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FLEX User`s Manual

1. DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the P command is P n command string where n is optional and is the port number of the parallel interface connected to the printer and command string is a valid command line to be passed to FLEX If the port number is not specified it will default to port seven except on S 09 computers which will default to the MP ID parallel port If the P command is used with multiple commands per line using the end of line chracter it will only affect the command immediately following it in the command line Some examples will clarify the use of the P command P CAT P 3 LIST TEXT P 5 B LIST TXT The first example will produce a printed listing of the catalog of the working drive The port number is omitted and defaults to port seven or the MP ID port depending on the computer system The second example will produce a printed listing of the file TEXT TXT on the printer connected to port number three When using dual parallel ports the port side may be specified by using an A or B suffix to the port number The suffix is separated from the port number by a hyphen or slash character If the suffix is omitted the A side of the port is selected In the third example the port specification of 5 B will use the B side of port number five P command initially loads into the utility command space at C100 If sufficient memory has been reserved for the printer driver see the RM command d
2. GET PRINTER ADDRESS SET DATA IN OUTPUT REGISTER SET DATA READY HIGH TO LOW STORE IN CONTROL REGISTER THEN SEARCH FOR TRANSITION OF LOW LEVEL TO HIGH LEVEL CHECK FOR PRINTER READY CHECK 5 5 TST BMI LDX TST BPL TST COM CHEXIT PULS ENDS EQU END X PFLAG CHECKEX PIA PCR CR X CHEXIT DR X PFLAG PCR X PC 3 11 SAVE INDEX REGISTER CHECK READY FLAG IF NEGATIVE PRINTER READY PICK UP INTERFACE ADDRESS CHECK FOR TRANSITION IF PLUS PRINTER READY RESET TRANSITION STATUS SET PRINTER READY FLAG END OF DRIVER FLEX User s Manual SERIAL PRINTER DRIVER 10 23 79 TSC 6809 XASMB PAGE 1 UP ADDRESS AND DRIVER LENGTH C300 ORG C300 MUST START AT C300 C300 0044 FDB ENDS POPEN LENGTH OF DRIVER ENTRY VECTORS C302 16 0000 POPEN LBRA PRINTER INITIALIZE C305 16 0025 PQUIT LBRA CLOSE PRINTER TERMINATE C308 16 0024 PCHAR LBRA PUT PRINT CHARACTER C30B 16 002E PCHEK LBRA CHECK PRINTER READY CHECK SERIAL PRINTER FILE CONTROL BLOCK C30E E10C ACIA FDB 01 DEFAULT PORT ADDRESS C310 00 SIDE FCB 0 INTERFACE SIDE VALUE C311 00 FCB 0 RESERVED BYTE SEE IF A SIDE IS SPECIFIED C313 A6 8C F8 OPEN LDA SIDE PCR C315 2A 08 BPL ARESET IF POSITIVE NO SIDE SPECIFIED C317 48 ASLA C318 48 ASLA MULTIPLY BY FOUR C319 AB 8C F3 ADDA ACIA 1 PCR C31C A7 8C F0 STA ACIA 1 PCR STORE INTO DEVICE ADDRESS RESET DEVICE C31F AE 8C EC ARESET LDX ACIA PCR GET ACIA ADDRE
3. The COPY command also re groups the sectors of a file in case they were spread all over the old disk This regrouping can make file access times much faster It should be noted that before copying files to a new disk the disk must be formatted first Refer to NEWDISK for instructions on this procedure DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the COPY command has three forms a COPY lt file spec gt lt file spec gt b COPY lt file spec gt lt drive gt c COPY lt drive gt lt drive gt lt match list gt where lt match list gt is the same as that described in the CAT command and all rules apply to matching names and extensions When copying files if the destination disk already contains a file with the same name as the one being copied the file name and the message FILE EXISTS DELETE ORIGINAL will be output to the terminal Typing Y will cause the file on the destination disk to be deleted and the file from the source disk will be copied to the destination disk Typing N will direct FLEX not to copy the file in question The first type of COPY allows copying a single file into another The output file may be ona different drive but if on the same drive the file names must be different It is always necessary to specify the extension of the input file but the output file s extension will default to that of the input s if none is specified An example of this form of COPY Ts COPY 0 TEST TXT 1 TEST25 This command line would
4. Values are either a decimal number or one of the words YES or NO If a yes or no response is appropriate you can specify tne single letters Y or N If no equal sign follows the parameter an implicit Y is assumed The following paragraphs describe each of the keyword parameters and what values they may assume However these values are normally set via the Flex bootstrap configurator Using the SBOX command to arbitrarily change these parameters may result in unpredictable results For example you can use the SBOX CPU parameter to set the 2MHz bit in the CPU type flag This does NOT mean that the computer will then be running at 2 MHz Programs that contain internal timing loops may make use of this flag byte and will then function improperly CPU 1 or CPU 2 This parameter is used to set the CPU speed in MHz in the CPU type flag It is normally used on non S 09 systems that have been modified to run at 2 Mhz The flag is set by the bootstrap configurator in S 09 systems PORT 4 or PORT 16 This parameter is used to set the number of addresses per I 0 port The default value is set by the conifigurator and is four for 09 systems only For S 09 69 A and 69 K systems the proper value is sixteen For compatability purposes the keyword 0 is also accepted for this parameter PLF 50 or PLF 60 This parameter is the Power Line Frequency It is set by the configurator 5 09 systems only and defaults to 60 Hz for
