MODE_TEXT0O MODE _APA2 or MODE_APA3 and for HERC it s MODE_TEXT0 or MODE_APA1 ERROR or OK is returned with ERROR indicat ing an invalid mode number void VGR_CLEAR void VGR_SET int x int y int c void VGR_CLR int x int y void VGR_XOR int x int y int c int VGR_GET int x int y void VGR_ROW int r char far p int n void VGR_MOVE char far s char far d int n void VGR_PEEKB char far p void VGR_POKEB char far p int b These VGR_ macros allow access to the board independent functions _CLEAR clears the screen SET sets the color of the pixel at x y to c If c is zero it clears the pixel It s a good idea to not confuse the two operations since the HERC module ig nores the value of c _CLR sets the color of the pixel to zero _XOR does a bit wise exclusive or of the color of the pixel with c Again the HERC module ignores c _GET returns the color of the pixel _ROW moves n bytes from location p to the VRAM row r _MOVE _PEEKB amp _
157. e with RLL The RLL will work for a week or two and then all of a sudden they ll start getting soft errors In other words they ll get random track not found or sector not found messages Then it ll just disintegrate They ll have to reformat Protection From The Data Munchers Let s say you have a competent hard drive and an aversion to backing things up What can you do to protect yourself from Catastrophic Hard drive Agony and Remorse CHAR Nothing However you can do something to prevent or recover from the very com mon lesser problems These problems often show up as Sector Not Found right at the beginning or end of the day There s a reason for the timing They also show up as missing files something garbaged the directory or missing subdirectories Stopping The Slow Deterioration As a drive ages hey we all age the casting destresses itself the bearings wear a bit and the head assembly shifts Add to this a bit of heat expan sion and you ll see that when the heads are over track 427 they re not necessari ly precisely over the same track 427 they were over when the drive was last formatted Some drives have a surface that s used only for verifying head position That works very well but it s not used A Powerful Procedural Database and Declarative Language Order From SPEED Where Prolog must backtrack Trilogy can often solve the problem logi
158. e your eyes and we ll com bine them into a single document We ll show you how to do it with Pagemaker and with Ventura Publisher so you can see the differences Then you ll join a smaller group for a hands on design session and we ll use the designs as a starting point for a quick discussion on graphics Handouts will include our hardware and software recommendations for putting together desktop systems We ll include suggestions for those of you who are creating ads producing handbills small newsletters newspapers small or large technical manuals and magazines Join the fun MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 39 The West Coast Computer Swap Meet Or Where To Get Your Cheap Rolexes The last time Micro Cornucopia ex hibited at the West Coast Computer Faire our booth was in the men s room on the second mezzanine we shared a stall with FOG That was six years ago This year we had a ten by ten on the main floor immediately in front of the johns so I was ready to rub shoulders with Microsoft Borland and Intel Unfortunate ly they weren t there Of course they ll be at SOG VII couldn t resist a dig but that s a different story puter Faire The name hasn t changed at least not officially but this year the Faire part was pretty well hidden among the swap tables There were a few certifiably techy types Trilogy Programmer s Journal RBBS PC Dr Dobb s Micro Systems Journal Marshall Magee
159. ean amp mean window and keyboard handler 2 70 ene seat C interpr ter o Se eee ee ok Ge Se eae Oe 0b Byte oe Bae i Sag Be he SS whe te 5 60 assembly language macros bridging C and MA MI E E ee Dy ae de eae eh OO Pies parse tree management ee ae ee ei Be ae Se 60 HELP tp pop up help system builder 1 1 1 ew 50 Multi User BBS chat mail menus sysop displays uses Galacticomm modem card ee ae 50 Heap Expander dynamic memory manager for expanded memory ie ae Ae gta de ie ee a OO Make macros all languages built in rules 2 2 ee eee Bo ting ud sto Se see a DO Vector to Raster Conversion stroke letters amp Tektronix 4010 codes to bitmaps 50 Coder s Prolog inference engine for use with C programs 220004 45 C Help pop up help for C programmers add your own notes 2 1 ee ee ee 40 Biggerstaff s System Tools multi tasking window manager kit Bp ah ar stay eee es set eae e ak ee A 40 PC XINU Comer s XINU operating system for PC 1 2 e ee eee eee 35 CLIPS rule based expert system generator Version 4 1 2 gt a ale vee ae 35 TELE Kernel or TELE Windows Ken Berry s multi tasking kernel amp window package 30 Clisp Lisp interpreter with extensive internals documentation fe Se a Se Ne de we hy OO Translate Rules to C YACC like function generator for rule based sy
160. ecome in teresting when some surfaces are made reflective or partially reflective So we must ask what happens when the ray strikes a reflective surface Reflection from the surface of a sphere is the same as reflection from the surface of the plane tangent to the sphere at the point of intersection Thus once the tan gent plane is found the case of reflection off a sphere is reduced to reflection off a plane The normal to the plane tangent to the circle is the vector from the center of the sphere to the point of intersection The 20 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 Figure 3 Intersection of Ray with a Rectangle intLineRectangle in mmtm a8 ray a9 rectangle data sp a4 a5 a8 a9 a5 intLinePlane 31 a0 ir _01 a0 a4 a0 a9 vTemp0 al0 PointOnLine al0 a8 a5 a9 60H a9 vSub 80H a9 vCalibrate 31 a0 ir_01 One al al ad ir_01 gt 60 a9 vCalibrate 31 a0 ir_01 One al al a0 ir_01 a4 a0 ir_00 1 a0 sp a4 a8 a9 a9 ald save rectangle pointer Test for intesection with embedding plane if not then quit Save intersection time a8 ray a9 time 3a10 will hold point of intersection Intersection point minus origin to temp point to X extent jproject temp onto X extent imiss if negative or greater than one point to Y extent test projection onto Y side miss if negative or if greater than 1 return time of
161. ecute DOS commands or other programs e MS DOS pathname support e Horizontal scrolling edit long lines e Flexible cut and paste with 36 scratch pad buffers e Customization determine your own keyboard layout create your own editing functions support any screen size e Optimized for IBM PC XT AT Color windows 43 line EGA EASY TO USE e Interactive on line help is user changeable and expandable e On line integer calculator also algebraic expressions e Single key search and global or selective replace e Pop up menus for easy access to many editing functions e Keystroke macros speed editing hot keys for menu functions FOR PROGRAMMERS e Automatic Indent Undent for C PL I PASCAL etc e Match check nested parentheses i e and for C e Automatic conversion to upper case for assembly language labels opcodes operands with comments unchanged e Optional 8080 to 8086 source code translator FOR WRITERS e Word Wrap and paragraph formatting at adjustable margins e Right margin justification e Support foreign graphic and special characters e Convert to from WordStar and mainframe files e Print any portion of file selectable printer margins MACRO PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE e if then else looping testing branching user prompts keyboard input 17 bit algebraic expressions variables e Flexible windowing forms entry select size color etc e Simplifies
162. eir max Earl Hinrichs 18 Ray Tracing on the T134010 Part 2 If you re interested in graphics or just puzzled about solving quadratic equations in assembly language then this is your dimension Larry Fogg 24 XT Theory Of Operation Larry thought he was done after he finished the last of the XT s smart chips However you don t have a computer without pasting a few of these guys together Bruce Eckel 32 Simulating A Bus If you re really interested in getting your computer off its digital jag and into the analog world then this bus based A D a project is a great start ee i David Thompson 40 The West Coast Computer Swap Meet After missing the Faire for six years I was very surprised Sam Azer 42 Working With PCX Files This is a sneaky article To understand graphics file formats you need to understand how graphics are displayed especially color graphics Sam explains both JULY AUGUST 1988 ISSUE NO 42 COLUMNS 50 C ing Clearly Scott Ladd looks at two exciting new C packages one from Zortech the other from WATCOM 56 86 World Laine leaves the U S his 286 system under his seat and a giant screen on his mind 66 lines anyone 64 ShareWare 67 On Your Own 70 Pascal Column 75 Culture Corner 86 Technical Tips CP M CORNER 83 CPM Notes 84 Kaypro Column FUTURE TENSE 72 Tidbits 96 Last Page Cover illustration by Paul Leatherwood MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 3
163. enerate a quick example I jumped into PC File and asked for a search in the PC World database on the keyword shareware The following display appeared on screen It gives complete information on the referenced article including other keywords under Cd YOU WANT THE SOURCE which it is indexed Record 112 keyword s J Button Button ware shareware PC File author s E Bender and M Hogan title INDUSTRY OUTLOOK Share and Like magazine PC World issue 87 10 Oct v 5 n 10 page 122 1st line Discussion of the success of shareware software developers 2nd line including Buttonware 3rd line Of course PC File lets you continue the keyword search after you have viewed each matching record until you ve scanned the entire database Finding The Key For user convenience the Nelsons create a file for each database that con tains an alphabetical listing of all keywords used to describe the articles Thus one can quickly search PCW87D KWD the keyword file for PC World with a utility like Vernon Buerg s LIST before entering PC File to do a search The dedicated user can merge in dividual databases to create a large master index PC File supports this directly and concatenate the keyword files accordingly Since all of the databases have the same structure it s easy to do One Letus aficionado I know has moved it into dBASE III Plus How Much Lettuce The annual subscription fee for th
164. eplacing the power supply doesn t help Replacing the system board fixes the problem but what s wrong with the system board To understand this one let s look at the power on self test POST The IBM POST routine located in the BIOS ROM runs numerous tests of the system board and add on boards If any of the first 11 tests fails you ll see no cursor and no error message The system appears dead even if the failure is simply a bad chip in the first 16K critical bank of RAM A bad RAM chip in the first 16K ac counts for about 50 of all dead system boards In the case of the PC some com patibles and sometimes the XT the criti cal bank of RAM is soldered in making it impractical to troubleshoot by swap ping chips So we use the WindsorPOST diagnos tic ROM module made by Windsor wouldn t like to admit how many Seagate 225s 238s and 213s we sent out for repair before we discovered how to fix a frequent failure Technologies of San Rafael California 415 456 2200 The WindsorPOST replaces the sock eted BIOS ROM It does 36 diagnostic tests on power up and about 70 of the time it will pinpoint the problem in an apparently dead board When the system is turned on WindsorPOST beeps to announce that it is working A red LED indicates whether or not the ROM socket is getting 5 Volts The module then initializes the video dis play and starts its tests Because the tests are all run from the
165. er Datalight customers will be able to get support from Zortech Zortech Inc 361 Massachusetts Ave Arlington MA 02174 800 848 8408 WATCOM Just when it would seem to be futile for another C compiler to enter the market an old hand at mainframe software jumps right in WATCOM is based in Waterloo Ontario and is well known for its IBM mainframe compilers especially WATFOR Editor s note Rumor has it they ll be coming out shortly with a flexible new lan guage called WATEVER WATELSE would they call it and I understand they have an even more dramatic product on tap It s a non fattening liquid refreshment for programmers called WATER Now they ve introduced a complete C development system for IBM com patibles Actually there are two C packages from WATCOM The first is Express C an inexpensive 75 prototyping com piler with an integrated environment The other is a full blown development system containing the optimizing C 6 0 compiler and tools for 295 Express C is included in the more comprehensive package much like the way Microsoft includes QuickC with their optimizing compiler Express C unlike QuickC cannot be used by itself to generate professional quality programs An empty program generates an 83K executable for ex ample Express C has built in debug ging functions and is targeted primarily at the educational market The main compiler is another story Here we have a high powered op
166. es the move statement fairly efficiently so there is no significant speed penalty for doing it this way Restorescr does pretty much the op posite of what savescr does but it does not restore the cursor The assumption is that there has been an intervening window open and use so only the caller knows where the cursor really belongs Clreos is a handy little routine in cluded here because the critical piece of information it needs the number of lines in the currently active window is available With only slight modification it could be used for everyday full screen work Open_window is the routine used to set up a new screen window It first sets the foreground and background colors then if the save flag is TRUE saves the physical screen It then calculates the absolute screen coordinates for the lower right corner of the window and if the border flag is TRUE frames the area The position and size values passed in the window_rec parameter become the active window and the border surrounds that area Finally the window is created and cleared if the clear flag is TRUE The cursor is left at its default position x 1 y 1 The final routine error displays a one line reverse video flashing error message anywhere on the physical screen It then waits for either the programmed number of seconds time or a keystroke Before exit the window described in the window_rec parameter is activated Normally this would be
167. ess time consuming to just chop the schematics into small blocks In the mean time I d written a simple board independent graphics package several test routines and a slide show program As you ve just guessed I don t support text Everything was compiled using Manx Aztec C 86 V 4 10a With the exception of the code that handles flicker on the CGA board it should compile without complaint on most systems Note however that itll only work in a large data model not only because of the huge amount of RAM that it uses but because of the way I accessed the VRAM There isn t enough space to list all the code so I ll document the software here eS a Bytes forming Line of Pi xel 79 New Lower Prices for CP M e VEDIT Version 1 40 49 Single file no windows e VEDIT PLUS Version 2 32 79 Multiple file no windows e VEDIT PLUS Version 2 33 95 Current version with windows TEXT LINE TNDOW Main loop 15 COL 16 FILE PHOTO 203 WINDOW 1 displays the ma VEDIT PLUS is an advanced editor that makes your program development and word do processing as efficient and easy as scrlines SCRLINES possible VEDIT PLUS is simple enough to scrwidth SCRWIDTH learn and use for the novice yet has the clrscreen scr ines 28 speed flexibility and power to satisfy show rain menu the most demanding computer professional ret_val getrange mm_pro VEDIT PLUS is particularly suited for
168. exception handlers in a high level lan guage I think we all agree that Ada is a high level language Finally Mr Isaacson concludes that Tassembly language programs match high level programs in reliability readability and speed of development In my view he has not presented any evidence to support these claims Marc A Poulin XonTech Inc 6862 Hayvenhurst Ave Van Nuys CA 91406 Seagate Repair Well boys and girls there s good news and bad news from the Seagate folks First the good news When not if your Seagate budget priced hard drive ST 225 238 or 251 craps out and the clone shop you bought it from has gone chapter 13 not to worry Our buddies in Delray Beach Florida have imple mented their long awaited orphan policy Here s the way it works Call 1 305 278 5899 explain the situation and get an RMA number Then ship the dead drive along with 35 skinny frogs flat rate exchange fee to Seagate Technologies Congress Park South 430 Commerce Dr Delray Beach FL 33445 Seagate will ship back a rebuilt more better drive Now the bad news Don t be in a hurry When I got my RMA number I was assured that the turn around time was less than ten days I sprung for Fed Ex shipping to get the broken puppy down there ASAP Today when I called ten days after Seagate had received my drive I was told that it would be another week before paper work made it upstairs When
169. extraction Hear lots of nice comments about these 12 50 a box 10 boxes 110 1 Ib HELP The command DOS forgot DOS HELP by Flambeaux Easier and faster than the DOS manual Usage examples are very good too List 35 Our price 20 1 Ib Nice Print Take you all evening to sample all the Fonts in this one Roman Script Olde English etc List 95 Our price 70 2 Ib Six foot parallel printer cable Not the cheap ones but the DB25 with the knurled fastener Centronics parallel on the other end of course 10 1 Ib Six outlet power strip With 3 prong plug switch circuit breaker and MOV surge suppressors Why pay up to 75 for this protection when you can buy for the Beary Friendly price of 15 3 Ib Dbase Application in Business ISBN 0 8359 1241 8 A 335 page 8 x11 book published by Reston Publishing Company Inc A Prentice Hall Company 4 2 Ib TERMS Cashier s check immediate shipment Personal checks Money Orders and others must clear No C O D No Collect Calls All prices FOB Torrance CA All items shipped UPS Contact your local UPS office for freight charges Approximate shipping weights in product description 213 316 5866 9 to 5 PST 4306 Torrance Boulevard Torrance California 90503 offices only Quantities limited to stock on hand on most items Add 2 handling to each order California residents add 61 2 sales tax See note above regarding freight charges Reader Service Num
170. f C You may have seen the ads for Stony Brook Modula 2 I come not to praise C but to bury it Yes Dave our en thusiastic editor I know this is a C programming column However I m an on again off again fan of the Modula 2 language and I just had to check out the benchmark claims in the ad For the uninitiated Modula 2 is an outgrowth of Pascal Both were designed by Niklaus Wirth Modula 2 is a strongly typed language just like Pas cal and has support for multitasking While I hate the way it does I O a dif ferent statement for every data type Give us a break Mr Wirth Modula 2 has some interesting features Most Modula 2 compilers generate mediocre code The Stony Brook com piler is an exception Not only will the compiler and libraries fit on just one 360K disk but it generates small fast programs This compiler even produces programs which work with Microsoft Windows and OS 2 While I don t ex pect it to bury C it certainly is a con tender Stony Brook Software Forest Rd Wilton NH 03086 603 654 2525 A Speedy Tip Many C compilers including Turbo C and Microsoft C have options for generating code for more advanced microprocessors than the 8088 or 8086 found in most PC compatibles If you have a NEC V 20 in your machine you do if you use a recent Kaypro PC you can set the compiler switches to generate instructions for the 80186 microprocessor This will make your program
171. fferent tests to check standard extended and expanded memory BOTH PC XT and PC AT SETS save 55 179 KEYBOARD Verifies that all keys send correct key codes After eight years of designing superior diagnostic software for including shift CNTL and ALT modes fact i f t CAPITAL SOFTWARE 7 manufacturers of computer equipment Tw CPU amp NUMERIC COPROCESSOR Verifies that all single and has created the definitive diagnostics package for both multiple instructions perform correctly and accurately as well personal and professional use For your custom needs let as testing all internal registers CAPITAL s experienced team provide the best solution VIDEO DISPLAY Checks video controller cards Confirms available attributes graphics colors if applicable and CRT alignment patterns SEND CHECK OR MONEY ORDER TO USE YOUR VISA OR MASTER CARD REAL TIME CLOCK Verifies correct timing all internal CAPITAL SOFTWARE registers and battery backed up RAM 300 DAVEY GLEN ROAD SUITE 331 S BELMONT CALIFORNIA 94002 VISA ey and many more features to insure the integrity of your computer 415 592 9076 os MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 21 parallel to the plane so it isn t changed by reflection B is normal to the plane so it s fully reflected by the plane B be comes B after reflection Thus the reflected vector R is A B The decomposition of I into A and B has been given early I eN B N