5. lt command string where lt n gt is optional and is the port number of the MP QP interface connected to the printer lt format gt is optional and is is one of the letters A B C D E or and command string is a valid command line to be passed to FLEX If the port number is not specified it will default to port seven If the Q command is used with multiple commands per line using the end of line chracter it will only affect the command immediately following it in the command line The format letter is separated from the port number or Q command by a slash character and specifies the printwheel pitch and print spacing to be used If the format character is omitted it will default to format This format represents standard elite spacing and is used with the WP LETTER GOTHIC 12 printwheel number 80956 supplied with the printers The following formats are available 10 Characters Inch Horizontal 6 Lines Inch Vertical 12 Characters Inch Horizontal 6 Lines Inch Vertical 15 Characters Inch Horizontal 6 Lines Inch Vertical 10 Characters Inch Horizontal 8 Lines Inch Vertical 12 Characters Inch Horizontal 8 Lines Inch Vertical 8 15 Characters Inch Horizontal 8 Lines Inch Vertical P Some examples will clarify the use of the Q command 4 Q CAT This example will produce a printed listing of the catalog of the working drive The port number is omitted and defaults to port seven T
6. on the eject sequence is sent to the terminal after the pause is terminated If the value dd is zero which it is by default no eject lines are issued An eject line is simply a blank line line feed sent to the terminal This feature is especially useful for terminals with fan fold paper to skip over the fold see Depth It may also be useful for certain CRT terminals to be able to erase the previous screen contents at the end of each page PS Y or PS N PauSe control This parameter enables PS Y or disables PS N the end of page pause feature If Pause is on and depth is set to some nonzero value the output display is automatically suspended at the end of each page The output may be restarted by typing the escape character see ES description If pause is disabled there will be no end of page pausing This feature is useful for those using high speed CRT terminals 27 13 FLEX User s Manual to suspend output long enough to read the page of text ES hh EScape character The character whose ASCII hex value is hh is defined to be the escape character Its initial value is 1B the ASCII ESC character The escape character is used to stop output from being displayed and once it is stopped restart it again It is also used to restart output after Pause has stopped it As an example suppose you are LISTing a long text file on the terminal and you wish to temporarily halt the output Typing the escape character will
7. 010 This mechanism for drive from CCCO to CCF7 it independant printer rs is that will recomended PRINTER READY ROUTINE PREADY TST COM RTS PIA PFLAG FLEX User s Manual RESET PIA READY INDICATION SET THE PRINTER READY FLAG CHECK FOR PRINTER READY MUST BE AT CCD8 ORG TST BMI TST BMI RTS PCHK PCHKX CCD8 PFLAG PCHKX PIA 1 PREADY PRINTER READY FLAG PFLAG FCB FF PRINT TEST AT CCD8 TEST FOR PRINTER READY IF NEGATIVE PRINTER READY CHECK FOR TRANSITION IF MINUS PRINTER NOW READY PRINTER READY FLAG PRINTER OUTPUT CHARACTER ROUTINE MUST BE AT CCE4 ORG BSR BPL CLR STA LDA BSR LDA STA RTS POUT POUTB END creating printer drivers CCE4 PCHK POUT PFLAG PIA 36 POUTB 3E PIA 1 MUST RESIDE AT CCE4 TEST FOR PRINTER READY LOOP UNTIL PRINTER READY SET PRINTER FLAG NOT READY SET DATA IN OUTPUT REGISTER SET DATA READY HIGH TO LOW STUFF BYTE INTO THE PIA THEN SEARCH FOR TRANSITION OF LOW LEVEL TO HIGH LEVEL is adequate for those fit entirely within the printer driver area located For those drivers that require additional that the P COR program be drivers 3 15 memory used with position FLEX User s Manual COMMAND SUMMARY APPEND lt file spec gt lt file list gt lt file spec gt Default Extension TXT Description Page A 1 ASNE W lt drive gt S lt drive gt Description
8. 250 files is build upon the disk The directory will expand if more than 250 files are placed on the disk Due to the large size and high density of the disk it is not unusual for several bad sectors to be found The program will abort if it cannot find at least 60 000 good free sectors on the disk All bad sectors are automatically bypassed C 3 1 CLEAN The CLEAN command is used in conjunction with a Remex FD 08 cleaning kit to clean DMAF eight inch disk drive heads DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the CLEAN command is CLEAN lt drive number gt where lt drive number gt is optional and defaults to drive zero The CLEAN command will then prompt you to load the cleaning diskette into the specified drive When the diskette is in place the heads loaded and stepped back and forth over the cleaning surface for thirty seconds You should then remove the cleaning disk and inspect it for oxide deposits If deposits are noted follow the manufacturers recomendations for media replacement Frequent oxide deposits could indicate defective disk heads C 6 1 DATE The DATE command is used to display or change an internal FLEX date register This date register may be used by future programs and FLEX utilities DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the DATE command is DATE month day year gt where month is the numerical month is the numerical day and year is the last two digits of the year
9. LIST will prompt for TITLE at which time a title for the output may be entered The TITLE may be up to 40 characters long This feature is useful for obtaining output on a printer for documentation purposes see P command Each page will consist of the title date page number 54 lines of output and a hex OC formfeed character Entering a NP will select both options A few examples will clarify the syntax used LIST RECEIPTS LIST CHAPTER1 30 200 NP LIST LETTER 100 The first example will list the file named RECEIPTS TXT without line numbers All lines will be output unless the escape character is used as described in the Utility Command Set introduction The second example will LIST the 30th line through the 200th line of the file named CHAPTER1 TXT on the terminal The hyphen is required as the range number separator Line numbering and page formatting will be output because of the NP option The last example shows a special feature of the range specification If only one number is stated it will be interpretted as the first line to be displayed All lines following that line will also be LISTed The last example will LIST the lines from line 100 to the end of the file No line numbers will be output since the N was omitted L 2 1 NEWDISK Newdisk is used to format a new diskette Diskettes as purchased will not work with FLEX until certain system information has been put on them The NEWDISK utility puts
10. Pane A 2 BUILD lt file spec gt Default Extension Description Page B 1 CAT lt drive list gt lt match list gt Description Page C 1 C4MAT Description Page C 5 CLEAN lt drive number gt Description Page C 6 1 COPY lt file spec gt lt file spec gt COPY lt file spec gt lt drive gt COPY lt drive gt lt drive gt lt match list gt Description Page C 2 DATE lt mm dd yy gt Description Page D 1 DELETE lt file spec gt lt file list gt Description Page D 2 ECHO lt string gt Description Page E 1 EXEC lt file spec gt Default Extension Description Page E 2 FIX lt file spec gt lt file spec gt Default Extension BIN Description Page F 1 GET lt file spec gt lt file list gt Default Extension BIN Description Page 1 7 I lt file spec gt lt command gt Default Extension TXT Description Page 1 1 4 1 FLEX User s Manual JUMP lt hex address gt Description Page J 1 LINK lt file spec gt Default Extension SYS Description Page L 1 LIST lt file spec gt lt ine range gt N Default Extension TXT Description Page L 2 MON Description Page 1 7 N lt command gt Description Page N 2 NEWDISK lt drive gt Description Page N 1 0 lt file spec gt lt command gt Default Extension OUT Description Page 0 1 P lt command gt Description Page P 1 P COR Description Page P 2 PO lt command gt Descri
11. TEST TXT 0 AUGUST TXT The first example will DELETE the file named MATHPACK BIN from the working drive If auto drive searching is selected the file will be deleted from the first drive it is found on The second line will DELETE the file TEST TXT from drive 1 and AUGUST TXT from drive 0 There are several restrictions on the DELETE command First a file that is delete or write protected may not be deleted without first removing the protection Also a file which is currently in the print queue see the PRINT command can not be deleted using the DELETE command D 2 1 ECHO The ECHO command is a utility that permits messages and control characters to be sent to the terminal device It is particularly useful when used inside of EXEC files DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the ECHO command is ECHO lt string gt where string is any string of printable characters or control escape sequences terminated by a carriage return or an end of line character Some examples of the echo command are ECHO THIS IS A MESSAGE ECHO G THE FILE HAS BEEN DELETED The first example types THIS IS A MESSAGE on the terminal The second example uses a control escape sequence to send a bell character Control G to the terminal followed by the message THE FILE HAS BEEN DELETED Control escape sequences provide a mechanism to send control characters to the terminal device for example a bell character may be sent to provide an audible ale
12. The FLEX prompt is the three plus signs and will always be present when the system is ready to accept an operator command The should become a familiar sight and signifies that FLEX is ready to work for you 1 2 FLEX User s Manual IV DISK FILES AND THEIR NAMES All disk files are stored in the form of sectors on the disk and in this version each sector contains 256 bytes of information Each byte can contain one character of text or one byte of binary machine information A maximum of 340 user accessible sectors will fit on a single sided mini disk or 1140 sectors on a single sided full size floppy Double sided disks would hold exactly twice that number of sectors Double density systems will hold more still The user however need not keep count for the system does this automatically A file will always be at least one sector long and can have as many as the maximum number of sectors on the disk The user should not be concerned with the actual placement of the files on the disk since this is done by the operating system File deletion is also supported and all previously used sectors become immediately available again after a file has been deleted All files on the disk have a name Names such as the following are typical PAYROLL INVNTORY TEST1234 APRIL 78 WKLY PAY Anytime a file is created referenced or deleted its name must be used Names can be most anything but must begin with a letter not numbers