172. g at 16 MHz will need an 80287 10 at least Wrapping Up So let s wrap up this ramble with a few prices and suggestions First if you re going with an 8 or 10 MHz mainboard or system piecing a system together part by part main board here drives there video over yonder etc is probably safe But it won t necessarily save you time or money Editor s note Some of those new Jr sized AT cards can simply replace your XT motherboard Everything else including the hard and floppy controllers simply plugs right in and runs Though you may need an AT specific keyboard Most clone companies have all the clone parts you need at fairly consis tent prices and if you buy everything from one you ll probably 1 save money 2 save work they ll put the system together for you AND MAKE SURE IT WORKS 3 and have someone to tell your troubles to over the long haul If you re in the mood to upgrade to an AT there are a few good deals A 10 MHz 80286 with 1 megabyte of conventional RAM could go as low as 600 under 400 w o RAM A very fast 16 MHz 80286 AT board with 1 meg of SIMM DRAM goes for about 1 000 A good price for a 386 board alone with two megs of SRAM is about 1 600 I didn t see anyone selling a 386 with 1 meg for under 1 500 The best price I found on a 10 MHz 0 wait state system with 640K RAM dual in line 20 meg hard disk 1 2 meg floppy Hercules compatible adapt er and
173. ge Manual Cumulative Character Attributes De inten ADD 40 FOR A amp T OPTIONAL EPROM FOR PC XT STYLE SERIAL KEYBOARD 15 SOURCE DISKETTE PC XT FORMAT 5 IN 15 Digital Research Computers P O BOX 381450 e DUNCANVILLE TX 75138 214 225 2309 Call or write for a free catalog on Z 80 or 6809 Single Board Computers SS 50 Boards and other S 100 products TERMS Add 3 00 postage We pay balance Orders under 15 add 75 handling No C O D We accept Visa and MasterCard Texas Res add 6 1 4 Tax Foreign orders except Canada add 20 P amp H Orders over 50 add 85 for insurance Reader Service Number 32 78 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 surface after the post office sent us the new rates They raised the foreign airmail rates from around 4 per copy to as high as 5 50 So we re increasing the subscription rates for foreign airmail and we re keeping the old rates for surface We considered reducing the surface rate a bit but when we checked the new surface rates and added in postage for renewal notices and returned magazines we pay to get them back if they can t deliver them it didn t work out In Praise Of FORTRAN I was amused to find out that the final score in the contest between Scien tist and FORTRAN indicated that the scientist was the loser Or so Mr Eckel claims in Micro C Issue 40 FORTRAN is not as he indicated around due to tradition and mis construed convenience Th
174. gure 1 The contents of BottomLine is also returned along with some other junk by the EGA BIOS call INT 10h function 1130h You can try looking here for the screen size as well But many cards in their efforts to not be mistaken for an EGA don t implement this call On the other hand there may be some cards that implement this call but not the BottomLines variable at 40 84 itself Maybe you should check both There is one exception though Since BottomLine didn t exist until EGA came along older cards don t store any thing at that location and they don t implement function 1130h either If this is the case BottomLine will 0 just check for this condition and change 0 to 24 The Award AT BIOS does this for you at boot time And what about different column sizes That s easy NumColumns is stored in the word at 0040 004Ah It is also returned by the GetVideoMode ROM BIOS call INT 10h function OFh NumColumns is in 1 to n format i e if you are dealing with an 80 column monitor NumColumns 80 Num Columns was supported even in the original IBM ROM BIOS so it should al ways be set correctly no matter what kind of card is installed Now we know how big the screen is Where is it Usually video cards that are pretending to be a large CGA or MDA will just use the same mode settings as their smaller cousins Just do INT 10h function OFh if the returned mode is 7 the video buffer is at addres
175. he OMTI con trollers seem to be working fine on XT class machines If you find some no name that s selling for 20 less stop and think for a minute about the possible aggravation that 20 could cause you later on when your system fails at 3 a m the night before that big demo at UNISYS I guess if cheap bottom of the line ugly scum is really what you want though I would be wary of buying RLL Pop Of The Stack Anyway while I was talking to the programmer at Logitech I decided I should tell everyone how to write programs that could take advantage of large screens automatically Since it s so damned easy there s no reason why everyone shouldn t do it What follows is a slightly polished version of what I have sent off in the mail to a couple of people Programming For Large Screens NOTE The following procedure is com patible with EGA and VGA as well as the original CGA MDA and Hercules in text mode It s also compatible with the PC Tech 34010 Monochrome Graphics Adapter Other manufacturers adapters should be compatible with this but I don t know for sure If they aren t they should be Using this method is easy and it s based on exist ing standards Background Most large screen text displays are simple extensions of either CGA or MDA This means that their video buf fers start at the same address B8000 or B0000 respectively and occupy con tiguous words up to the end of the 58 MI
176. he interleaved memory scheme works mainboard with 1 megabyte of EMS compatible SIMM DRAM on board expandable to 4 megabytes It looks like it s going to be a honey of a system and it s not the least bit furry Bye In short despite high RAM prices you can buy a lot more computing power for the buck now than ever before Back in December 86 when I wrote about building a PC it cost 800 for a minimally equipped XT and at least 2 000 for a minimally equipped AT 256K 2 360K floppies And 2 550 for an AT with a 20 megabyte Seagate This summer you can cut lots of corners and build a minimally equipped AT for less than 1 000 and have at least five times the power of an XT Really it s not a bad time to build a clone References Entsminger Gary Build A PC Clone For Less Than 800 December 1986 Micro Cornucopia 27 p 52 55 Klein Dean Designing With The 80386 February 1987 Micro Cor nucopia 34 p 6 10 Malloy Rich G Vose G Stewart The Tandy Anniversary Product Ex plosion BYTE October 1987 p 100 McNierney Ed The WYSEpc BYTE April 1988 p 211 Poor Alfred High Speed ATs Life In The Fast Lane PC Magazine April 14 1987 p 119 Van Name Mark The PC s Limited 386 BYTE December 1987 p 141 By Irv Mullins Rt 1 Box 312C Talking Rock GA 30175 404 635 5750 Way Beyond Desktop Or The Curse Of The Automated Heads
177. he internal control bus is seen only by the expansion cards again all except J8 and an LS243 quad bus transceiver The LS243 separates the internal and external control busses and lets either the 8288 or the DMA Controller generate the control signals DMAAEN the DMA Address Enable signal see DMA section below which is active during DMA XT Processor Circuit transfers sets the direction of the LS243 An active DMAAEN on the LS243 s enable inputs lets control signals flow from external where the DMA Con troller lives to internal expansion card land And a high DMAAEN sets the direction from internal 8288 to external So either the 8288 or the DMA Controller has access to both busses at the ap propriate time SYSTEM CLOCK Y1 5 38 pF 14 31818 MHz READY RESET CLK88 4 77 MHz OSC 12 14 318 MHz f Ny 2 PCLK CONTROL BUS lt lt lt K lt lt lt DOononnonnono bd CONTROL BUS RNS 4 7K x 5 CONTROL BUS INTERNAL DATA BUS INTERNAL DATA BUS INTERNAL ADDRESS BUS INTERNAL ADDRESS BUS 26 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 NMI Parity errors on the system board or If the NMI makes it through the maze the 8088 jumps to the NMI handler and respond when it s ready Also the BUSY output of the 8087 the I O channel or 8087
178. hind the hardware or any of that It s all under the bridge Forget about that look at it as an oppor tunity It may not be ideal but it has some powerful features and it s an emerging standard And most important it exists finally And you have to admit that it s better than DOS I know I ll catch some shrapnel on that one but that s what I think Editor s note People who live in in flatable boats should avoid shrapnel Anyway lately what I ve been talk ing to people about is Does your machine BOOT OS 2 For a surpris ingly large number of those who pur chased early cheap AT clones the answer is a devastating NO Many things can contribute to this in compatibility Among them are winchester controllers with their own ROM BIOSes incompatible motherboard BIOSes incompatible put your own here It s really kind of scary One of my reasons for wanting a 286 machine for this trip was that I want to do some serious looking at OS 2 Since OS 2 can kind of be equated with large libraries and big programs I had wanted to use an RLL controller on my machine and get 30 Megs for the price of 20 plus a little But when I slapped an RLL controller in the box admittedly an XT style OMTI control ler the machine refused to have any MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 57 thing to do with OS 2 at all The AT style OMTI we have wouldn t boot OS 2 either I finally became par
179. how all of the major screens as well as several of the underly ing screens The object is to allow the potential user to work through the screen linkages in as realistic a fashion as possible The second portion of the demonstration package is the user manual Yes I am suggest ing that you write a preliminary user manual before you lay one line of code onto the screen Writing the user manual and developing demonstration software will go a long way toward pointing out problem areas Remember good software is consistent ALT C does the same thing in all screens Nothing is more frustrating to a user except maybe nonfunctional software than inconsis tencies in the human interface One of the strengths of Macintosh software is that Apple imposed certain constraints on the human interface So it s consistent not only within a program but also among programs Developing a demo package and a user manual before writing any code may seem like a lot of work It is But it will save you time in the long run Avoiding just one major rewrite will more than pay for the effort Another benefit of producing this demo package is that when it comes time to write the final manuals they ll already be organized Also when you go out to bid for writing the manuals you will be able to save yourself big money by cutting the time the writer will need riting a manual before starting to code the product might seem backward It s really no
180. how to define their first product line and it worked The most important thing to remem ber is to listen to your customer base MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 69 W AN By John Paul Jones 6245 Columbia Ave St Louis MO 63139 314 645 1596 N 3 Writing Your Own Window Unit Don t Buy A Library Do It Yourself You can purchase a package of Pascal window ing utilities or you can follow along as John creates a very solid set Join him as he takes advantage of the new Turbo units to enhance his user interfaces Ithough I indicated last time this column would be about mixed lan guage programming it s turned out that it will be better to postpone that topic for a while Instead I ll talk about applica tion windows With regards to the text screen a window is an area to which normal output with WRITE or WRITELN will be restricted Beginning with version 2 DOS Turbo Pascal has had built in support for screen windows Try this little program program windemo uses crt needed for version 4 var i integer ch char begin window 15 5 65 12 for i 0 to 2000 do write chr i mod 224 32 don t allow ctl chars read ch wait for input end The WINDOW statement in this program defines a screen area with upper left corner at x 15 y 5 and lower right corner at x 65 y 12 Rather than filling the screen with an in crementing character pattern
181. ice names S04 for 74504 in place of U numbers and we re using signal names e g RESET in place of pin numbers We re doing this because most of you have clones and though the U numbers and pin numbers may differ the device names and the signals remain in nearly all cases the same Note A signal named RESET would be active would reset the system when the line is high 4V or above A signal named RESET sometimes called RESET NOT or RESET BAR would be active when the line is low 1V or lower Schematic drafters usually put a line above names of signals that are active low Clock The PC s heartbeat comes from an 8284 clock generator All of the 8000 series chips here are spawn of Intel Ac tually the 8284 spits out three clock sig nals OSC a 1431818 MHz symmetric square wave goes to the I O bus for use by peripheral cards This signal is also used by the 8284 to create the other two clock signals The frequency of the OSC output depends on the crystal connected to the 8284 A variable capacitor labeled color 24 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 adjust by IBM lets you fine tune the crystal s frequency The name color adjust comes from the fact that IBM s CGA card requires a very precise 14 31818 MHz and 3 579 MHz 14 31818 4 The 8284 can also accept an external clock input and switch between that and OSC But its clock source select input is held low through an LS04 inverter c
182. id hop over to Micro Sphere to rummage through their boneyard This is what happened The first system was a Kaypro XT clone It wouldn t display anything no matter what video board I wasn t op timistic but I tried the ROM Nothing on the screen though I did get the introduc tory beep and two beeps later on The second system worked but I stuck some suspect RAM into it to see how well Windsor isolated RAM problems Windsor reported no errors so I bent a pin on one of the RAM chips It seems that every second or third system I work on I accidentally bend a pin or a socket doesn t work right so open pins are a pretty common problem First I bent under pin 10 address line 5 reset the system and guess what No error Now there s a reason Windsor s missing the problem The processor doesn t care where data winds up in RAM It just issues an address and data Later when it reissues the address it ex pects to read the same data Well a dis connected address pin won t change that However that missing pin will cause later data to be written over earlier data since only half the RAM chip is being used The way to detect this kind of error is to write all ones to the first half of memory and all zeros to the second half Then go back and read the entire first California New York Washington Atlanta St Lus Dallas Seattle and other major cities Call Reader Service Number 59 16 MICRO CORNUCOPIA
183. ile I ve been certified to NASA 5200 and Mil S 45783 I have an aversion to reworking boards unless it s really necessary I ve lost a few that way This was an experi ment and for all I knew I d have to try several values of pot to get what I wanted The mod worked so well that I just left it If the chip ever dies I ll probably pull R6 and add the pot Philip W Elrod 3245 Spring Dr NW Doraville GA 30360 Imperfect Date I am wondering if any of your readers has a solution to the date limitation of Perfect Filer v 1 2 The limitation is that the maximum number it will accept for the year is 88 So the date feature of the program will be of no use after 1988 I have called and written Kaypro Thorne EMI and Perfect Software in Eugene Oregon getting either I don t know or no response at all I would appreciate it very much if you or one of your readers could help Fred Horton 180 Marsh Ave Metuchen NJ 08840 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 83 By John S Allen 7 University Park Waltham MA 02154 617 891 9307 Bringing Up The Micro C 256K Mod On 83 Kaypros This is a fine tuning on the popular 256K upgrade for 83 Kaypros The hardware portion of this mod is not trivial and we strongly suggest that you not try it unless you build digital circuits on a regular basis Also this adds a 190K RAM disk not additional program memory See issues 30 83 Kaypros and 34
184. iniscribe has the best technical sup port MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 9 What about 3 1 2 drives in general 3 1 2 drives are like the others they read write seek and spin and they have their share of problems The 8425 Miniscribe is the leader in the 3 1 2s Rodime also has a good 3 1 2 If I Can Butt In A Minute I should mention here that I ve also heard good things about the Miniscribe 5 1 4 half height 40 meg and I ve been hearing more and more positive reports about the latest Seagate 251s The 251 is faster and cheaper than the Miniscribe and its infant failures at least seem to have disappeared But a Seagate technician I talked to in early April mentioned a call he d just received from a customer All 15 of their 251s had failed The guy was crying on the phone and there wasn t a thing I could do for him I really felt awful In late March I came across one of the latest full height Seagates 4038 4051 It had a new non kachunking park mechanism Listen to the drive as power is removed if there s a loud kachunk it s an old one Hopefully the park fix will make those voice coil monsters really solid I ve had numerous repair people tell me that single handedly the Seagate 238 30 meg has given RLL a bad name A few are still insisting that be cause controller manufacturers are still tweaking the technology RLL may not be ready for prime time Of
185. is sucker is fast too As I m sitting at home on Sunday writing this my very early prototype is still poling along at 10 MHz 0 waits shades of Venice but the newer models are run ning at 16 MHz 1 wait state Monte Carlo now And I ve been promised an upgrade before I leave on Thursday By the time I hit the airport I ll have a 16 MHz 286 2 MB of RAM expan dable to 4 MB on the CPU card 20 MB of winchester oh and by the way don t forget the 34010 video board sans monitor unfortunately all packed into a little black shoulder bag that will slide right under my seat The final score About 1 25 lb per MHz How much did it cost About the same as a fully outfitted Avon Red shank inflatable At least the way I out fit Avon Redshanks I think Gary is going to have more to say about portables and inflation in this or the next issue Last time I talked to him he was babbling some thing about Colorado mountains and 286 clones so I ll leave most of the details to him Updates I have been in communication with Logitech since last issue They sent me a newer version of the Point editor which fixes some of the bugs I had found Some are still there but the program mer says that he s working on them He also agreed that Point should be made y the time hit the airport PII have a 16 MHz 286 2 MB of RAM amp 20 MB of winchester all packed into a little black shoulder bag
186. it transfer on AT bus Single board design eincludes RAM disk and extensive diagnostics Quantity OEM discounts Designed N Manufactured l E ES Sold and Serviced by ea ce f Cy XT and AT Compatible 904 North 6th St Lake City MN 55041 612 345 4555 Es TD Reader Service Number 54 THE COMMAND System e Instant Access to Any Directory on Your Hard Disk e Automatically Generated Short Names For Every Directory e All Our Programs Use Short Names e Copy Erase Rename Move Compare Search with e Consistent Command Structure e Multiple Operations On a Line Built in Help Super Programs to Show Files amp Directories Call 301 969 8068 O N L Y with your order now 75 CompuMagic inc P O Box 437 Severn Maryland 21144 Reader Service Number 95 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 198889 1988 SOG Tentative List Of Speakers Friday July 15 Louis Baker Earl Hinrichs PC Tech How to get your Technical Book Published 3D Graphics on the 34010 Joe Bartel Hawthorne Technology Willy Steiger Logitech Generic MicroProcessors Hitachi HD641016 Inside Logitech s Modula 2 Bill Weinman Greg Lobdell Microsoft Why C is not the Devil s Programming Language The Design of Programming Languages Earl Brabandt Inte Corp Allyn Franklin Drive Masters PS 2 Design Drive Diagnostics Mike Sequiera Micro C Chaos 101 Staff forum Jim Warren Founder West Coast Computer Faire To be announced Bru