13. available the printer driver is relocated there If there is no reserved printer area the printer drivers are relocated into the high end of user memory and the end of user memory pointer is updated When the command to be printed completes the memory occupied by the printer driver is returned to the user memory area 3 1 FLEX User s Manual V ACCESSING DRIVES NOT CONTAINING A DISKETTE If an attempt is made to access a drive not containing a disk an error message is normally issued However if you are using 5 inch disks and a DC 1 or DC 2 controller the system will hang up attempting to read until a disk is inserted and the door closed VI SYSTEM ERROR NUMBERS Any time that FLEX detects an error during an operation an appropriate error message will be displayed on the terminal FLEX internally translates a derived error number into a plain language statement using a look up table called ERROR SYS If you have forgotten to copy this SYS file onto a disk that you are using FLEX will report a corresponding number as shown below DISK ERROR xx where is a decimal error number The table below is a list of these numbers and what error they represent ERROR MEANING ILLEGAL FMA FUNCTION CODE ENCOUNTERED THE REQUESTED FILE IS IN USE THE FILE SPECIFIED ALREADY EXISTS THE SPECIFIED FILE COULD NOT BE FOUND SYSTEM DIRECTORY ERROR REBOOT SYSTEM THE SYSTEM DIRECTORY IS FULL ALL AVAILABLE DISK SPACE HAS BEEN USED RE
14. be entered on one command line by use of the end of line character This character is initially a colon but may be user defined with the TTYSET utility By ending a command with the end of line character it is possible to follow it immediately with another command FLEX will execute all commands on the line before returning with the prompt An error in any of the command entries will cause the system to terminate operation of that command line and return with the prompt Some examples of valid command lines follow 1 1 5 5 1 LIST LIBRARY CAT 1 CAT 0 As many commands may be typed in one command line as desired but the total number of characters typed must not exceed 128 Any excess characters will be ignored by FLEX One last system feature to be described is the idea of system and working drives As stated earlier if a file specification does not specifically designate a drive number it will assume a default value This default value will either be the current system drive assignment or the current working drive assignment The system drive is the default for all command names or in other words all file names which are typed first on a command line Any other file name on the command line will default to the working drive This version of FLEX also supports automatic drive searching When in the auto search mode if no drive numbers are specified the operating system will first search dri
15. cause the file TEST TXT on drive 0 to be copied into a file called TEST25 TXT on drive 1 Note how the second file s extension defaulted to TXT the extension of the input file The second type of COPY allows copying a file from one drive to another drive with the file keeping its original name An example of this is COPY 0 LIST CMD 1 Here the file named LIST CMD on drive 0 would be copied to drive 1 It is again necessary to specify the file s extension in the file specification This form of the command is more convenient than the previous form if the file is to retain its original name after the copying process 2 1 FLEX User s Manual The final form of COPY is the most versatile and the most powerful It is possible to copy all files from one drive to another or to copy only those files which match the match list characters given Some examples will clarify its use C0PY 0 1 C0PY 1 0 CMD SYS COPY 0 1 A B CA T The first example will copy all files from drive 0 to drive 1 keeping the same names in the process The second example will copy only those files on drive 1 whose extensions are CMD and SYS to drive 0 No other files will be copied The last example will copy the files from drive 0 whose names start with or B regardless of extension and those files whose names start with the letters CA and whose extensions start with T to the output drive which is drive 1 The last form of copy is the most
16. disk specified Usually the wrong drive was specified or defaulted or a misspelling of the name was made ILLEGAL FILE NAME This can happen if the name or extension did not start with a letter or the name or extension field was too long limited to 8 and 3 respectively This message may also mean that the command being executed expected a file name to follow and one was not provided FILE EXISTS This message will be output if you try to create a file with a name the same as one which currently exists on the same disk Two different files with the same name are not allowed to exist on the same disk SYNTAX ERROR This means that the command line just typed does not follow the rules stated for the particular command used Refer to the individual command descriptions for syntax rules GENERAL SYSTEM FEATURES Any time one of the utility commands is sending output to the terminal it may be temporarily halted by typing the escape character see TTYSET for the definition of this character Once the output is stopped the user has two choices typing the escape character again or typing RETURN If the escape character is typed again the output will resume If the RETURN is typed control will return to FLEX and the command will be terminated 11 other characters ignored while output is stopped 2 1 APPEND The APPEND command is used to append or concatenate two or more files creating a new file as the result