187. k file or printer You can check the equation itself or ask Eureka to continue searching iteratively for a Satisfactory solution Or change the active variables or constants and search for an entirely different solu tion Using Eureka s windows you can solve up to 20 equations at once It s all done with pull down menus full help screens and abso lutely no agony And all for just 167 System Requirements For the IBM PS 2 and the IBM and Compaq families of personal computers and all 100 compatibles PC DOS MS DOS 2 0 and later 384K Eureka The Solver olve omnands eport raph ptions indow Plot Edit Verify Help F2 Save F3 Load F5 Zoom F6 Next F7 Beg Blk F8 End Blk Size nove Eureka instantly solved this Physics equation by immediately calculating how much work is required to compress isobarically 2 grams of oxygen initially at STP to 1 2 its original volume In Science Engineering Finance and any application involving equa tions Eureka gives you the right answer right now Easy as a Calculator Powerful as a Mainframe Pull down menus Full screen text editor Context sensitive help On screen calculator Automatic 8087 math coprocessor support Inequality constraints Powerful built in and user defined math and financial functions Report generation com plete with plots and lists Polynomial root finder 11 Merely difficult problems Eureka solved virtually instantaneo
188. king function Input response macros Enhances These Functions Format disks faster than DOS Make and erase subdirectories Copy rename and erase files Copy files to printer or COM ports Display disk free space and other media information Check and set the time and date Benefits Saves Time No waiting to exit or reload programs Instant access to DOS functions whatever your current task Easily saves 10 or more minutes a day Comprehensive Broad range of ot commands including many not supplied by DOS Satisfies the needs of both new and advanced M users e Simplifies DOS No need to remember exact DOS commands Intuitive interface and point and ne shoot design saves keystrokes and prevents mistakes Group file tagging avoids the drudgery of repetitive commands Security Capability to hide un hide subdirectories password lock a computer and check for un wanted prog ams in RAM helps secure data and prevent unauthor ized access Other Information Not copy protected Uses only 51K of memory Supports EGA amp Hercules Runs memory resident or as a stand alone program Uninstall command PC XT AT 100 Compatibles Order Today Only 49 95 WindowDOS Associates Box 300488 C Arlington Tx 76010 817 467 4103 Reader Service Number 14 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 63 Anthony Barcellos P O
189. l 0 is dedicated to memory refresh The 8237 generates its own addresses through its AO A7 and DBO DB7 pins The low order byte of address goes from A0 A7 to an LS244 octal buffer Bits 8 15 come from DBO DB7 and feed an LS373 octal latch This portion of the address gets strobed into the LS373 by the 8237 s Address Strobe ADSTB output The last four bits of address don t come from the DMA Controller The DMA Page Register holds ad dress bits 16 19 This LS670 4X4 register file must be programmed before a DMA transfer with the high nybble of address for whatever DMA channel will be used All 3 chips have their outputs enabled by DMA Address Enable DMAAEN and the full address goes out onto the in ternal address bus DMAAEN occurs in response to a Hold Request HRQ by the 8237 HRQ requests that the 8088 release the busses for the DMA activity The 8088 doesn t respond directly to the re quest Instead an LS20 positive NAND gate watches SO S1 LOCK and HRQ The only time S0 and S1 are both high is when the processor s either halted or has finished an instruction So when HRQ goes high and the 28 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 arity is simple Sorta We re dealing with 8 data bits and one parity bit The parity bit is used to make sure the total number of 1 bits is odd processor finishes its current task the output of the LS20 goes low assuming we re not executing a locked inst
190. line mode Obviously these programs were well written they can support dif ferent screen sizes Obviously they re not seeing the whole picture What hap pens if I happen to own a machine that has a 42 line display What about 66 lines And I haven t even mentioned the possibility of 90 columns 132 columns etc And I m being simplistic What if every card on the market had a dif ferent number of columns More realis tically even if the largest commercially viable cheap screen is 43 lines by 80 columns today what if tomorrow some body comes up with an incredible new technology A technology for instance that supports multiple hardware font sizes on a screen with a user program mable resolution up to 200 by 200 characters Wouldn t you like it if your software had built in support already working Motherboard 6 amp 10 Meg Zero Wait State 8 Expansion Slots 1 Meg RAM On Board Math Co processor Option Phoenix Bios 200 Watt Power Supply Hercules Compat Video Board Parallel Port 2 Serial Ports Active Game Port Clock Calendar Hard Disk amp Floppy Controller 20M Hard Drive 1 2M 5 Floppy Drive 360K 5 Floppy Drive 5061 Keyboard Case with Turbo amp Reset Hard Drive Light and Keyboard Disable Switch Amber Graphics Monitor 1581 EGA ADD 449 40M HD ADD 150 6 amp 12 MHz ADD 73 ERAC CO BABY AT Motherboard 6 amp 10 Meg Zero Wait State 8 Expansion Slots 80286 Processor Math Co
191. ll use for demonstra tions Once you have made sure that there are no major problems with this release it is time to hit the dog and pony circuit again But this time you have an addi tional need Not only are you looking for input on your product but you will be looking for a company or two to help you wring the bugs out These test sites are invaluable If you have an especially good relationship with one of the companies that you have used for product evaluation try them first It will always be easier to convince someone who knows you to try your product Remember that very often smaller organizations are more willing to take a chance on an untried product or concept PROMPT DELIVERY SAME DAY SHIPPING USUALLY QUANTITY ONE PRICES SHOWN for MAY 3 1988 36 50 13 50 14 50 14 00 13 50 13 50 12 50 16 95 37 50 14 95 7 50 6 95 FREE BONUS You ll be even more productive with Show Me Version III the 59 95 pop up file viewing and pasting power tool sent FREE with your paid order 80287 8 80387 16 160 00 245 00 80387 20 8087 2 S Test Sites The test site serves two very crucial purposes The first is actual hands on evaluation and real life use of your product Second when you go out to market your product and the customer not wanting to be the first person to buy it asks who s using the product you can say XYZ Corp If XYZ Corp is a competitor the cus tomer will wonder
192. log 210 Hacienda Ave Campbell CA 95008 attn Jim Magill Wordstar 4 0 amp Kaypro Intensity Mod My my what a nice surprise I received a letter from Micropro offering to upgrade my Wordstar 3 3 to 4 0 for about 95 They promised to have fixed all those annoyances that have resulted in the patch tables for WS 3 3 on the pbbs Should I buy Decisions decisions After all I have a rather well patched up version of 3 3 for my two Kaypros and make do nice ly with that Most of the patches con cern my outlaw printer a Canon PW 1156A aka Centronics H136A It s al most an FX 80 clone almost It has NLQ but I haven t been able to switch it on from inside the program without giving up something else Maybe the new version has a driver for it I or New 2180 Processor And Variable Half Intensity Mod For Kaypros dered it And it came All six diskettes And a large book And I m in love Spend the money I have a lot more control over my printer now except that the NLQ still doesn t work from inside the program All the goodies are there like propor tional spacing variable character width and mailmerge built in Micropro uses reverse video to mark blocks in the text just as before But now they use half intensity video for the text so that they can use normal video for highlighted commands and bold text They recognize that this may cause problems and have provided a patch to reverse the situation so
193. lways connect to the same pins on the larger 24 40 pin chips However the U numbers assigned to ICs will usually be different from the original and in dividual gates within packages of gates will often be wired differently Since 1963 e Electronic Components amp Test Equip e Prototyping amp Hobby Supplies E79 Halted specialties ca e Computers Lasers amp Optics HSC Electronic Supply of Santa Rosa Turn your IBM PC XT AT or compatibles into a powerful Lab Engineering I O station PC LabCard F Data Acquisition amp Control Lab Automation PCL 712 Multi Lab 12 Bit A D D A DIO Counter PCL 712 Multi Lab is a low cost single board solution for data acquisi tion and control with all the following functions in one card Analog Input A D converter 16 single ended channels 12 bit Input range 5V to SV O to 8 2V or 0 to 5V Analog Output D A converter 2 Channels 12 bit 5V 5V 8 2V 8 2V unipolar or bipolar Digital 1 O Input patible Output compatible Counter 3 3 Channels of timer counter 2950 PCL 725 Relay Actuator and Isolated D I Card PCL 725 offers 8 programmable SPDT relays for ON OFF control or small power switching and 8 channel opto isolated inputs which can be used as digital input under noisy environ ment or floating potential 16 channels TTL com 16 channels TTL Relay Actuator Outputs
194. m and used their un delete utility to recover the files However I was bummed that the recovery portion didn t work better I tested the package on a floppy and it restored the directory just fine H TEST H FORMAT I m not finished before I tell you about the H TEST H FORMAT pack age This set includes the program HOPTIMUM and it reformats a single track with interleaves of 1 to 16 and tells you the data transfer rate for each interleave Afterwards the original data is written back onto the track Wow one of my drives had an inter leave of 3 25Kbytes sec At 4 the program reported 80K bytes sec and then the rate declined slowly after 4 So I had the program reformat the drive at an interleave of 4 HOPTIMUM rewrites the data onto each track after doing the low level for mat As far as I can tell the only way you re going to lose data with this pack age is to have power problems during the reformat These routines were written by Kolod Research and are marketed by Paul Mace Every computer dealer every clone builder and every user group whose members care about sys tem performance should have a copy of this package It s not copy protected Finally I don t have to tell you that hard drives are important I don t have to tell you that data is important But I may have to tell you that no matter what kind of hard drive you have it s going to fail The differences among drives are not whether
195. ment and at that point I suddenly lost interest in persuin the subjek any further We bought one of them PageMucker programs insted All that was left was to write th news stories I didn t know where we were goin to git all th reporters and corryspondents we d need but LuBell had already thought of that She hauled an old TellyType in from th barn hooked it up to a cereal port on one of th PC s and wrote a short program in Turbo Pascal which she explained would generate random headlines Then we set back to let th news roll in Boy th place really looked sounded and smelt like a workin newspaper with that Telly Type chunkin away All we had to do was pick an excitin headline and fill in th details Just like all the big time publycations do accordin to LuBell Well since then The Talking Rock Tattler has been sellin like hotcakes We d like to share our good fortune with your readers so we are makin Miz LuBell s headline maker program available free of charge to Micro C readers The program requires a word data base to run An ASCII file which contains the entire MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 75 386 386 386 386 386 386 386 386 386 386 386 CLONE SYSTEM 386 RUNNING AT 20 MEG Hz WITH O WAIT MDA CGA EGA VGA ON MOTHER BOARD 2 SERIAL AND 2 PARALLEL PORTS ONE MEG RAM ON BOARD WA2 HARD FLOPPY CONTROLLER CASE KEYBOARD AND POWER SUPPLY EGA MONITOR 40 MEG HARD DRIVE AN
196. mpatiCard with UniFORM PC x x Special x x 225 00 CompatiCard with UniFORM PC amp high density or 312 drive x x x Special x x x 350 00 MatchPoint PC by MicroSolutions The MatchPoint PC board for the PC XT AT works with your Standard controller card to let you read and write to NorthStar hard sector and Apple II diskettes on your PC INCLUDES a copy of the UniForm PC program as well as utilities to format disks copy delete and view files on Apple DOS PRODOS and Apple CP M diskettes MatchPoint PC Board 169 95 MatchMaker by MicroSolutions Now you can copy your Macintosh diskettes right on your PC XT AT with the MatchMaker Just plug your external Macintosh drive into the MatchMaker board and experience EASY access to your 31 Mac diskettes Includes programs to read write initialize and delete files on your single or double sided Mac diskettes MatchMaker Board 139 95 MatchMaker w External Mac Drive 325 00 Frustrated because your PC can t speak CP M UniDOS by Micro Solutions Run CP M programs on your PC Of course UniDOS is a memory resident program that can use the NEC V20 CPU chip to actually RUN your favorite 8080 programs Use UniDOS with UniForm PC and automatically switch to CP M mode as you log on your CP M diskette Switch to emulation mode to run Z80 code programs or for systems without a V20 UniDOS directly converts video and keyboard emulation for Kaypro Xerox 820 Morrow Osborne VT100 and eight othe
197. n check all the outputs with an inexpensive logic probe that s how I debugged the hardware For graphics details check issue 39 jan Feb 1988 Larry Fogg shows you how to put dots on a Hercules graphics screen and Gary Entsminger does dots on an EGA So you can put it all together and create an oscilloscope Next Time Next issue IlI show you how to build your own PC bus interface card using a plug in board covered with super strips By using the cable configuration I showed last issue to connect the two machines you can start up Procomm on the second machine and log into the first one If you want to change directories and hunt for files you can start a DOS shell on the first machine from the second I was moving files back and forth at 19 2 Kbaud It wasn t a local area net work but it didn t cost a fortune either C The C charge continues The best news is the forthcoming 99 compiler Lou byte present after second rising clock gt And Furthermore Notes and information about various projects and related subjects have been piling up so here are a few notes to bring you up to date I mentioned in the last issue that I use communications programs to transfer files back and forth between my two computers Since then I ve discovered a particularly nice system Procomm has something called host mode which you can use to set one machine up as a simple bulletin board system BBS
198. n Sunnyvale California PC SIG has placed over 550 megabytes there s no decimal point in that 550 comprising 15 000 separate files on a single compact disk It s their entire software library of over 900 volumes conventional 360K diskettes in one small package Of course the price is not quite as small You may buy the PC SIG CD ROM Library for 295 on a one time purchase basis For 495 you ob tain not only the compact disk but the next update as well Every update is a brand new disk says PC SIG sales assistant Robin Plotts We add one hundred to two hundred new programs every time An update comes out about every six months and the next version is due in April or so PC SIG has thus far released four ver sions of the CD ROM Few PCs presently sport CD ROM drives as peripherals so the one disk library is not exactly a commodity item yet Even so it does offer a remarkable opportunity to collect the entire con tents of PC SIG s extensive shareware library in a convenient form Or would you rather juggle a thousand floppies CIRCUIT BOARDS Not everyone is as delighted with the CD ROM library as its creators Some shareware authors regard the one disk library as a step backward The PC SIG CD ROM is disliked by some shareware authors because it freezes our programs says Neil Rubenking author of Piano Man and a leader of the San Francisco PC Users Group Even if an auth
199. n be used to retrieve the value of a variable from the local copy of the en vironment Some libraries even provide a function usually called putenv to store new variables in this area You can use the pointer in the PSP if you want to write your own functions to access the application s local copy of the environment Unfortunately the local environment is temporary it goes away when the program finishes And modifications to the global environment are not reflected in the local copy Let s say you have a program which wants to leave a message behind for other programs For instance a con figuration program might load setup info into the global environment Per haps you want a program to remember where it was when you restart it Since the local environment is temporary how can we put a variable into the global one The Ultimate Lap lop The McTek286B Lap Top com bines the fastest most reliable AT motherboard available with the most visible full size LCD lap top screen on the market Running at a switchable 8 or 10 MHz it includes a 20MB hard disk 3 floppy drive color monitor or a digital or composite monochrome monitor Included also is an external 51 4 floppy port for reading and converting to 34 disks 51 4 external drive w case power supply 179 when purchased with Lap Top The McIek 286B Lap Top comes fully assem parallel amp serial ports Award electroluminescently
200. n the PCX graphics file for mat I was looking for an article on PCX Well he figured out the format and we ve got an article he Picture file format used by IE for their PC Paintbrush program has become one of the more popular formats around I took an interest in it because I needed to get diagrams into Ventura Publisher The PCX format turned out to be easy to work with The files can be loaded and written quickly using a set of simple functions Screen update is fast and the screen can easily be panned around a large picture Drawing operations for multi color formats aren t as fast but that s due to the data structure that I ve chosen I d like to start by describing PCX pic tures in general terms The Header and Color palette are complicated enough to work through in detail I ll finish with a description of the modules that I ve writ ten to generate write read and display PCX pictures You ll probably want to make many improvements to them but they should get a PCX related project off the ground for you The Basic Structure A PCX file consists of a 128 byte header followed by one or more com pressed picture planes In memory each plane is basically a bit map each bit usually corresponding to a pixel on the screen The number of bits per pixel pixels per byte bytes per line lines per plane and planes per picture are all stored in the header On an EGA board there are four planes see Figure 1 Bit
201. n write protected disks The last of the three inputs to the LS245 comes from an LS27 positive NOR gate This gate s output goes high when ever all three of its inputs External I O Read XIOR XA8 and XA9 go low That is when a read of one of the lower FFh I O ports occurs These ports belong to the system board and include the DMA Controller Interrupt Controller Counter Timer and Programmable Peripheral Interface parallel chip all of which connect to the external data bus So a read of any of the system ports on the external bus sets the LS245 direction from external to in ternal MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 25 The three conditions above cover all external to internal bus data transfers Any other conditions will cause the LS245 to set the direction from internal to external bus The Control Busses We ve talked about the control sig nals Let s go a little deeper I O Read and Write IOR IOW and Memory Read and Write MEMR MEMW all y LOCK 29 V INTR 18 Y READY 22 R Y CLK88 19 CLK RESET 21 RESET NMI 17 QS1 RQ CTI A18 A19 BUSY Vec RQ GTT AD2 BHE S7 AD3 AD an 2 M a O a pm Q O 3g 29 18 AA12 1 READY 22 CLK88 19 3 17 A 8 CLK RESET 21 RESET YROQ GT 31 RQ GTO V Q3e 25 AA16 17 J OU O 090 00 O oo C9090 790 7900 come from the 8288 bus controller This portion of t