17. name may exist on several drives simultaneously To designate a particular drive a drive number is added to the file specification It consists of a single digit 0 3 and is separated from the name by the field separator The drive number may appear either before the name or after it after the extension if it is given If the drive is not specified the system will default to either the system drive or the working drive These terms will be described a little later Some examples of file specifications with drive numbers follow 0 BASIC MONDAY 2 1 TEST BIN LIST CMD 1 In summary a file specification may contain up to three fields separated by the field separator These fields are drive name and extension The rules for the file specification can be stated quite concisely using the following notation lt drive gt lt name gt lt extension gt or lt name gt lt extension gt lt drive gt The lt gt enclose a field and do not actually appear in the specification and the surround optional items of the specification The following are all syntactically correct 0 0 NAME EXT 0 0 NAME Note that the only required field is the actual name itself and the other values will usually default to predetermined values Studying the above examples will clarify the notation used The same notation will occur regularly throughout the manual
18. or symbols and be followed by at most 7 additional characters called name characters These name characters can be combination of the letters A through Z or a through z any digit 0 through 9 or one of the two special characters the hyphen or the underscore a left arrow on some terminals File names must also contain an extension The file extension further defines the file and usually indicates the type of information contained therein Examples of extensions are TXT for text type files BIN for machine readable binary encoded files CMD for utility command files and BAS for BASIC source programs Extensions may contain up to 3 name characters with the first character being a letter Most of the FLEX commands assume a default extension on the file name and the user need not be concerned with the actual extension on the file The user may at anytime assign new extensions overiding the default value and treat the extension as just part of the file name Some examples of file names with their extensions follow APPEND CMD LEDGER BAS TEST BIN Note that the extension is always separated from the name by a period period is the name field separator It tells FLEX to treat the following characters as a new field in the name specification 1 3 FLEX User s Manual A file name can be further refined The name and extension uniquely define a file on a particular drive but the same
19. other computer systems 5 3 1 FLEX User s Manual EXT YES or EXT NO This value determines whether the system is using extended 20 bit addresses It is set by the bootstrap if an extended memory unit such as the Motorola SMS3509 is installed in the computer TIMER YES or TIMER NO This parameter is set by the configurator on 5 09 systems to reflect the presence of the 68B40 programmable Timer Module on the MP ID interface For convenience the keyword INT For INTerval timer is also accepted UC YES or UC NO This parameter is defaulted to YES by the bootstrap and causes Flex to internally map all file names into upper case If both upper and lower case file names are desired the parameter may be set to NO NOMSG The final parameter is not a keyword and may be specified to supress printing of the option flag settings This parameter is useful when the SBOX command is included in STARTUP files When this parameter is not specified the format of the SBOX report is as follows MES Configurator Version 2 Memory Size 128K 1 0 Port Size 16 CPU Clock Rate 2MHz Power Line Frequency 60 Hz Extended Addressing Yes Interval Timer Yes Real Time Clock Yes Upper Case Only Yes 3 2 SP The SP command is used to direct the output of commands in the Utility Command get to an IBM Electronic Typewriter Model 50 connected to an MP WP interface It is normally used to produ
20. prompt character This is similar to the Text Editing System s prompt for text input To enter your text simply type on the terminal the desired characters keeping in mind that once the RETURN is typed the line is in the file and can not be changed time before the RETURN is typed the backspace character may be used as well as the line delete character If the delete character is used the prompt will be instead of the equals sign to show that the last line was deleted and not entered into the file It should be noted that only printable characters not control characters may be entered into text files using the BUILD command To exit the BUILD mode it is necessary to type a pound sign immediately following the prompt then type RETURN The file will be finished and control returned back to FLEX where the three plus signs should again be output to the terminal This exiting is similar to that of the Text Editing System B 1 1 CAT The CATalog command is used to display the FLEX disk file names in the directory on each disk The user may display selected files on one or multiple drives if desired DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the CAT command is CAT lt drive list gt lt match list gt where lt drive list gt can be one or more drive numbers seperated by commas and lt match list gt is a set of name and extension characters to be matched against names in the directory For example if only file
21. routine PCHK at CCD8 and an output character routine POUT at CCE4 3 When the POUT routine is called by FLEX the character to be output will be in the A accumulator The output routine must not destroy the B X Y or U registers may destroy the A and X registers PCHK may NOT alter any registers 4 The routines MUST start at the addresses specified but may be continued anywhere in memory if there is not room where specified If placed elsewhere in memory be certain they do not conflict with any utilities or programs which will use them 5 All three routines must end with a return from subroutine RTS instruction PRINT SYS PIA DRIVERS FOR GENERAL CASE PRINTER 01 PIA EQU 01 ADDRESS FOR PORT 7 PRINTER INITIALIZATION MUST BE AT CCCO CCCO ORG CCCO MUST RESIDE AT CCCO CCCO 86 PINIT 1 3A SELECT DATA DIRECTION REG CCC2 B7 EOID STA PIA 1 BY WRITING O IN DDR CONTROL CCC5 86 FF LDA FF SELECT ALL OUTPUT LINES CCC7 B7 E01C STA PIA PUT IN DATA DIRECTION REG CCCA 86 3E LDA 3E SET UP FOR TRANSITION CHECKS CCCC B7 E01D STA PIA 1 AND ENABLE OUTPUT REGISTER CCCF 39 RTS 3 14 CCDO CCD3 CCD6 CCD8 CCD8 CCDB CCDD CCEO CCE2 CCE3 CCE4 CCE4 CCE6 CCE8 CCEB CCEE CCFO CCF2 CCF4 CCF7 7D 73 39 7D 2B 7D 2B 39 FF 8D 2A 7F B7 86 8D 86 B7 39 01 CCE3 E01D EE F2 FC CCE3 01 36 02
22. s Manual Some examples of using the ASN command are ASN W 1 ASN S 1 W 0 where the first line would set the working drive to 1 and leave the system drive assigned to its previous value The second example sets the system drive to 1 and the working drive to 0 Careful use of drive assignments can allow the operator to avoid the use of drive numbers on file specifications most of the time If auto drive searching is desired then the letter A for automatic should be used in place of the drive number Example ASN W A ASN S A W 1 ASN S A W A A 2 2 BUILD The BUILD command is provided for those desiring to create small text files quickly such as STARTUP files see STARTUP or not wishing to use the optionally available FLEX Text Editing System The main purpose for BUILD is to generate short text files for use by either the EXEC command or the STARTUP facility provided in FLEX DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the BUILD command is BUILD lt file spec gt where lt file spec gt is the name of the file you wish to be created The default extension for the spec is TXT and the drive defaults to the working drive If the output file already exists the question MAY THE EXISTING FILE BE DELETED will be displayed A Y response will delete the existing file and build a new file while a N response will terminate the BUILD command After you are in the BUILD mode the terminal will respond with an equals sign as the
23. the transfer address to 0100 type T 0100 Remove the transfer address from the file See the description of a binary file in the advanced programmer s guide View a section of the file This command expects a range of addresses and displays the contents of the binary file between these addresses The binary code is displayed in both hexadecimal and ASCII Any addresses in the range not contained within the binary file are displayed as a pair of hyphens Exit Give Up No modified data is written back to the disk The file is left intact This command is useful if you have managed to screw up the file while making modifications FIX Memory Examine and Change The memory examine and change function of fix permits the programmer to look at and change bytes in a binary file by referencing the address at which they will load This function cannot be used to add additional bytes to the binary tile If you need to add data use the B command to create the new bytes and then use the memory command to change them 1 2 Enter the M command followed by the four digit address of the byte you wish to examine or change The computer will display the address followed by the data found in the byte If no such byte exists in the binary file a question mark will be shown At this point the user has the option of advancing either forward or backward to the next memory location changing the data stored at the displayed addres
24. this information on the diskette as well as checking the diskette for defective sectors bad spots on the surface of the disk which may cause data errors DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the NEWDISK command is NEWDISK lt drive gt where lt drive gt represents a single digit drive number and specifies the drive to be formatted After typing the command the system will ask if you are sure you want to NEWDISK and if the disk to be initialized is a scratch disk Type Y as the response to these questions if you are sure the NEWDISK command should continue Certain versions of NEWDISK will also ask you if you have a double sided or double density disk installed If so type Y otherwise type N NEWDISK then prompts for a volume name and number This gives you the ability to name the diskette for future reference The NEWDISK process takes approximately five minutes to initialize a disk assuming there are no bad spots on it Defective sectors will make NEWDISK run even slower depending on the number of bad sectors found As bad sectors are detected a message will be output to the terminal such as BAD SECTOR AT xxyy where xx is the disk track number in hex and yy is the sector number also in hex NEWDISK automatically removes bad sectors from the list of available sectors so even if a disk has several bad spots on it it is still usable When NEWDISK finishes FLEX will report the number of available sectors remaining