202. nce 1977 If you require either TECHNICAL CONSULTING OR CUSTOM ENGINEERING give us a call it would be a pleasure serving you MasterCard Visa Check Money Order or C O D Allow tour weeks for delivery Prices subject to change without notice NOTE NEW ADDRESS amp PHONE NO Slicer Computers Inc 3450 Snelling Ave So Minneapolis MN 55406 612 724 2710 Telex 501357 SLICER UD PC and XT Are Trademarks of International Business Machines Reader Service Number 19 80 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 a A aren t unlimited Fact Suppliers are down to desoldering parts from old boards You can tell they re recycled by looking at the legs They usually get shortened slightly during removal Also you ll probably find several different product dates within a single tube Fact It takes 6 to 9 months for U S manufacturers to get back into RAM production Assuming that Intel and TI were interested in building their own again it would be summer before their parts started showing up Rumor Japanese have gotten together to withhold parts from the U S market to teach us a lesson That s not too reasonable considering how much trouble OPEC has had keeping their members from overproducing Plus the Japanese are getting better money per chip for their 1 meg devices Rumor IBM is playing the Hunt Brothers game with the marketplace by buying up all the uncontracted RAM they can find I understand that this rumo
203. ng G C800 5 That s fine but it doesn t give the drive a chance to warm up Many hard drive experts strongly recommend that you let the drive run at least 2 hours before formatting That way temperature can stabilize before format begins Then plan to format twice followed by a reformat every 6 months or so Sticky Floppies Another problem that crops up from time to time at the old home place has to do with disk errors Micro C receives a lot of disks from all over the world And often they re a real challenge to read They may be unlabeled Pied Piper Quad or even Gnat System 10 disks I m serious Sometimes even if we know the disk format the familiar Not ready error reading disk pops up All may not be lost If one of your disks especially 88 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 one subjected to the rigors of a trip through the Postal Service seems to have given up the ghost try the follow ing Grab the media by the inner hub being careful not to touch the actual data surface and turn it by hand Ex posure to the mails may have caused the media to stick to the jacket On hot muggy days postmen too stick to their jackets If you can free the disk by hand fine If not run each of the four edges of the disk back and forth over the edge of a desk pressing gently It ll be obvious if you ve done any good the disk will turn more freely and you ll be able to read it Micro C Staff
204. niscribe HD with controller SOFTWARE The Twin Spreadsheet Leading Edge Word Processor oiin o A Gases Ventura Desktop Publisher by Xerox Learning Dos MicroSoft ACCESSORIES 1200 Baud Modem Internal Leading Edge Model L Hayes compatible 2400 Baud Modem Internal Leading Edge Model L Hayes compatible 1200 Baud Modem External Hayes compatible V20 8mhz 635555502 Rosanna EEE OT call for prices DEPEND ON MICROSPHERE The components and products we sell are chosen specifically because they have been proven in our own use and testing We guarantee our cards will be compatible when purchased all together vise NEW RE BUILDING YOUR OWN CLONE FREE BOOKLET 90 day warranty 30 day money back subject to restrictions gMicroSphere COMPUTERS MicroSphere Inc P O Box 1221 Bend Oregon 97709 503 388 1194 Hours Monday Friday 9 00 5 30 THE MICRO TECHNICAE JOURNAL MICRO CORN UCOPIA FEATURES David Thompson 8 Keeping Your Hard Drives Running Think you re taking good care of your hard drives Really You re covered for every possible problem Right Ok go ahead and ignore this article Make my day Dan Evans amp Don Doerr 14 Troubleshooting PCs and XTs Chip level troubleshooting doesn t have to take days Ten minutes is th
205. nked with existing libraries in C PASCAL FORTRAN and ASSEMBLER so you can build on previous development and put the power of LOGITECH Modula 2 to work for you right now Fully supports Wirth s latest language definition including ONG INS tire SONEN SE which provides large set support including SET of CHAR Provides optimization for tighter more efficient code generation NEW EDITOR Our new mouse based editor is fully integrated easy to learn fast and easy to use and very customizable Its multiple overlapping windows and color support make it easy to manage parts of one file or several files on the screen at one time You ll love using it with or without a mouse Call for information about our VAX VMS version Site License University Discounts Dealer amp Distributor pricing To place an order call toll free In California 800 552 8885 LOGITECH LOGITECH Inc 6505 Kaiser Drive Fremont CA 94555 Tel 415 795 8500 In Europe LOGITECH Switzerland Tel 41 21 87 9656 Telex 458 217 Tech Ch In the United Kingdom LOGITECH U K Tel 44908 368071 Fax 44908 71751 Troubleshooting PCs and XTs Diagnosing The Frequent Failures Dan Evans works for a technician train ing company and one of their services is supporting the technicians they ve trained If their emphasis on quick diagnosis surprises you then you probably haven t worked in a shop This is an introduction to how they work
206. ns programs use environment variables to hold infor mation on configurations and the loca tions of components Most compilers re quire several variables to be defined in the environment to give search paths for libraries include files and compiler programs The more software products you have installed on your PC the more items will need to be stored in the environment COMMAND COM creates the primary or global environment when a PC boots up Some items are stored in the environment through special inter nal MS DOS commands PATH and PROMPT are two such examples The other way to store environment vari ables is through the SET command The command SET TEMP C TEMPDATA would add a new variable to the en vironment named TEMP with a value of C TEMPDATA The first problem to crop up when using the environment is a lack of space The default environment size is from 128 to 160 bytes depending on your version of MS DOS Although the MS DOS manuals claim that the en vironment will automatically expand if it needs more room it also points out that this expansion can t happen if any memory resident TSR applications have been loaded From my experience the size of the environment when it is created is the size you get to work with thereafter If we want to have a bigger environment our choices depend on our version of MS DOS If you have a version prior to 3 10 you re out of luck unless you own a copy of a Microsoft
207. oard 429 Lap Top Kits 0 0 0 799 RS232 2 port card 35 3MB Multifunction card 125 AC power center 25 g Serial POM card esiak 95 2MB Expansion card 125 AC power Strips 15 Game VO GANG gerrei 15 Multi 1 0 card n 59 Diskette file bOX 9 so Multifunction card 69 Locking slide case 65 Printer or serial cable 8 EGG app sce XTcase 29 200W power supply 75 386 16MHz 2MB 1599 150W power supply 49 Enhanced keyboard 59 286 16MHz 1MB 899 XT keyboard as 42 WD HD floppy Archive Tape Backup controller 129 40MB oe 299 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 53 There are no built in MS DOS func tions for accessing the global environ ment from a user written application in fact MS DOS doesn t even provide a documented way to find it So we re back to sneaking through the unknown MS DOS features Looking at offset 0x16 in the application s PSP we find a pointer to the PSP of the application s parent If the application was executed from the MS DOS prompt this will point to the PSP of COMMAND COM which gosh is the owner of the global en vironment So we should be able to look in the application s PSP find the PSP location of it s owner COMMAND COM and then use the environment pointer in COMMAND COM s PSP to find the global environment While this method works in some versions of M
208. ock cycles to do the same thing Thus 1 wait state means a 50 performance cut A 0 wait state system runs faster but a system designed for 0 wait states will probably be more expensive since you ll pay more for fast RAM and other fast chips Everything must keep up with the CPU Or else In general a 16 MHz CPU requires 80 or 100 ns RAM chips or the system freezes more suddenly than a dewdrop 12 MHz will need 120 ns RAM chips 10 MHz will need 150 ns RAM chips Editor s note Gary s right generally But a lot depends on the quality of the bus signals and the RAM 100 ns RAM has valid data available on the bus about 100 ns after it receives the second half of the ad dress At 10 MHz one clock cycle takes 100 ns Fortunately RAM has a bit over one cycle to get it together and most RAM chips especially Japanese parts are faster than they re marked However it would be much safer if you used 120 ns parts on a 10 MHz 0 wait state system Wait states RAM speed and a few tricks of the trade will determine whether a system flies or not For example a 286 running at 16 MHz 0 wait states will in theory not run with 100 ns RAM But it will run at 0 wait states if consecutive reads are from alternate banks An interleaved memory system or ganizes RAM into 2 banks odd num bered addresses in one bank even num bered addresses in the other Since most data reads or writes are sequential it s unlikely we ll have
209. olio manager and something else Here it is a centipede that crawls around the screen eating screaming software ven dors Three packages for 25 take your pick Any of the bins Bins We re talking plastic wash tubs What an end for programmers dreams of fame and fortune I remember Bend s 4th of July craft faire During the first few years it was craftspeople showing their wares and families selling home baked specialties But as the crowds grew the hand crafted wares were replaced by the black felt merchants specializing in tigers the assembly line basket brokers and the driftwood clock manufacturers Oh I enjoy grape snow cones all right but I miss the year to year unpre dictability of Grandma Marti s brown guey supreme Another View Most of the exhibitors I spoke with were disappointed with this year s Faire They were disappointed with the atten dance and with the paucity of new products So on a lark I called Jim War ren the founder of the show Ws different than the old days It s hard to tell if it would have changed anyway I enjoyed this year s faire I ve enjoyed them all a lot more since I sold it Now I can attend the conference ses sions and see all this shit However I thought the crowds seemed awfully light They re the Inter face Group saying the count was higher than ever before but I didn t see them I didn t notice all that much dif TO
210. ome A User To become an Aztec C user call 800 221 0440 From NJ or intemational locations call 201 542 2121 Telex 4995812 or FAX 201 542 8386 C O D VISA Master Card American Express wire domestic and international and terms are available One and two day delivery available for all domestic and most international destinations Aztec Systems bought directly from Manx have a 30 day satisfaction uarantee Most systems are upgradable oy paying the difference in pnce plus 10 Site licenses OEM educational and multiple copy discounts are available Reader Service Number 17 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 79 A Reliable PC XT Compatible For The Corner Stone of Your Products The SLY40 XT is a small 4 14 by 9 1 4 four layer card featuring all of the PC XT mother board functions The board simply plugs into a passive back plane or SLICER S 10 slot bus board e High Integration Composed of just 47 Low Power CMOS ICS e NEC s 8 MHZ V40 e One Megabyte of Zero Wait State RAM e 8087 Co Processor Socket e Standard Keyboard Connector e Slicer s Own Bios Source Code Included e ideal For Tough Industrial OEM and Portable Applications e American Made and Fully Supported by Slicer TECHNICAL CONSULTING CUSTOM ENGINEERING Having a wealth of knowledge in hardware and software development SLICER has been a leading manufacturer of industrial micro com puters and numerical controls si
211. on Phil Coull 40 Wear Bay Crescent Folkestone Kent CT196BA England Editor s note I have some good news Phil And some bad news First we re of fering surface now In fact we ve sent the last two issues surface The first one went surface by accident the second one went THE NEW 65 9028 VT ANSI VIDEO TERMINAL BOARD FROM LINGER ENTERPRISES x A second generation low cost high performance mini sized single board for making your own RS232 Video Terminal This highly versatile board can be used as a stand alone video terminal or without a keyboard as a video console VT100 VT52 Compatible FEATURES MICRO SIZE Uses the new CRT9128 Video Con troller driven by a 6502A CPU On Screen Non Volatile Configuration _ 10 Terminal Modes ANSI H19 ADM 5 WYSE 50 TVI 920 KT 7 HAZ 1500 ADDS 60 QUME 101 and Datapoint 8200 Supports IBM PC XT and Parallel i ASCII Keyboards Supports standard 15 75 kHz Horiz Composite or Split Video 50 60 Hz 25 X 80 Format with Non Scrolling User Row Jump or Smooth Scroll RS 232 at 16 Baud Rates from 50 to 19 200 On Board Printer Port Wide and Thin Line Graphics Normal and Reverse Screen Attributes Reverse Underline and Blank 10 Programmable Function Keys and Answerback message 5 X 8 Character Matrix or 7 X 9 for IBM Monitors Mini Size 6 5 X 5 inches Low Power 5VDC 7A 12VDC 20mA i 7995 FULL KIT w 100 Pa
212. on nected to 5V This assures that OSC will always be selected a good thing since the external clock input connects to thin air But why not just tie the select line to ground Dave guesses the unnecessary inverter is a vestige from the XT s development days when IBM may have toyed with a two speed system Larry thinks it s sheer perversity See Micro C issue 31 for a 7 37 MHz switchable speedup which utilizes this feature of the 8284 CLK88 provides the 4 77 MHz 33 duty cycle 2 3 low 1 3 high signal which serves as the main system clock The third output a peripheral clock called PCLK gives the 8253 timer chip and the keyboard section a symmetric reference signal also 4 77 MHz In True Blue XTs the 8284 s RES input connects to a PWRGOOD signal from the power supply So a loss of power causes a reset None of the clones we ve looked at implement this feature But you can create your own reset switch by shorting the reset input to ground This initiates a high on the 8284 s RESET output which connects directly to the processor and any coprocessor The fall ing edge of this RESET triggers the reset sequence During Direct Memory Access DMA transfers some rather convoluted logic circuitry sets up the first of two possible READY inputs to the 8284 With this input held low by the DMAWAIT sig nal the 8284 s READY output goes low When the 8088 sees this low it inserts wait states until the DMA cont
213. only the area defined in the WINDOW statement is used When a WINDOW statement has been ex ecuted cursor locations are window relative not screen relative In the example above valid x cursor positions range from 1 to 49 and y positions from 1 to 6 Great but what s it good for By itself not much but it can be used to develop something useful There are several commercial produc tivity modules on the market which provide very sophisticated screen and window manage 70 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 ment facilities In many cases there s a lot more in these packages than we need so let s develop a Turbo UNIT to provide a useful sub set of text screen routines In this unit we have routines for 1 opening a window with or without bor der anywhere on the screen 2 save restore of the main screen full dis play 3 one line error messages nondestructive 4 clearing to end of the current window from the current cursor position Figure 1 is the Turbo 4 source for the unit The TYPE window_rec is exported it defines the basic information we need to manage a screen window The position of the upper left corner absolute screen coordinates width and height are the minimum information needed We ve added some fields foreground and background colors and some boolean flags to make our procedures a bit more versatile The global variable mgr_ok is also exported if it is FALSE the function of the
214. or makes vast improvements to a program PC SIG will still have the old version on their CD ROM In real life shareware programs get updated all the time I asked PC SIG librarian Brian Tuck about Rubenking s comments I have authors that update once a month he acknowledged but Tuck estimated that only about twenty five authors were so prolific Out of the 900 floppy disks that we have in the library he con tinued each new CD ROM contains about one hundred updated disks If one absolutely needs the very latest release of a program Tuck sug gests the floppy disk version which is updated on a continuous basis Since Rubenking guesses that the average up date period for a shareware program is one year the six month update cycle of the PC SIG CD ROM may be reasonable Of course the one year average incorporates a huge range from the monthly update to once in a blue moon PC SIG publishes Shareware Magazine which provides regular infor mation on the updates to their growing software library Plans call for the magazine to go from bimonthly to monthly sometime in 1988 PC SIG s annual membership fee of 20 includes a subscription to the magazine and notices of library up dates A special membership of 39 in cludes any five disks of your choice Disks normally sell for 6 each unless they are part of a special package deal Any PC SIG diskette is available in either 5 25 or
215. or warranty XT Turbo Superturbo 599 4 77 8MHz 4 77 10MHz 6 59 Complete Complete McTek Systems Inc 1411 San Pablo Avenue Berkeley CA 94702 415 525 5129 Meek Prices subject to change without notice DISK DRIVES PRINTERS MONITORS PC XT PC AT MISC Fujitsu 360K eee Citizen CD 120 159 Samsung amber 79 Fujitsu 1 2MB Citizen CD 180 189 Samsung EGA color 359 Fea oi HPLASAR Serial2 1699 Samsung RGB color 259 Teac 1 2MB 0 0 Epson LX 800 00 00 0200 219 NEC Multisync 559 Toshiba 3 720K Toshiba 321 XL 559 Sony Multiscan 619 Floppy controller 22 Call for prices of other brands HGC compat mono card 49 20MB Hard Disk Kit 289 Color graphic card 49 30MB Hard Disk Kit 319 EGA Paradise 480 149 MODEMS VGA Paradise 279 Everex int 300 1200 int 300 1200 79 MOUSE Everex 2400 external 195 Everex 2400 internal 179 Logimouse C7 75 Reader Service Number 42 640k TurboMothrord McTek286 Kingtech Portable Computer 10MHz TurboMothrbrd pea 6 8 10 12MH2 279 Kits XT AT power supply Multi I O w disk contrir 59 Baby McTek 286B AT case keyboard monitor 10 13 O wait oo 289 eseese 380 410 SAO BOM card ARNA 39 McTek 286A O wait 3MB Eprom burner 4 socket 139 2MB Expansion card 115 4 ports on b
216. ould mean 128 lines If you must use these functions you should call the function and then recheck the size stored in BottomLine That way you will always come up with the correct answer even after IBM an nounces the EVGA 2 Model 71 or whatever Bottom Line No Pun Intended To determine number of columns look at word 0040 004Ah or use INT 10h function OFh and use the value returned in AH note that this is only a byte To determine number of rows look at byte 0040 0084h and add 1 or use INT 10h function 1130h and add 1 to register DL If those numbers are both 0 assume 25 To determine the start of the video buffer do INT 10h function OFh If the mode returned in AL is 7 then the buffer starts at B0000 if other numbers then it begins at B8000 One known ex ception is MDS Genius Modes 8 and 9 are 66 line at B0000 Only look for special cards if these tests fail to find anything other than normal values Recheck the screen size and video mode any time your program does a mode set or executes another program or library routine which modifies the screen It may change If someone wants to switch from color 43 lines to mono 66 lines by escaping to DOS and doing a mode command you should let them Your program should then use the new settings 62 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 Let me know about programs which support large screens in this manner I will gladly be a beta tester
217. p others Public domain text editor with C sources Available on BIX in LISTINGS IBM ARC at for Networks All DOS Functions without Computerese Menu i is Brown Bag Software s DOS operating environment It creates colorful pop up stacking menus that run your programs at the press of a single key Programs can be password protected if you wish and access to Raw DOS can be restricted PowerMenu also features a powerful file manager that displays files and directories Multiple files can be Flagged for One Pass copy erase or ore Both novices and Power Users Menu s eg and ease of use marketing Resources Inc AREWARE DISK AVAILABLE FOR 10 00 Reader Service Number 87 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 49 By Scott Robert Ladd P O Box 61425 Denver CO 80206 303 322 7294 Zortech s C amp WATCOM s C And Manipulating MS DOS Scott remains buried under the droppings of his UPS driver That means of course there are more interesting updates to the benchmark tables Also he manipulates global MS DOS variables as a way of passing information from one program to the next ew things continue to happen in the world of C There s a new compiler from Canada a few bug fixes and some upcoming products of interest As usual a newly updated version of the com piler benchmark table is available on the Micro Cornucopia Bulletin Board at 503 382 7643 or on