25. versatile because it will allow putting just the command CMD files on a new disk or just the SYS files etc with a single command entry During the COPY process the name of the file which is currently being copied will be output to the terminal as well as the drive to which it is being copied C 2 2 C4MAT The command is used to format the CalComp Marksman hard disk It performs a surface verification and format function similar to the NEWDISK utility DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the C4MAT command is C4MAT This command will initialize the entire surface of the hard disk It is important to format the disk initially to build directories and sector maps Once initialized the disk should never need to be reinitialized unless catastrophic damage occurs like a wild program writing all over the disk The initialization process destroys all data previously on the disk and it is vital that disks with good data not formatted The CAMAT program required approximately two hours to run When the CAMAT program is run it will ask you if you are sure you want to initialize the disk If you do type Y C4MAT will then ask for a volume name which can be up to eight characters in length The volume name is stored in the disk information sector and is displayed by the CAT command and others Be absolutely sure the disk is not write protected when you run the CAMAT program An initial directory capable of storing up to
26. 1 N N 2 0 0 1 P P COR P 2 PO P33 PSP 4 PROT P35 Q 0 1 0 0 2 RENAME R 1 RM R 2 READPROM R 3 5 5 1 SAVE S 2 SBOX S 3 SP 5 4 STARTUP Sub TTYSET T 1 TOUCH 1 2 USEMF U 1 VER V 1 VERIFY V 2 WRITPROM W 1 XOUT X 1 Y Y iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Continued Page CHAPTER 3 Disk Capacity 3 1 II Write Protect 3 1 III The RESET Button 3 1 IV Notes on the P Command 3 1 V Accessing Drives Not Containing a Disk 3 1 VI System Error Numbers 3 2 VII System Memory Map 3 3 VIII FLEX Input Output Subroutines 3 4 IX Booting the FLEX Disk Operating System 3 6 X Requirements for printer drivers 3 7 XI Parallel and Serial Printer drivers 3 9 XII Former P and PRINT SYS 3 14 CHAPTER 4 I Command Summary 4 1 FLEX USER S MANUAL I INTRODUCTION The FLEX Operating System is a very versatile and flexible operating system It provides the user with a powerful set of system commands to control all disk operations directly from the user s terminal The systems programmer will be delighted with the wide variety of disk access file management routines available for personal use Overall FLEX is one of the most powerful operating systems available today The FLEX Operating System is comprised of three parts the File Management System FMS the Disk Operating System DOS and the Utility Command Set UCS Part of the power of the overall system lies in the fact that the system can
27. 1 4 FLEX User s Manual V ENTERING COMMANDS When FLEX is displaying the system is ready to accept a command line A command line is usually a name followed by certain parameters depending on the command being executed There is no RUN command in FLEX The first file name on a command line is always loaded into memory and execution is attempted If no extension is given with the file name CMD is the default If an extension is specified the one entered is the one used Some examples of commands and how they would look on the terminal follow PEt TTY SET TTYSET CMD LOOKUP BIN The first two lines are identical to FLEX since the first would default to an extension of CMD The third line would load the binary file LOOKUP BIN into memory and assuming the file contained a transfer address the program would be executed A transfer address tells the program loader where to start the program executing after it has been loaded If you try to load and execute a program in the above manner and no transfer address is present the message NO LINK will be output to the terminal where link refers to the transfer address Some other error messages which can occur are WHAT if an illegal file specification has been typed as the first part of a command line and THERE if the file typed does not exist on the disk During the typing of a command line the system simply accepts all characters until a RETURN key is type
28. AD PAST END OF FILE DISK FILE READ ERROR DISK FILE WRITE ERROR THE FILE OR DISK IS WRITE PROTECTED THE FILE IS PROTECTED FILE NOT DELETED ILLEGAL FILE CONTROL BLOCK SPECIFIED ILLEGAL DISK ADDRESS ENCOUNTERED AN ILLEGAL DRIVE NUMBER WAS SPECIFIED DRIVE NOT READY THE FILE IS PROTECTED ACCESS DENIED SYSTEM FILE STATUS ERROR FMS DATA INDEX RANGE ERROR FMS INACTIVE REBOOT SYSTEM pL RRP A A A ux CO Y O O1 ON Fr Q Oo OO O0 O1 45 C90 P9 EA 21 ILLEGAL FILE SPECIFICATION 22 SYSTEM FILE CLOSE ERROR 23 SECTOR MAP OVERFLOW DISK TOO SEGMENTED 24 NON EXISTENT RECORD NUMBER SPECIFIED 25 RECORD NUMBER MATCH ERROR FILE DAMAGED 26 COMMAND SYNTAX ERROR RE TYPE COMMAND 27 THAT COMMAND IS NOT ALLOWED WHILE PRINTING 28 WRONG HARDWARE CONFIGURATION 3 2 FLEX User s Manual VII SYSTEM MEMORY MAP The following is a brief list of the RAM space required by the FLEX Operating System All address are in hex 0000 BFFF User RAM Note Some of this space is used by NEWDISK COPY and the printer utilities C000 07 System stack C080 COFF Line Input Buffer C100 C6FF Utility command space C700 DFFF Disk Operating System CD00 FLEX cold start entry address CD03 FLEX warm start entry address For a more detailed memory map consult the Advanced Programmer s Guide 3 3 FLEX User s Manual VIII FLEX OPERATING SYSTEM INPUT OUTPUT SUBROUTINES In order for the FLEX I 0 functions to operate p