218. pcx_putc writes the byte c to the file using a repeat count of n n may have a value of up to 32767 pcx_putc will recursively call itself with n lt 63 until the correct total has been written to the file void pcex_showpic PCXPIC pic int hoffs int voffs int load_palette_flg This function uses VGR_ROW to copy rows from the pic picture to the video board driver module in use hoffs is an offset from the start of each row in pic voffs is an offset which is applied to the row number These two offsets allow the screen to be panned around a large pic ture The load_palette_flg when set al lows pcex_showpic to set the hardware palette registers from the PCXPIC palette table Consider the palette functions to be unreliable The Test Routine As I write this PCX EXE is running and bug free It s a test routine which ex ercises the modules If executed without command line parameters it tries to figure out which video board is available and if it sees a CGA HERC or EGA board it creates and displays a simple test picture see Figure 3 If it s invoked with a board name CGA 640x200x2 EGA HERC or CGA2 320x200x4 it creates a picture for that CONNECTOR ADD 5 00 UPS SERVICES FEATURES Uses a Z80A and 6845 CRT Controller for powerful video capabilities RS232 at 16 BAUD Rates from 75 to 19 200 24 x 80 standard format 60 Hz Optional formats from 24 x 80 50 Hz to 64 lines x 96 characters
219. per transis tor Eight out of ten times if we get a 225 it has the same problem It s usual ly the stepper driver transistor that goes You ll see a little spot of brown on the circuit board near the front of the drive On the other side of the board is the driver transistor We just saved your readers a bunch of money by telling you this Thanks I ve been hearing grumbles about stepper shaft wobble Wobble gives you soft errors Ac tually the bearings are pretty good on the stepper I very seldom see soft er rors on the 225s they are really pretty good Mostly it was the way the stepper circuitry was designed in the beginning without a track 0 sensor What about spindle noise If any drive is getting noisy you should check the ground strap the thin metal tongue that presses against the end of the spindle bearing It can get bent or lose its tension Just take it off bend it so it ll be tighter against the carbon button and reinstall it It s just a static ground but people think their bearings are gone when it gets loose Another problem people call us about is sector errors When I worked at Seagate I didn t see a single drive that had a head crash or other defect But I see them now That s because the problems show up after they re out of warranty We get them at between 13 and 18 months That s the life expectancy They do have a good warranty it s a replacement warranty
220. phics Review 48 pages ISSUE 15 12 83 Screen Dump Listing Fixing Serial Ports Playing Adventure SBASIC Column Begins Upgrading Kaypro II To 4 Upgrading Kaypro 4 To 8 48 pages ISSUE 16 2 84 Xerox 820 Column Restarts BBI Double Density BBil 5 8 Interface Fix Kaypro ZCPR Patch Adding Joystick To Color Graphics Recovering Text From Memory 52 pages ISSUE 17 4 84 Voice Synthesizer 820 RAM Disk Kaypro Morse Code Interface 68000 Based System Review Inside CP M 86 56 pages ISSUE 18 6 84 Kaypro EPROM Programmer 1 O Byte A Primer Kaypro Joystick Serial To Parallel Interface Business COBOL 60 pages ISSUE 19 8 84 Adding Winchester To BBII 6 MHz On The BBI Builetin Boards Track Buffering On Slicer 4 MHz For The 820 1 64 pages ISSUE 20 10 84 HSC 68000 Co Processor DynaDisk For The BBil Serial Printer On BBI Sans S10 Cheap amp Dirty Talker For Kaypro Extended 8 Single Density 72 pages ISSUE 21 12 84 Analog To Digital Interface Installing Turbo Pascal Low intensity BB Video Turbo Pascal The Early Days 80 pages 92 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 41 May June 1988 ISSUE 22 2 85 Xerox 820 l1 To A Kaypro 8 Sound Generator For the STD Bus Reviews Of 256K RAM Expansion In the Public Domain Begins 88 pages ISSUE 23 4 85 Automatic Disk Relogging Interrupt Drive Serial Printer Low Cost EPROM Eraser Smart Video Controller Review MicroSphere RAM Disk Future Tense Begins
221. r HLOOK Greenbar 1112x147 paper Only 2000 cases left This is a one time deal and we bought it all Case approx 35 Ibs Two holes punched at top for binders Your choice 2 part or 4 part 2 part 11 4 part 10 When this is gone no more XT Style Keyboard manufactured by Cherry LEDs in NUM and CAP LOCK keys Complete with coil cord and plug but without case Our Service Department sells these as an alternative to repair the old style PC keyboards Plus you end up with a keyboard that has a much nicer feel than the regular clone keyboard If you area touch typist this is a nice upgrade and KOALA Beary Beary inexpensive 25 2 Ib Monochrome Display Adapter MDA with parallel printer port These are manufacturered in Japan and we think they are better quality than the usual components from the Pacific Rim 35 2 Ib Nota mistake and no Bull but quantities are limited Expand your 256K system to 640K 384K expansion card parallel port serial port game port clock calendar and 384K of memory installed and tested 160 3 Ib Large diskette boxes with metal keylock This is the size 6 x14 inches that are called 100 diskette capacity We store less in them ourselves but to each his own 12 3 Ib 10 DSDD 5 Diskettes with hub rings labels Tyvek sleeves and write protects in a Dial N File box Container cover flips to form an easel Turn the lever on the front and the diskettes are separated for easy selection and
222. r Let N be the normal vector to the plane Decompose I into a component perpendicular to N and a component parallel to N Call the perpendicular component A and the parallel com ponent B So I A B Consider how each of these com ponents is reflected off the plane A is neg al b sub ad al b sqrt b 2 4ac sra 1 al b sqrt b 2 4ac 2 empi SphereMinTime al test with room to get started jrgt is_01 if positive then is first intersection add a0 al btsqrt b 2 4ac 2 if positive then it is the intersection if negative then there is no intersection In either case value is returned as is al a0 sp a4 a5 a6 a7 a8 a9 al0 ms DIAGNOSTICS The Complete Diagnostics Solution for Your PC XT PC AT or Compatible INCLUDES PC XT Diagnostic Software 49 DRIVE TESTS Complete diagnostics for Hard and Floppy PEAT Disk DIAGNOSES wir les Cskeles 79 drives including controller cards Tests read write and format PC XT I O Loopback Test Plugs 19 capability as well as seek timings historesis and rotation COMPLETE PC XT DIAGNOSTICS SET save 17 99 timings ee PC AT Diagnostic Software 49 1 O PORTS For both parallel ad serial ports confirms internal PC AT DiskDiagnostics w test diskettes 49 and external loopback capabilities at all baud rates and PC AT I O Loopback Test Plugs 19 configurations COMPLETE PC AT DIAGNOSTICS SET save 17 99 MEMORY Performs over eight di
223. r named Merlin by my wife It s a long story but I ve found that I actually like the little machine It certainly comes in handy when I m traveling or while I m at a meeting The thought occurred to me that it would be nice to be able to do C programming with the Zenith My primary criteria was that the compiler be usable from a pair of 720K drives without my needing to swap disks It can be done but only with a little trepidation and work Of the compilers I have for review only four would fit with enough space left for source code These are Borland MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 51 Turbo C Mark Williams Let s C Microsoft Quick C and MIX Power C Having been spoiled by a fast hard disk in my main machine the compile times seemed awfully slow Those little 3 1 2 inch drives are slower than regular 5 1 4 inch drives Other than that I was able to do my compiling without any problems Editor s third note I spent a whole term running Aztec C from the single 720K drive and 300K RAM disk on my Kaypro 2000 It was great I had the class assign ment written and running before the period ended I was writing compiling and espe cially debugging C routines while the in structor was finishing his discussion of the problem When he asked for questions I was ready for him Environmental Control Let s get down to coding Last issue 41 I talked about how MS DOS and the PC manage memo
224. r 5 1 or 2 amp BBI QP M Operating System bootable specify system 64 95 QP M without CBIOS installs on any Z80 system 49 95 Networks QP M Network File System by MICROCode Consulting QP M Network File System is an efficient local area network allowing up to seven CP M computers to share peripherals and data resources Transparent operation at speeds up to 11 000 bytes second in syncronous mode e Speecs of up to 1 920 bytes second in asyncronous mode Local remote disk drive and printer support e Remote peripheral support for modems and real time clocks All stations need not be on the network even though connected e Local drive access protection and control e Simple menu oriented configuration utility Extended DOS calls are provided for addition of custom net work utilities Works with interrupt driven Z80 systems such as Xerox 820 Kaypro KayPLUS amp Advent ROMs Eagle and other computers running QP M or CP M 2 2 QP M Network File System Hard Disks Need more speed and storage on your system Improve the productivity of your Z80 computer with a hard disk HDS Host Board This daughter board provides a convenient interface for connect ing a Western Digital WD1002 05 hard disk controller to your computer i Plugs into the Z80 socket no other wiring required e 40 pin interface for a WD1002 05 or HDO controller board e Switch selectable I O port addressing e Comes
225. r Service Number 100 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 198887 Unbelievable Creates commented source code and listings from memory COMor EXE files e CLARIFY UNDOCUMENTED CODE e EASILY MODIFY PROGRAMS SOURCER creates detailed com mented listings and source code di rectly suitable for assembly Builtin data analyzer and simulator resolves mul tiple data segments and provides detailed comments on interrupts and subfunctions I O ports and much more Determines all necessary assembler directives Complete support for 8088 through 80286 V20 V30 8087 and 80287 instruction sets No other prod uct comes close to the output quality of SOURCER PS 2 AT XT PC Clones e CHANGE amp ADD FEATURES e CLARIFIES BIOS INTERFACES e SPECIFIC TO YOUR MACHINE The bios pre processor to SOURCER provides the first means to obtain ac curate legal source listings for any bios Identifies entry points with full explana tions Resolves PS 2 s multiple jumps for improved clarity Provides highly de scriptive data labels such as video_ mode and keybd_g_head and much more Fully automatic SOURCER SOURCER w BIOS Pre Processor 139 95 OUTSIDE USA ADD 15 SHIPPING CA RES ADD SALES TAX All our products come with a 30 day money back satisfaction guarantee Not copy protected To order or receive additional information just call 800 538 8157 x 811 800 672 3470 x 811 outside Calif inside Calif
226. r came from the Wall Street Journal The increase in prices and decreased availability could hurt small competitors who have to depend on the spot market For instance Kaypro Corp says it s having trouble filling orders because of the RAM shortage That s curious if their order rate is significantly down from last year Rumor also has it that Kaypro had a surprise layoff on April 11 About 100 out of 350 employees were surprised You Aren t Reading This Like a lot of you I write hard Paper doesn t work for me because it can t stand up to blood I take an axe to my weaker ideas last issue the editorial shrank from 21K to 12K in half an hour After the axe I take a chisel to what s left Thus the mangled mess This issue for example I m axing this paragraph and the one above it so you won t have to suffer through this kind of drivel Tech Calls I had just bluffed my way through a technical problem when the caller blurted out I wish I were you Boy That will unhinge even the coolest pretender Spending your life trying out and writing about new products Hey this is the tenth tech call of the morning My stomach after feeling slighted by breakfast is already mumbling about lunch I was planning to spend the morning writing an introduc tion for a new catalog finishing the poster for the Computer Faire meeting with an unemployed high schooler who wants to become an employed high schooler photog
227. r displays All standard CP M system calls are supported Note The NEC V20 CPU is a fast low power CMOS replacement for the 8088 CPU chip that includes a full 8080 instruction set as well as the standard 8088 set Systems using an 8086 may substitute a V30 chip UniDOS by MicroSolutions UniDOS w UniForm and V20 8 chip 135 00 UniDOS Z80 Coprocessor Board by MicroSolutions This 8 Mhz Z80H half card will run your Z80 and 8080 code programs at LIGHTNING speed on your PC or AT Functions just like the UniDOS program except NO V20 or emulation mode is required to run your programs Now includes UniForm PC UniDOS Z80 Coprocessor Card 169 95 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 29 shifted in both start bits have shifted into bit heaven and we have eight bits of data When the keyboard interrupt occurs the 8255 parallel chip s Port B bit 7 PB7 is low Since this bit connects to the LS322 s active low output enable the 8255 s Port A can read the keystroke from the LS322 After the keyboard inter rupt handler in the ROM BIOS reads the keystroke it sends a keyboard ac knowledge to the LS322 again through PB7 This temporary high disables the LS322 s outputs and after being inverted by an LS04 clears both the LS322 and the S74 in preparation for the next keystroke Parallel System Control So parallel bits PBO and PB1 on the system parallel port control the speaker What about the bits on the 8255 we h
228. r example PCW87D is the index to PC World for the fourth quarter of 1987 All of the databases are defined by an identical PC File header file Here s the header PCW87D HDR keyword s 65 author s 45 title 65 magazine 8 issue 25 page 4 1st line 65 2nd line 65 3rd line 65 As you can see Letus provides a 65 charac ter field for keywords 45 characters to identify the authors 8 characters for the name of the magazine and so on The Nelsons use three comment lines at the end to describe the con tents of the article Facts On File Ralph and Randy Nelson have followed the ebb and flow of microcomputer magazines over the past five years They currently scan and index the articles for BYTE Info World PC Magazine PC Resource PC Tech Journal PC Week PC World Per sonal Computing and Programmer s Jour nal I can of course think of at least one extremely important magazine they re missing The Nelsons even record interesting letters to the editor as well as the regular articles Letus A B C really goes from A through Z when it comes to completeness While Letus is scarcely a shareware dynamo when it comes to sales through software libraries it completely fills the niche that the Nelsons have devised for it Letus has created its own category and no one has challenged it yet No one need bother One good index is all it takes to fill the bill and Letus is a good index Thumbing Through The Index To g
229. r insertion Full payment must accompany ad Each ad space is 2 1 4 inches by 1 3 4 inches THE WINDOW Boss The Window Boss is a powerful windowing library for the C language Popup windows pull down menus and status lines are a breeze to implement The Window Boss is available for The Borland Microsoft Data light and Lattice Compilers Mention this ad and receive a 20 Discount Star Guidance Consulting Inc 273 Windy Drive Waterbury CT 06705 203 574 2449 Reader Service Number 96 SourceTvols FULL SOURCE CODE MANAGEMENT m Document revision history Audit trails m Branching and key word insertion m Utilities POWERFUL MAKE FACILITY Available for VAX PDP 11 amp MS DOS To order or for more information call 1 800 874 8501 OREGON 6915 SW Macadam Ave Portland OR 97219 Reader Service Number 85 GRAPHICS WINDOWS FOR IBM AND COMPATIBLES with SKYLIGHTS Screen Management Package e Interactive Screen Editor e Runtime C Library e Grabber and Demo Maker Utilities Information and Demo available on request The Report Store 910 Massachusetts St Suite 602 MC Lawrence Kansas 66044 913 842 7348 Reader Service Number 98 Instruction Manuals for your product Written in an informal style by techies for real users Free quote Rare Earth Services Inc 3115 Willow Road NW Roanoke VA 24017 703 343 4565 Reader Service Number 73 CONSULTANTS AND SYSTEMS INTEGR
230. rafting and all night technical discussions Tell your boss that SOG is not only a great source of information but it s also an incredible opportunity to add really sharp technical people to your personal net work Networking made the original West Coast Com puter Faire great Tell your family that Bend is one of the most beauti ful communities in the Northwest Over 250 000 skiers come here during Mt Bachelor s seven to nine months of snow The U S Olympic alpine and nordic teams stay on the COCC campus while they train here But summer is our biggest season We get water skiers sailboarders backpackers fishermen horseback riders bird watchers hang gliders astronomers geologists rock climbers it s a world famous rock climbing area and rock collectors Continued on page 79 Blaise puts the ieee on C with Enhance your Microsoft C programming environment with C TOOLS PLUS 5 0 a new quintessential library of C tions C TOOLS PLUS 5 0 from Blaise Computing Inc puts a prime quickly building professional applications using the full power of Version 5 0 and QuickC Now you can concentrate on program by having full control over DOS menus interrupt service routines sident programs printer and keyboard control and more C TOOLS PLUS 5 0 prebuilt libraries are ready to use with either QuickC or the Microsoft C Version 5 0 com mand line environment Complete doc
231. raphing clone guts for a cover we re fancy now remember and my list is here somewhere Being able to call anyone in the industry to get the scoop Who writes this guy s material And you re doing it in Bend Oregon How quaint Anyway good to talk to you This ll help me finish up this project so the little lady and I can take off for three weeks in Three weeks In three weeks he ll have forgotten every thing I ve told him and he ll have to call back And if he men tions the vacation Actually not all mornings are like this Some aren t nearly this interesting Writing Code I used to write a lot of code I wrote little databases utilities games and other reinventions Then night after night I d nurture them Nobody could add features like I could add features With the loving care they d grow sprouting new displays new functions new sounds Eventually each got too large or began to accumulate too many small crawly things or a root would become entangled with something else Then one by one I d shove them onto floppy and let them mold in my bottom drawer I wrote the code as therapy Now I don t have time Even with the new debuggers it takes days to write really therapeutic code Now all I write is this Editorial debugger anyone The Computer Journal For The Self Reliant I ve been looking for a better description of Micro C About the best I can say a
232. rating system OS 2 requires 400 to 600K So not only are companies selling more computers but they re putting more memory in them Plus there s a strong market for extended memory boards and EGA or VGA video cards Fact Even for those willing to pay current prices supplies Genius Begins With A Great Idea New PC MS DOS CP M 86 ROM Superior performance a powerful new array of features and utilities and pricing that is unmatched make the new boise C86 the first choice of serious software developers Aztec C86 p 199 optimized C with near far huge small and large memory Inline assembler Inline 8087 80287 ANSI support Fast Float 32 bit optimization options e Manx Aztec 8086 80x86 macro assembler Aztec overlay linker sarema model source level debugger object librarian 3 x file sharing amp locking comprehensive libraries of UNIX DOS Screen Graphics and special run time routines Aztec C86 C scesseeseseesG 299 e includes all of Aztec C86 p Unix utilities make diff grep vi editor 6 memory models Profiler Aztec C86 C e0sseers00000 499 e includes all of Aztec C86 d Source for library routines e ROM Support CP M 86 support One year of updates Third Party Software A large array of support software is available for Aztec C86 Essential Graphics e C Essentials C Utility Library Greenleaf Com Greenleaf General Halo Panel PC lint PforC
233. rd end and my super strip at the A D end The printer data port also has a capacitor on each line The printer port could easily drive the capacitors and the cable so it works fine for output only projects but the A D chip couldn t Not only did I have to cut off all the capacitors on the data port of the printer card they re all in a row right next to the DB 25 connector but I had to shorten my cable to two feet If for some reason you don t want to cut off your capacitors or you want to put the A D at a remote location you need a bus transceiver chip 74LS245 to boost the A D s output For cabling which is in the hundreds of feet use the TTL compatible variety of high power CMOS 74HCT245 You ll also need to replace the LS374 and LS244 on the printer board with the HCT variety and cut off the capacitors Everyone else can just cut off their capacitors No Power Supply If you don t have a five volt power supply handy you can tap the power supply from the PC Drill a little hole in the faceplate the DB 25 connector mounts on run a wire through and solder it to the five volt bus 12 volt signals aren t used on this board On my board there s an electrolytic capacitor with a sign next to it that s a good place With a little more dexterity you could also wire 5V into one of the unused DB 25 lines TO The A D Chip Figure 2 shows the wiring connection between the DB 25 connector
234. re working on a small program or a complex project with LOGITECH Modula 2 Versiof3 0 you can write more reliable maintainable better docu mented code in a fraction of the time at a fraction of the cost FREE TURBO PASCAL TO LOGITECH MODULA 2 TRANSLATOR NEW IMPROVED DEBUGGERS Time gained with a fast compiler can be lost at debug time without the right debugging tools With the powerful Logitech Modula 2 Debuggers you can debug your code fast and dram tica ly improve your overall gt project throughput The Post Mortem x Debugger analyzes the status of a program atter it has terminated while the dynamic Run Time Debugger monitors the execu tion of a program with user defined break points With their new mouse based multiple window user interface these powerful debugging tools are a pleasure to uge NEW INTELLIGENT LINKER Links only those routines from a particular module that you need so you eliminate unreferenced routines and produce smaller more compact executable files A Turbo Pascal is a registered trademark of Borland International VAN and VMS are registered trademarks of Diga dl Equipment Corp
235. remaining routines is suspect Within the IMPLEMENTA TION section are a few global declarations TYPE screen represents the underlying struc ture of the screen memory in text mode Each character on the physical screen is represented by a character attribute pair contained in one word s storage The 80 column X 25 row full screen is thus 2000 words The function setupscreen serves several pur poses First it calls BIOS to determine the cur rent video mode if it is not one of the recog nized text modes the function returns FALSE to indicate an error Since the different video adapters have their refresh memory located at different addresses within the processor s address space the routine assigns the proper segment address for the mode detected Then it allocates a screen sized block of memory on the heap for savescr and restorescr Finally the screen is cleared with the default foreground and background colors white on black This routine must have returned a TRUE result to mgr_ok for savescr and restorescr to work properly Savescr stores the current window relative cursor position in the global variables saved_x and saved_y then copies the entire physical screen contents into dynamic storage This allows us to open a window on top of the current screen then later restore the overwritten area This is a bit brute force since theoretically only the area overlaid would need to be saved Turbo 4 hand l
236. rocessors and memory In sum I found these options 1 8 MHz 80286 CPU 150 ns con ventional RAM at this notch you get IBM AT speed and total compatibility 2 10 MHz 80286 CPU 0 or 1 wait state you might get by with 150 ns RAM with 1 wait state 3 12 5 MHz 80286 CPU 0 or 1 state 120 ns RAM for 1 wait or 100 ns for 0 4 16 MHz 80286 CPU 0 1 wait state using 100 ns SIMM DRAM and interleaved memory 5 16 and 20 MHz 80386 0 1 or 0 wait states depending on RAM Static RAM gets 0 wait states DRAM gets 0 1 Compatibility According to the folks I talked with at the WCCF a 10 MHz AT switchable to 6 or 8 will probably handle most software and all but old whatever old is peripherals Expanded mem ory cards intended to run at 6 or 8 MHz with slow RAM 150 ns or so might be a problem at even 10 MHz and certainly a problem at 16 MHz Very early XT video circa 84 and before cards have had problems at any thing over 6 MHz But any fairly recent video system was probably upgraded before you bought it to support the faster ATs So a good bet is to go for a new mainboard which allows you to upgrade to as much memory as you think you ll need ON BOARD And if the memory on board is EMS compatible something else to check for you whip two villains incom patibility and or slowing down to ac commodate slow expansion cards with one check Drives And Controllers The floppy drive sto
237. roller finishes its transfer READY can also be forced low by slow devices on the I O bus telling the processor to wait a bit Processor So much for the heart on to the brains We ll talk about most of the 8088 s functions when we deal with the peripheral chips But one thing should be mentioned here The 8088 can be configured in two modes In the XT the mode select input MN MxX min max connects to ground This selects the maximum mode where the 8088 receives help generating bus control signals and can deal with coprocessors The Busses And The Bus Controller The 8088 can handle eight bits of data and 20 bits of address It needs only 20 pins for both data and address because it uses 8 pins for double duty these are labeled ADO through AD7 So the 8 bits of data share the 8 least significant ad dress lines Separating the data from the address takes place as follows During the first part of a bus cycle the 8088 places a complete address on its AD0 AD7 and A8 A19 pins It also sends information to the 8288 bus controller via status lines S0 S2 The 8288 decodes this status information and generates an Ad dress Latch Enable ALE By the pint of course ALE latches most of the address into two LS373s An 1LS244 buffers the remaining four bits A8 A11 Address Enable Board AENBRD see DMA dis cussion below enables outputs for all three chips Once the address has been latched we deal with data New statu
238. rolling I was having fun By midnight I had a whole set of utilities I threw half a dozen functions together to do everything I ve mentioned so far into a file called CLEANUP and turned it loose In under 60 seconds it had turned a raggedy 72K file into 42K of the cleanest neatest most beautiful pages Ventura was happy Carol was happy so happy that now she lets me write a new one for her at least once a week And I was happy she could handle all the file cleanups Now if Vedit could just locate the rest of my booth materials where s that manual David Thompson Editor amp Searcher The Micro C staff from top left Bruce Eckel Melinda Zoehrer Larry Fogg and David Thompson Bottom row from left Gary Entsminger Tammy Westfall Cary Gatton Carol Steffy and Laura Logan New From Zilog In a recent news release Zilog an nounced another addition to the Z80 family the Z180 This 8 bit CMOS processor runs at 8 MHz and supports the Z80 instruction set It also incor porates seven new instructions includ ing multiply Main features of the chip include e One MByte of memory address space e 64K of I O e Two DMA channels e Wait state generation e Programmable DRAM controller e Two full duplex asynchronous serial channels e Clock generator Interrupt controller The Z180 comes packaged in either a 64 pin DIP or a 68 pin PLCC and will set you back 11 45 each in lots of 100 refresh Zi
239. rom within the language PRICE Only 99 95 postpaid U S funds Plus 5 00 shipping amp handling Or 12 00 shipping amp handling outside North America Check money order or VISA accepted Reader Service Number 71 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 11 a lot because it wastes space These drives have an odd number of read write heads For the rest it s guess and hope and careful allowances for the effects of heat and wear Unfortunately the allowan ces are never enough I ve got kids too So sector headers and trailers even tually get out of line from the data You write headers only when you do a low level format COM and EXE files are also susceptible since they re not up dated very often Anyway after six months or a year you ll probably start losing sectors If you re lucky the problem will warn you by showing up only when the drive is hot or cold The cure is to backup everything you hold dear at least whatever s still readable and reformat the drive That s a pain but there s a way to prevent the problem Disk Technician Disk Technician goes through your drive sector by sector looking for bit errors When it finds even a single er roneous bit it reformats the whole track then rewrites correct data onto the track It also keeps a record of the locations of the errors and watches them for future problems A location which repeatedly generates soft errors will event
240. rouble modifying it The Color Palette The palette information is stored in the array of 16 triples It s the only part of the PCX format that s really tricky being totally board dependent Perhaps Shannon at ZSoft explains it better but here s how I understand it The IBM EGA adapter has 16 single ae byte color registers Each register holds a two bit intensity value from 0 to 3 for each color gun The intensity values are stored like this xxRGBrgb The first two bits 7 amp 6 are ignored The next three bits are the high bits of the intensity values for the Red Green amp Blue guns The last three bits are the low bits of the intensity values Thus each of the 16 registers con tains one of 64 possible color combina tions The PCX header has a 16 element palette table one element per color register Each element is a three byte structure TRIPLET which holds an in tensity value for each color gun To set the color for a palette register the Red Green amp Blue intensity bytes contain the color intensity after it s been multiplied by 85 I have no idea why we multiply by 85 To set the EGA palette register EGA VRAM Sam Azer AzerTech 2095 Patricia Ave 1 Montreal PQ Canada H4B 1Y7 we take the intensity value divide by 85 twiddle the bits then take the easy route to the palette register by calling the BIOS Set Palette function The CGA board has a Color Selec
241. rrespondence Kaypro KayPLUS ROM Set by MICROCode Consulting Want more performance and flexibility from your Kaypro With the KayPLUS ROM set you can have the advantages of a Kaypro 4 or 10 even on your Kaypro 2 e Install up to four floppies and two hard drives Boots from floppy or hard disk Supports 96 TPI and 3 2 disk drives e Can use any ST506 type hard drive 5 to 64 Meg e 32 character type ahead keyboard buffer Automatic screen blanking not avail on 83 series e 12 disk formats built in unlimited configurable e Full automatic disk relogging with QP M Internal real time clock support e No software assembly required Includes manual format configuration diagnostics sysgen diskette customization utility AND hard disk utilities Available for 83 and 84 series Kaypros KayPLUS ROM Set specify model KayPLUS ROM Set with QP M Parts and accessories for the Kaypro Kaypro 2X Real time Clock parts kit Kaypro 2X Hard disk interface parts kit Kaypro 10 or 84 series Hard Disk host board Kaypro four drive floppy decoder board Complete parts and repair services available Xerox 820 PLUS2 ROM and X120 Double Density Board by MICROCode Consulting and Emerald Microware About had it with single density diskettes on your Xerox 820 1 Get unsurpassed versatility with our X120 Board and PLUS2 ROM package e Run up to four floppy disk drives at once e Mix 8 and 5 at the same time Sof
242. rtech C and C As is usual in this business by the time the May June column saw print it was out of date Where s a cheap time machine when you need one Walter Bright no longer markets his excel lent Optimizing C compiler through Datalight Instead a company called Zortech will be marketing the compiler in the United States Zortech and Walter have a_ longstanding relationship since Zortech under its old name Zorland has been selling the compiler in Europe for several years In mid May Zortech will introduce his new C compiler for 99 followed by the release of an upgraded version of the regular C for 49 Yes I did say C this will be the first compiler for C under MS DOS The final product should be excellent judging from my beta copy For those of you in the dark C is an object oriented extension of K amp R C To be honest I haven t worked much with C but everything I hear makes me want to learn more The Optimum C compiler I have also a beta produces code even faster than before I find it amazing that Walter continues to find ways to improve his already excellent product Both compilers support the segment order ing and naming conventions used by Microsoft s products so you can use Microsoft CodeView for debugging Zortech C and C programs Two other improvements will be better manuals produced by Zortech and an extended library The head of the American division of Zortech told me that form
243. ruction This low output wends its way through an LS04 inverter an LS175 flip flop and an LS74 flip flop to eventually generate the following signals First is a hold acknowledge for the DMA Controller This signal also feeds back into the LS175 to create AENBRD and AEN AENBRD tells the expansion boards that DMA has control of the bus ses and AEN does the same for the sys tem board AENBRD goes through the LS175 yet again and produces the DMAWAIT sig nal discussed in the clock section above and finally DMAAEN When the DMA Controller finishes a transfer it drops its End Of Process EOP output EOP gets inverted by an LS04 and becomes Terminal Count T C on the expansion bus A high T C tells expansion cards that DMA activity has ended During DMA activity the DMA chip takes over the external control bus since the 8088 and 8288 are out of the picture Counter Timer The first of the three Counter Timer channels channel 0 in the PC s 8253 Programmable Interval Timer connects directly to the Interrupt Controller s IRQO input This channel triggers the time of day interrupt Channel 1 sets an LS74 flip flop which generates a DMA request for DMA chan nel 0 DRQO in turn causes a memory refresh cycle by the DMA controller And the channel 0 acknowledge signal DACKOBRD from the controller resets the flip flop in preparation for the next DRQO Channel 2 s output is ANDed with SPKRDATA from the 8255 par
244. ry As promised I m going to build on that information showing you how to access and manipulate the MS DOS environ ment The environment is a list of null ter and 6800 2 8 9 SOFTWARE SK DOS a powerful DOS for the 6809 75 or the 68000 140 incl an editor assembler Basic utilities code for a boot ROM etc HUMBUG a monitor boot ROM 50 75 OTHER SYSTEM SOFT WARE including assem blers text formatters editors spell checkers languages etc all very reasonable HARDWARE A wide selection of single board computers and sys tems from 275 COMBINATIONS Package deals of fast and powerful computer plus DOS and more from 350 STAR K SOFTWARE SYSTEMS CORP BOX 209 MT KISCO NY 10549 914 241 0287 Reader Service Number 40 52 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 minated text variables maintained by MS DOS Fach environment variable has a name customarily in uppercase an equal sign and the associated string value An example of an environment vari able is PATH which has a list of direc tories as its value e g PATH C C BIN and is used by MS DOS to search for executable programs not found on the default drive direc tory Other common environment vari ables are COMSPEC the path and name of the command processor usual ly COMMAND COM and PROMPT which contains the definition used in the last PROMPT command A number of applicatio
245. ry has changed a bit You now have four good pos sibilities if you re running DOS 3 3 or better 5 1 4 360K 5 1 4 1 2M 3 1 2 720K 3 1 2 1 44M For the record DOS 3 0 supports the first two of the above DOS 3 2 supports the first three and DOS 3 3 supports all four If you want two floppy drives and want to be able to read everything go for a 1 2 meg 5 1 4 and a 1 44 meg 3 1 2 The 1 2 will read 360 The 1 44 will read 720 And the extra storage is worth it Editor s note Reading is one thing Writing is a whole different kettle of vipers Sure those handy dandy narrow headed lit tle data munchers will write too but their tracks are half as wide as their less dense lit tle brothers See Techtips for more info 5 1 4 disks are cheap enough to remain popular indefinitely but the 3 1 2 disks are a nice size and capacity These two and either a Seagate or Miniscribe 20 megabyte 28 ms hard drive make a not too expensive and FAST system Or add RLL and pick up MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 73 another 10 Mbytes see Dave s discus sion of RLL Coprocessors If you re crunching numbers remember that faster CPUs need faster coprocessors The 80287 runs at roughly 2 3 the speed of the 80286 The 8087 runs at the same speed as the 8088 So an 80286 running at 8 MHz can use the 80287 6 6 MHz An 80286 running at 10 or 12 MHz will want an 80287 8 And an 80286 runnin
246. s B0000 If the mode is anything else it s probably B8000 One exception is the MDS Genius where modes 8 and 9 are 66 line B0000 modes Note that I am not accounting for using display pages other than page 0 If you want to do any of that stuff 60 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 I ve never found the need you re on your own One more thing Some video cards reset back to 25 lines whenever you do a mode change INT 10h function 0 so don t set the video mode unless you ab solutely have to It s reasonable to figure that whoever is running your program has a liking for the video mode they are using when they enter the program Don t screw up a good thing List Of Things NOT To Do Do not do massive compatibility checks to assure that the installed video card actually can display the number of lines given in BottomLine If the card couldn t display it BottomLine wouldn t have been set in the first place You shouldn t for example do a VGA equipment check and then refuse to display 50 lines just because you can t find the palette register or any thing like that Take the word of the BIOS It knows what it s doing Are you listening Microsoft CodeView Editor and WORD authors If no specific screen size is set you can do other checks to look for certain cards that don t support this standard MDS Genius for example does not Only do this after
247. s are disk resident all file I O is handled including random file positioning by record numbers or by unique index marks to locate specific text Available in both memory resident and linkable library formats making So Help Me compatible with all languages and compilers for PC MS DOS 2 0 amp later e Requires as little as 20K utilizes EMS memory sample BASIC C Pascal and dBASE II programs provided So Help Me is only 89 95 5 S H To Order Call 800 634 3122 Visa amp MasterCard accepted 90 day guarantee No royalties Serengeti Software P O Box 27254 Austin Texas 78755 9954 Reader Service Number 27 will continue to use the product after release Even then you should consider giving them the product at release Remember that they have a lot of time and money involved in your product too Conclusion Getting a successful product to market is full of pitfalls Successful products are market driven not seller driven What I ve attempted to outline here is a method which reduces the pitfalls During my years in high tech I have seen more than one product brought to market because the company knew it would sell only to find out that the market didn t want what the seller had On the other hand some very success ful companies have been founded using the basic techniques discussed here Mentor Graphics is a notable case in point The founders of Mentor Graphics used the dog and pony s
248. s outputs from the 8088 tell the 8288 to generate a data transmit receive DT R signal DT R controls the direction of data flow through an LS245 octal bus transceiver connected to ADO AD7 So we have data Tk By Larry Fogg Mostly And David Thompson and we know whether the processor will be receiving or sending Another tweak of the status lines makes the 8288 pump out one of four sources and destinations I O read IOR I O write IOW memory read MEMR or memory write MEMW Finally through its status lines and the 8288 the 8088 sends a Data Enable DEN to the LS245 and we ve placed ad dress and data on the address and data busses That takes care of one set of address and data signals the ones belonging to the internal busses These busses talk to the processors RAM addressing logic RAM data and most of the I O bus j1 J7 J8 the right most expansion slot is the black sheep of the family More on J8 later External Address And Data The demultiplexing circuitry de scribed earlier doesn t have enough oomph to talk to everything on the ad dress data or control busses Every input on an address line for instance adds a little capacitance and a little cur rent drain to the line So in order to give these little demuxers a break the busses are divided into two parts internal and external The demultiplexers drive the in ternal address and data busses Buffers then transfer the internal signal
249. s slightly quicker and smaller Remember though that if you do this the program generated will not run on the old 8088 86 machines But for your own internal programs it s kind of nice BBS Of The Issue For those of you interested in using your modems to contact the world of programming you might want to check out the C BBS run by Barry Lynch at 703 998 8377 FidoNET node 1 109 713 Barry s board is dedicated to C programming He has areas for Microsoft and Borland addicts and car ries an excellent selection of public domain and shareware source libraries and utilities While Barry asks for a 10 per year registration fee his board is worth the money Barry is also the producer and editor of a freely distributed electronic newsletter called C News Several boards participating in FidoNET carry this newsletter for downloading It in cludes news reviews code examples and some pretty good articles Definite ly recommended Book Of The Issue If you want to do work with serial communications check out a book called C Programmer s Guide to Serial Communications by Joe Campbell published by Sams This is an excep tional book filled with theory practice and code examples It covers not only how your serial port works but why it works Editor s second note Now if someone would tell us why it doesn t work Laptop C Recently through a quirk of fate I ended up with a Zenith Z 181 laptop compute
250. s to the external busses The external address bus for instance services the system RAM system ROM I O ports and expansion slot J8 Three LS244s buffer the addresses onto the external bus Two of the LS244s carrying A8 A19 have their two active low output control pins tied to ground So part of the external address bus XA8 XA19 always reflects exactly the con tents of the internal bus The LS244 responsible for A0 A7 has its output control pins tied to AENBRD That s fine But why treat A0 A7 dif ferently than A12 A19 Both groups of addresses originate in LS373s controlled by identical inputs If anyone out there was involved in the design of the XT or knows someone who knows someone who was involved in the design we d sure like to talk to you Some of the workings of this machine arent im mediately obvious The external data bus is a bit stickier the NMI makes it through the maze the 8088 jumps to the NMI handler and things grind to a halt Addresses go only one way from the processor or DMA to memory or I O Data has to travel in both directions An LS245 octal bus transceiver handles the bidirectional buffering The LS245 s direction control input DIR connects to an LS27 positive NOR gate which has three inputs When any of the three inputs goes high the output of the NOR gate goes low That forces the LS245 to pass data from the external data bus to the internal data bus An a
251. s to them If it runs out of memory it de allocates all arrays and returns NULL pcex_free_pic frees up all the space allocated for a picture pcx_invert_picQ inverts all the bits in each row of the picture int pcex_read_pic PCXPIC pic FILE fp int pex_getc int c int n FILE fp int maxn int pex_write_pic PCXPIC pic FILE fp int pex_xputc int c FILE fp int pex_putc int c int n FILE fp These functions operate on a file which has been opened by one of the STDIO buffered file open functions fp is the file pointer returned by the open call pic is a pointer to a PCXPIC picture structure These functions return OK or ERROR pcex_read_pic loads a picture from the file The pic structure can either be statically allocated or dynamically allo cated using pcx_init_pic 0 0 0 pcx_read_pic automatically allocates picture arrays pcx_write_pic writes the picture to the file pcx_getc reads a character or pair of characters from the file The character is placed in the integer pointed at by c and a repeat count of one or more is placed in the integer pointed at by n maxn is the maximum repeat count that the calling function wants to receive pcx_write_picQ calls pcx_xputc which counts the number of times it receives a given byte value then calls pex_putc with that number If pcx_xputc is called with c 1 the buffered byte value and count are passed immediately flushed to pcx_putc
252. send a byte wait 96 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 receive do receive byte send acknowledgment while there are still bytes to read In this way the transmitter never overruns the receiver no matter how much the two com puters differ in speed of operation The only drawback to this type of handshaking is that it effectively halves the transmission rate since two bytes must be transmitted for each byte of information The discussions are good gentle but il luminating the code detailed and intended to compile in the Turbo C and Microsoft C sys tems And the subjects are at the heart of serious programming I ve seen half a dozen other books by Schildt Advanced C Advanced Turbo Prolog etc but this one has the most bells and whistles for serious hacking and programming 22 95 pap Published by Osborne McGraw Hill 2600 Tenth St Berkeley CA 94710 Turbo Prolog User s Group If you don t know already Turbo Prolog has an Official user s group and an official newslet ter Mike Floyd technical editor of Turbo Tech nix Dan Kerman Borland R amp D and Kelly Rich Borland technical support are the or ganizers The newsletter is chock full of programming ideas and tidbits and the group has a BBS user s disks and provides a good platform for exchanging Turbo information For more information contact TPro Users 3109 Scotts Valley Drive
253. sing less than 50K but offers all the power of a nonresident disk manager Patrick Marshall WindowDOS 2 0 Product Review PC World May 1987 Once you ve experienced the convenience of instant access to DOS commands you ll never be satisfied with returning to DOS to list files format disks or copy rename or erase files Nor will you be happy with a DOS shell because shell programs are just as inaccessible as DOS when you are using an application program Only one program combines memory residency with the power of a full featured disk manager WindowDOS Version 2 0 Features Not Found In DOS Sort directories in 8 ways or not at all Copy erase and move groups of files Find any file in seconds Display default directory of any drive with a single keystroke Display graphic tree Global copy amp erase commands Copy function prompts you to insert another disk when necessary Display hidden files and subdirecto ries Display file contents in various for mats and page forward backward Display Wordstar files in readable format Unique RAM Environment function shows name size location and interrupts of every program in memory Rename subdirectories for instant reorganization Hide and unhide subdirectories See and change file attributes Send control codes to printer Switch default printer Password lock your system Set AT Real Time Clock 5 minute screen blan
254. stems eo BR he Bh tek eas welch SOOO 6 Pack of Editors six public domain editors for use study amp hacking 2 2 2 30 NEW Crunch Pack a baker s dozen of file compression amp expansion programs 30 ICON string and list processin language Version 6 and update 25 LEX lexical analyzer generator 2 1 ee ee we 25 Bison amp PREP YACC workalike parser generator amp attribute grammar preprocessor Oy Ss ts ae Yes i 25 AutoTrace program tracer and memory trasher catcher Gah aE She dn bo Aske ah E 7 C Compiler Torture Test checks a C compiler against K amp R si fe A aaa ae Gk athe So Bo a Se OO Benchmark Package C compiler PC hardware and Unix system ee ae ee ree TN3270 remote login to IBM VM CMS as a 3270 terminal on a 3274 4 controller ae ee A 20 A68 68000 cross assembler 1 1 ey er eae et List Pac C functions for lists stacks and queues ns he Re eS ele aes any lt 20 Macro Processor general purpose text translator ETE E me wk 7 ata WordCruncher text retrieval amp document analysis program fo an 8 Gs a pe eda ee 275 DNA Sequences GenBank 52 0 including fast similarity search program 150 Protein Sequences 5 415 sequences 1 302 966 residuals with similarity search program AWE Leet ict Nae 3h 60 Webster s Second Dictionary 234 932 words eee ee ee ae ae 60 U S Cities names amp longitu e l
255. t It s smart to get up to speed assuming you keep the demo package current during the develop ment I strongly recommend this because you will be constantly showing the demo to poten tial customers employees and maybe even an investor or two Show And Tell Once you have your demo version running bug free and your preliminary user manual done it s time to put together a dog and pony show How extensive you want to be with this depends on where you ll be doing your market research Obviously if your product will sell to professionals for use in their MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 67 porting a product We ve done it for you Merlin Publishing Group software for publication You get e initial cash payments e generous royalties 1 dl cd r dike wa es a hae pms a tod a a a lt 2 ae a s a hd Reader Service Number 35 business the level of show will need to be much higher than for a new software tool Remember that the people you demo your product to are going to use the quality of your dog and pony show to judge your sincerity and intent and the quality of your final product If all you have to show is a few scratchings on a napkin and your name is Knuth you probably will be treated seriously But if your name is Scott you probably won t The minimum level presentation is a running demo program hard copies of all
256. t Register at I O location 0x3d9 The bit configuration for this register is xxCAIRGB The first two bits are ig nored The C bit selects one of two pre defined palettes called Color Sets Set 1 is Background Green Red amp Brown Set MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 43 2 is Background Cyan Magenta amp White The Background color is one of 16 colors formed using the IRGB bits I is an intensity bit R G amp B are enables for the Red Green and Blue color guns respec tively If the A bit is set it Selects an Alternate Intensified set of colors in Graphics Mode see ref 1 To me this translates into 4 color sets and one of 16 background colors Storage of the CGA palette settings in the PCX header is simple The first byte of the first element in the palette table contains a background color multiplied by 16 The first byte of the second ele ment in the palette table apparently con tains a three bit value multiplied by 32 I haven t been able to figure out what to do with the third bit At any rate there are 8 such settings in the PCX headers palette table but it seems to me that only one of them can be in effect at a time There are probably many more palette formats for other boards but I don t know of any documentation on them In the code that accompanies this article the pcx_set_palette function has a load_palette flag which must be set in Rows PI ane 44 MICRO CO
257. t pin 8 of the 74LS04 location U51 on PC U89 on XT Replace the chip if there is no clock 4 Check for 4 77 MHz clock on pin 4 of the time delay location TD2 on the PC or XT If no clock is present remove the time delay and replace with a 470 Ohm resistor across pins 1 and 4 on the system board 5 Check the signal at pin 9 of the 74LS74 location U96 on PC U86 on XT for a HIGH or FLOATING signal If a high or float is found on this pin replace the chip This signal is the ALLOW Non Maskable Interrupt NMI 6 Replace the 8088 processor It s socketed These steps should help you locate 85 of all system board failures within five minutes MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 15 Most of the other 15 are caused by a stuck address or data line In many cases you can find these problems with an os cilloscope If you re not very experienced we don t recommend that you try to remove or install soldered in ICs Finally I hope that this information will save you time and money If you have a solu tion to a frequent failure or are look ing for a solution not mentioned here please contact Don Doerr National Advancement Corp 2730 J South Harbor Blvd Santa Ana CA 92704 714 754 7110 Editor s Notes On WindsorPOST I received the ROM from Windsor Technologies just a couple of days before the final final final deadline for this issue so I m just beginning to check it out However I d
258. t to program size For IBM PC s and true compatibles with MS DOS 2 0 or greater and 256K memory Complete with printed manual for 35 00 Each additional is 20 00 Michigan residents add 4 tax Visa MC Order from distributor Micro Kit 6910 Patterson Caledonia MI 49316 616 791 9333 Reader Service Number 75 SCREEN MANAGER MENU WINDOW and DATA ENTRY Support for the Professional Programmer Interfaces to most languages BASIC C FORTRAN COBOL PASCAL ASSEMBLER 100 Page Manual 30 day money back guarantee No Royaities from The West Chester Group 7 P O Box 1304 West Chester PA 19380 VISA MC 215 644 4206 CALL FOR FREE DEMO Reader Service Number 78 68000 SOFTWARE e K OS ONE operating system uses MS DOS disks with source code 50 e K OS ONE manual 10 e HT68K SBC w K OS ONE 395 e Screen Editor Toolkit 50 e HT FORTH Free newsletter amp spec sheets HAWTHORNE TECHNOLOGY 1411 S E 31st Ave Portland OR 97214 503 232 7332 Reader Service Number 34 35 mm SLIDES FROM YOUR IBM PC Computer Slide Express Finally a one day service to convert your graphic files into 4000 line color slides from your disk for 9 or less Visual Horizons 180 Metro Park Rochester N Y 14623 716 424 5300 Reader Service Number 79 16 Megabytes EMS and or Extended Memory eWorks on 8 or 16 bit bus 16 b
259. t wraps it up for this issue In the future I ll be covering some aspects of C which are not MS DOS re lated so as to not leave out those of you with CP M or Macintosh PCs If you have any questions about this column or C programming in general please feel free to leave a message on the Micro C RBBS or to drop me a let ter Next issue I ll be writing about C database libraries along with my usual update on the who what where and why of C programming See ya then ADD TO THE POWER OF YOUR PROGRAMS WHILE YOU SAVE TIME AND MONEY CBTREE does it all Your best value in a B tree source Save programming time and effort Access any record or group of records by You can develop exciting file access programs quickly and easily because CBTREE provides a simple but powerful program interface to all B tree operations Every aspect of CBTREE is covered thoroughly in the 70 page Users Manual with complete examples Sample programs are provided on disk Gain flexibility in designing your applications CBTREE lets you use multiple keys variable key lengths concatenated keys and any data record size and record length You can customize the B tree parameters using utilities provided Your programs will be using the most efficient searching techniques CBTREE provides the fastest keyed file access performance with multiple indexes in a single file and crash recovery utilities CBTREE is a full function implementation of th
260. the caller s window but does not need to be Figure 2 tests the scrnmegr unit No explicit close_window routine is needed windows are closed automatically when another one is opened Since this is but a subset of a full function screen window management package there are a few caveats and limitations Most important virtually no error checking is done Strange and wonderful things will happen if parameter values place win dows or borders outside the physical screen It s your responsibility to check for these kinds of errors Also it s your responsibility to insure that the fields of your window_rec variables are initial ized and updated correctly You will also need to keep track of which win dow is active Although you can create as many non overlapping windows as will fit the screen you can create only a single overlapping window if you plan to re store the data in the underlying screens Because I save only one physical screen image You could save more than one screen by simply passing pointers as parameters to savscr and restorescr You d use 2000 bytes of memory for each screen and you d need to write the routines to manage these images With just these simple screen win dow management routines you can do some pretty sophisticated things I developed these routines for an applica tion program that 1 in normal mode acts as a dumb terminal 2 allows opening a special function
261. the few Now alas the front cover looks as good as its contents and thus will at tract those shallow sorts who join the ranks of the intelligentsia just to look good You know the people I mean yuppies computer store sales staff and other pretenders But I suppose the bottom line had to be acknowledged and viability presumably depends on the survival of the prettiest Or as Joan Collins would say A stitch in time But I am so glad that the contents have remained untouched and unsullied What I find of more merit than the rest is the editorial It is that honest down to earth style of writing that ap peals to my thinking I would liken it to the style used by the host of the Prairie Home Companion radio show A mar vellous show which to me has as its strength a five minute story which espouses a philosophical tenet some times but with subtle quiet humour al ways Keep up the good work You write of PC Network having major problems I need to write in their defense for what appear to be genuine attempts to make good their debts In September 1987 I ordered two products MASM and Turbo Pascal One month later I phoned to be in formed that neither was currently avail able I cancelled MASM but requested that the TP3 order be continued About that time they billed my credit card for 6 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 Letters the TP3 In mid December I left the UK for Australia The thre
262. the floppy drive inter face ATs don t Line 34 carries an active low READY signal generated by the floppy drive READY stays high until the drive has spun up to speed and stabilized usually a few hundred msec For some reason if READY is discon nected the AT assumes the drive is a 360K So just cover the card edge contact for line 34 with a thin sliver of Scotch or electrical tape Meanwhile if you re stuck with 1 2 meg drives and want to create a disk that someone with a 360K can read you must 1 Find a new unformatted DSDD disk or erase an already formatted disk with a magnet very thoroughly 2 Format the disk as a 360K disk but you must do it with the 1 2 meg drive The com mand is FORMAT A 4 the 4 forces a 360K format 3 Now place the files on the disk using COPY You can continue to use this same disk for transferring files from the AT to a system with 360K drives as long as the 360K drive doesn t write anything onto the disk Remember eras ing a file writes data into the directory For Micro Ads SS Sa ee a er ee ee A Micro Ad is the Inexpensive way to reach over 22 000 technical folks like yourself To place a Micro Ad just print out your message make it short and sweet and mail it to Micro C We ll typeset your ad no charge and run it in the next available issue You can also send camera ready copy Rates 99 for 1 time 267 for three times 474 for 6 times a best buy at only 79 pe
263. the intersec tion time of the input ray with each ob ject in the Universe table The object with the earliest intersection time is deter mined If the ray doesn t intersect any object the a background color usually black is returned When the earliest intersection is deter mined RayComputations will send the ray the time of intersection and the ob ject of intersection to a routine called ColorOfObject ColorOfObject will return the color of the intersected object An object may have a simple coloring rule such as all points on the object have the same color Or a more complex color ing rule such as covering the object with multicolored squares stripes of circles Some objects may be designated as reflective In this case the reflected ray is built and RayComputations is called recursively to determine the color Whatever the coloring rule of the object ColorOfObject will determine the color and return it to RayComputations Ray Computations then returns the color to the main program loop The color returned by Ray Computations is sent to ColorDot to place the color on the display screen Integrand s new Chassis System is not another IBM mechanical and electrical clone An entirely fresh packaging design approach has been taken using modular construction At present over 40 optional stock modules allow you to customize our standard chassis to nearly any requirement Integrand offers high quality
264. the module chip level in three full displays of information on the system s video display unit WindsorPOST is intended for those service operations where specific identi fication of failing components is required and where soldered components are removed and replaced WindsorPOST has been in use in the field for over one year and performance data indicates that it properly identifies the failing component at least 70 of the time WindsorPOST is currently available for use on IBM PC s and PC XT s a PC AT type product is under development and those compatible systems where the system board circuitry and components are extremely similar to the IBM standard WindsorPOST comes with a 30 day money back guarantee DOW to YN at P01 PC PC XT Product Code P01 PC PC XT 295 00 For immediate ordering contact Windsor i Windsor Technologies Inc Technologies at 415 456 2200 8 30 A Aa I CA 94901 415 456 2200 AM 5 00 PM Pacific Coast time VISA 130 Alto Street San Rafal CAST HOP 2 Mastercard American Express and COD Please Send A Free PC Technician Evaluation Diskete S orgors pekea Please Send Info About PC Technician WindsorposT _ Pits er ici enc e Aa mec m i ap NAME TLE es ors f Volume discounts and reseller discounts COMPANY TELEPHONE 4 A RG t are available Vays ox say r a r ARAA D yi Windsor Technologies Inc
265. the standard method has failed to reveal a screen size other than 80 x 25 Do not assume a fixed screen size based on a mode command you send to the video BIOS For example don t do an INT 10h function 1112h set 43 line mono text on an EGA and then assume that the screen now has 43 lines In this example some cards do not support this function so their screen 5 25 HARD DISK CONTROLLER CARD 20 MEG HARD DRIVES For any Modern 5 25 Hard Drive SEAGATE Model ST 225 89 95 w cable 219 95 full 6 Mo Warranty less face plate Western Digital Controller For Model ST 225 Drive 69 95 x cable Yes These are for IBM compatible machines BECKMAN DM78 MULTIMETER Pocket Size e A C D C Volts amp Ohms e Continuity Beep Tester e Autoranging e L C D Display e Carrying Case Our Biggest Seller 29 95 D C Motor Controller Control 2 D C motors with a computer or other logic source e For motors rated 6 24 VDC STEPPER MOTORS Copal SP 57 e Control forward reverse run cw ccw stop e Up to 6 Amp starting surge 4 Amp cont 1 4 Shaft XT CLONE e Dynamic breaking capable 7 5 deg step il 4 eal also run most 4 lead stepper motors 36 Ohm 12 Building VDC 6 95 USMD C Upgrading Control standard 6 lead stepper motors with a computer or other logic source
266. they ll fail but when Rotating Memory Service 473 Sapena Court 26 Santa Clara CA 95054 408 988 2335 technical Fastback 179 Fifth Generation Systems 1322 Bell Ave Ste 1A Tustin CA 92680 800 225 2775 in California 714 259 0541 Corefast 149 Core International 7171 N Federal Hwy Boca Raton FL 33431 305 997 6055 H TEST H FORMAT 89 95 Mace Utilities 99 00 Paul Mace Software 400 Williamson Way Ashland OR 97520 800 523 0258
267. timiz ing compiler They throw in a complete set of tools including a linker librarian disassembler and source level debug ger Both the main compiler and Ex press C adhere to the December 1987 ANSI standard While the library is a bit small it is very complete and com patible with Microsoft C WATCOM C rearranged the pecking order in my benchmarks It finished first speed wise in the Dhrystone AllocMem and Sort tests and usually finished in the top five on the other benchmarks Compile speeds are too slow for my taste but it produces small executables The editor is miserable in my lowly opinion but that s about my only com plaint WATCOM s editor reminds me of the first full screen editors on mainframes where for example you use a function key to insert a new line It takes guts to enter the compiler wars WATCOM C has jumped in with a very good product WATCOM PRODUCTS INC 415 Phillip St Waterloo Ontario CD N2L 3X2 519 884 3141 TLX 06 957520 MIX Power C Last issue I mentioned problems when compiling my benchmark suite with Power C these have all been fixed in version 1 1 0 The latest results are in the tables on the Micro C RBBS While it isn t as good as its ads claim is any thing ever that good you get a good ANSI standard C compiler for less 20 than the price of most programming books If you just want to C what this is all about you might look into Power C The Death O
268. to my collection of periodicals Unfortunately that project turned out to be unwieldy and I fell fur ther and further behind Then I discovered a new software product that made me give it up entirely Lots of other people had the same idea but the father and son team of Ralph and Randy Nelson applied themselves more diligently than most Letus A B C was born the Literature Evaluation Table and User Service Ralph Nel son admits that the acronym was created before the full name it ostensibly abbreviates 64 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 Using ButtonWare s PC File the Nelsons began to compile a methodical index of com puter magazine articles Their first disk covered 1982 and included information from four magazines PC Magazine Softalk for the IBM PC Personal Computer Age and BYTE Two of those magazines no longer exist Two disks covered all of 1983 but then the Nelsons switched to quarterly publication of their database The PC publication boom was on and they were trying to keep up The Paperless Index Through the end of 1987 Letus A B C oc cupies a total of 39 disks The Nelsons mail two or three new disks every quarter to their sub scribers Refined and augmented with time Letus has migrated from the original 320K flop pies to 360K can 1 2 megabytes be far away and updated its file format to conform with upgrades to PC File Letus provides a separate database each quarter for each magazine Fo
269. tware compatible with Kaypro and Xerox 820 e Built in drivers for most serial and parallel printers e Get mini monitor functions and auto boot capability e 19 built in disk formats including Xerox and Kaypro e Includes custom disk format definition program e Banked ROM BIOS for more space in your TPA e Composite video adaptor on X120 board e Runs 48 TPI diskettes on 96 TP drives Supports real time clock from Z80 CTC e Works on the Xerox 820 1 and Big Board Both ROM and X120 board are required for operation PLUS2 ROM Set and X120 Board A amp T PLUS2 ROM Set and X120 Bare Board PLUS2 ROM Set only 120 Bare Board only x x Special x x x 2 boards for 25 5 for 50 Other kits parts and packages available Parts and accessories for the Xerox 820 Xerox 820 2 CPU Board new Xerox 820 2 Floppy Controller board new Xerox 820 2 CPU board w Floppy Controller Xerox 820 1 CPU board new Xerox 820 complete high profile keyboard Xerox 820 bare high profile keyboard new Xerox 820 5 drive cable Xerox internal video cable w brightness control 9 00 Xerox 820 power supply Power connector specify board or cable Xerox parallel printer interface cable Dual Half Height 5 Disk Drives DSDD in cabinet with standard Xerox cable Complete parts and repair services available P O Box 1726 Beaverton OR 97075 503 641 0347 SD 30 day money back guarantee on all products Reader Service Number 10 IBM PC
270. ually get locked out Note Most hard drive controllers write an 11 bit error correction code onto the disk That code makes it possible for the controller to correct an erroneous string of bits I believe it s up to 64 bits long It s only when the controller can t correct the data that it reports an error By then of course things have really deteriorated The Disk Technician package in cludes a park routine which it installs in AUTOEXEC BAT after the program locks other software out of the top cylinder It does this so the heads won t park over important data Disk Technician is easy to run generates a report of each check and is quite useful Its primary problem is it s copy protected Once you ve installed the package on a hard drive that s it It will only work with that winnie and only with the original distribution disk in a floppy drive Do something that changes the drive like their own low level format and you have to call the factory to get the package reset They say you ll be able to reset your own disk soon Meanwhile this program still insists 12 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 you backup all your files before running it So it s ironic that the only thing you can t backup is this program at least not without a bit copier Recovering Garbaged Directories While Disk Technician tries to prevent drive hardware from losing data Mace Utilities is one of several packages designe
271. ubroutine in Figure 2 computes the intersection of a ray with a plane The subroutine will return the time parameter for a point traveling along the ray Input to the subroutine has a8 point ing to a ray structure and a9 pointing to a plane structure The time of intersection is returned in a0 Situations may arise where the ray never intersects the plane For example the ray may be pointing away from the plane This situation is flagged by a nega tive value being returned in a0 Figure 3 computes the intersection of a ray with a rectangle Our first step here is to make sure the ray intersects the plane We do it by calling intLinePlane If there s no intersection with the plane then we quit Otherwise we must determine whether the point of intersec tion lies within the rectangle A call to PointOnLine puts the point of intersec tion in a temporary vector We then subtract the origin from this point Then we compute the projection of this vector onto both the X and Y extents to check that the point lies in the bound MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 19 ary of the rectangle The subroutine in Figure 4 computes the intersection of a ray and a sphere Input to the subroutine has a8 pointing to a ray structure and a9 pointing to a sphere structure The intersection time is returned in a0 For an arbitrary ray and sphere the ray will intersect the sphere in zero one or two points Each of these situations has a
272. umented source code is included so that you can study and adapt it to your 5 i specific needs Blaise Computing s attention to detail like the use of full function prototyping cleanly organized header files and a comprehensive fully indexed manual makes C TOOLS PLUS 5 0 the choice for experienced developers as well as newcomers to C Continuous refinement of Blaise Computing s library products has produced a collection of tools that are unsurpassed for reliability functionality and ease of use Built upon the widely acclaimed C TOOLS PLUS _C TOOLS PLUS 5 0 includes such highly developed INTERVENTION CODE Schedule C functions at specified times inter vals or with a hot key NEW ut formatted output Take full advantage of DOS even from memory W resident programs NEW asso SERVICE ROUTINES FAST DIRECT VIDEO ACCESS _ Capture DOS critical errors and keystrokes All monitors even EGA 43 line mode Install hardware interrupt handlers PRINTER CONTROL RESIDENT SOFTWARE SUPPORT Access BIOS print functions NEW Install detect and remove memory resident Control the DOS PRINT utility NEW programs UTILITIES AND MACROS MENUS Take advantage of DOS file structure Horizontal and pulldown Manipulate data types far amp near pointers NEW NEW Access any memory areas with fast peek and Lotus style support NEW poke macros NEW C TOOLS PLUS 5 0 nop th
273. used by a shorted transistor location TR23 this can be a BU406 BU407 or BU408 Do not use a cross referenced component To disassemble the monitor discon nect the power and signal cables from the system To remove the two screw covers on top of the monitor use a small flat blade screw driver and pry up the back of each cover Next remove the two Phillips screws from the top of the monitor and turn it face down Remove the six screws on the bottom of the case Don t remove the feet or the two screws next to where the cables enter the monitor Pull both cables from behind the plastic flange You can now lift off the case If you still do not have a picture after replacing the fuse and the transistor check for a glow in the back of the CRT this will tell you if you have power If there is no glow and the fuse is still good the main power transformer probably has an open primary Don t fool around the transformer s primary is con nected to 110 VAC If you have no picture but you do have a glow in the back of the CRT you ve replaced the fuse and transistor quickly turn off the monitor Check the heat sink at the transistor you just replaced location TR23 Careful it may be very hot If it is getting hot the flyback transformer is shorted and needs to be replaced Editor s note Flyback transformers were invented in the Australian bush so you have to be careful with them Technicians have been injured trying to
274. usly the almost impossible took a few seconds Stephen Randy Davis PC Magazine 9 For the dealer nearest you or to order call 800 543 7543 60 Day Money back Guarantee Customer satisfaction is our main concern if within 60 days of purchase this product does not perform in accordance with our claims call our customer service department and we will arrange a refund All Borland products are trademarks or registered trademarks of Borland International Inc Other brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders Copyright 1987 Borland International Inc BI 1179 Reader Service Number 1
275. windows on most CRT terminals including CRT s connected to an IBM PC Order direct or from your dealer 185 Compare features and speed BRIEF Norton PMATE VEDIT Editor PLUS Off the cuff macros No No Yes Yes Built in macros Yes No Yes Yes Keystroke macros Only1 No No 1007 Multiple file editing 20 2 No 20 Windows 207 2 No 207 Macro execution window No No No Yes Trace amp Breakpoint macros No No Yes Yes Execute DOS commands Yes Yes Yes Yes Configurable keyboard Layout Hard No Hard Easy Cut and paste buffers 1 1 1 36 Undo line changes Yes No No Yes Paragraph justification No No No Yes On line calculator No No No Yes Manual size index 250 No 42 No 469 Yes 380 Yes Benchmarks in 120K File 1 07 min 6 sec Cannot 2 sec Cannot 11sec 1 15 min 34 sec 20sec Cannot 2 40 min Cannot 2000 replacements Pattern matching search Pattern matching replace VEDIT and CompuView are registered trademarks of CompuView Products Inc BRIEF is a trademark of UnderWare Inc PMATE is a trademark of Phoenix Technologies Ltd Norton Editor is a trademark of Peter Norton Computing Inc PROGRAMMABLE EDITOR FREE Fully Functional Demo Disk it Call for 286 XENIX Version Fully Network Compatible e Simultaneously edit up to 37 files of unlimited size e Split the screen into variable sized windows e Virtual disk buffering simplifies editing of large files e Memory management supports up to 640K e Ex
276. xel The program loop is repeated for every pixel on the screen The program loop will be controlled by a routine called NextDot NextDot is called at the start of every loop NextDot will return the coordinates of the next pixel to be colored or an in dication that the picture is finished The order in which NextDot returns pixels isn t important to the final picture However we can watch the picture be built on the screen The natural tendency is to do each row from left to right one after the other from top to bottom A better idea is to have NextDot pick points scattered all over the screen This way one has a good idea of how the final picture will look long before the last pixel is plotted The pixel coordinates are changed into a percentage of screen fraction by dividing them by the full screen extent The dot position as a percentage of screen is passed to a routine named ViewRay ViewRay will build up the viewing ray A point on the screen rectangle is computed from the screen position If O X Y are the origin X extent Y extent of the screen rectangle and a and b are the X and Y percent of screen parameters then we ll be looking at the point P O a X b y If E denotes the eye then the start of the view ray is E and the direction is P E ViewRay will normalize the direction vector before returning A subroutine called RayComputations will take as input a ray and return a color This routine computes
277. xpects He won t know whether a particular drive will make it until it makes it If the batch averages 14 months before failure then it ll take him 14 months to find that out So we re using history to predict the future but because of rapid change his tory isn t a very good predictor Anyway with that in mind here goes Work In Progress I called Seagate and talked to the guy who designed the 225 He told me they d tried a number of fixes for the track 1 problem munched guard band before finding a solution And he said they were constantly working on in creasing the life and reducing infant mortality of their units I m not sure he could have said anything else but he was convincing He wouldn t say specifically what they were doing but he promised to have a marketing person call me one who could say specifically So far no one has called I arranged to talk to the folks at Rotating Memory Service during the West Coast Computer Faire I was there They were there We should talk Right If you were to buy a hard drive right now what would you get Control Data we use them in all our own systems But they start at 40 meg For a smaller drive look at the PTI Peripheral Technology from Southern California Are they cheap Yes very They re very competitive with Miniscribe s 3 1 2 and I think that s what they re trying to hit We also found the Miniscribe to be very good M
278. y wheel 499 10 AM to 7 PM Peachtree Accounting System 179 EA VISA TENERS sales tax DreamTech Computers Phone 408 996 2373 Reader Service Number 16 All systems carry a full 1 year warranty original system configuration only Prices are subject to change without notice All orders are shipped UPS FOB San Jose unless otherwise specified at time of order All registered trademarks are recognized California residents add 7 Dream 88 Dream 286 and Dream 386 are trademarks of MICROCORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 7 Keeping Your Hard Drives Running 8 MICRO CORNUCOPIA 42 July August 1988 A couple of months ago I spoke to the Eugene PC group My topic officially was desktop publishing but audience questions quickly turned the subject to hard drives Whenever the subject comes up in Micro C we get letters lots of letters Bring up the subject in a computer store and you ll be in viting fisticuffs Sound like a hot topic ou and I both know that RAM data is volatile Turn off the machine and the data goes away Sometimes it goes away before you turn the machine off but that s a dif ferent story Anyway because of RAM s memory problem we use floppy and hard disks for our permanent data storage Unfortunately data stored on disk isn t necessarily permanent After all Te O aa floppy drives aren t exactly carving those bits onto rock And hard drives They write by long dist
279. zation CP M a few times This happens even after a cold boot a mystery since nothing should rewrite CP M system tracks Writing new system tracks onto my system disk cures the problem at least for a while I suspect a hardware or timing problem Any clues Dr Michael Liddle the author of the 256K mod is using an earlier Pro 8 ROM version and ZCPR3 RAMdisk software which he wrote Note that he does not provide the entire ZCPR3 sys tem or the utilities you will need to run it You will have to configure these yourself no further P is THE one Dr Liddle s documentation mentions a special SYSGEN8 COM needed in ZCPR3 which he doesn t provide I im agine that this must be part of the standard ZCPR3 utilities package But he also mentions a RAMINITD program needed to clear the RAMdisk in a ZCPR3 system It s not in his software package from Micro C Double check on the availability of this program before you try to bring up ZCPR3 with the RAMdisk Summing Up The RAMdisk is easy to install in hardware and works fine once you re past a few software difficulties It speeds up the computer tremendously You do lose a few features because there is no CONFIG program which fully supports the altered BIOS Anyone who can solve these minor software problems will be doing a real service to users of the mod SHAREWARE DISK AVAILABLE FOR 10 00 Reader Service Number 90 Reader Service Number 87 MICR

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