29. APTERI TXT CHAPTER2 TXT and CHAPTER3 TXT in that order The second example would append FILE2 BAK from drive 1 to FILEI TXT from the working drive and put the result in a file called GOODFILE TXT on the working drive The file GOODFILE defaults to the extension of TXT since it is the default extension Again after the use of the APPEND command all of the original files will be intact exactly as they were before the APPEND operation A 1 1 ASN The ASN command is used for assigning the system drive and the working drive or to select automatic drive searching The system drive is used by FLEX as the default for command names or in general the first name on a command line The working drive is used by FLEX as the default on all other file specifications within a command line Upon initialization FLEX assigns drive 0 as both the system and working drive example will show how the system defaults to these values APPEND FILE1 FILE2 FILE3 If the system drive is assigned to be 0 and the working drive is assigned to drive 1 the above example will perform the following operation get the APPEND command from drive 0 the system drive then append FILE2 from drive 1 the working drive to FILE1 from drive 1 and put the result in FILE3 on drive 1 As can be seen the system drive was the default for APPEND where the working drive was the default for all other file specs listed Automatic drive searching causes FLE
30. Any type of file may be appended but it only makes sense to append files of the same type in most cases appending binary files which have transfer addresses associated with them the transfer address of the last file of the list will be the effective transfer address of the resultant file All of the original files will be left intact DESCRIPTION The general syntax for the APPEND command is as follows APPEND file spec gt lt file list gt lt file spec where file list can be an optional list of the specifications The last name specified should not exist on the disk since this will be the name of the resultant file If the last file name given does exist on the disk the question MAY THE EXISTING FILE BE DELETED will be displayed A Y response will delete the current file and cause the APPEND operation to be completed A N response will terminate the APPEND operation All other files specified must exist since they are the ones to be appended together If only 2 file names are given the first file will be copied to the second file The extension default is TXT unless a different extension is used on the FIRST FILE SPECIFIED in which case that extension becomes the default for the rest of the command line Some examples will show its use APPEND CHAPTER1 CHAPTER2 CHAPTER3 BOOK APPEND FILE1 1 FILE2 BAK GOODFILE The first line would create a file on the working drive called BOOK TXT which would contain the files CH
31. DATE 5 2 79 Sets the date register to May 2 1979 Typing DATE followed by a carriage return will return the last entered date Example DATE May 2 1979 D 1 1 DELETE The DELETE command is used to delete a file from the disk Its name will be removed from the directory and its sector space will be returned to the free space on the disk DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the DELETE command is DELETE lt file spec gt lt file list gt where lt file list gt can be an optional list of file specifications It is necessary to include the extension on each file specified As the DELETE command is executing it will prompt you with DELETE FILE NAME The entire file specification will be displayed including the drive number If you decide the file should be deleted type Y otherwise any other response will cause that file to remain on the disk If a Y was typed the message ARE YOU SURE will be displayed on the terminal If you are absolutely sure you want the file deleted from the disk type another Y and it will be gone Any other character will leave the file intact ONCE A FILE HAS BEEN DELETED THERE IS NO WAY TO GET IT BACK Be absolutely sure you have the right file before answering the prompt questions with Y s Once the file is deleted the space it had occupied on the disk is returned back to the list of free space for future use by other files Few examples follow DELETE MATHPACK BIN DELETE 1
32. DOS input buffer FLEX would then send out a space 20 to erase the Y and another 08 cursor left to re position the cursor DL hh DeLete character This sets the delete current line character to the hex value hh This character is initially a control X hex 18 The action of the delete character is to erase the current input line before it is accepted into the computer for execution Setting DL 0 will disable the line delete feature EL hh End of Line character This character is the one used by FLEX to separate multiple commands on one input line It is initially set to a colon a hex value of 3A Setting this character to 0 will disable the multiple command per line capability of FLEX The parameter EL hh will set the end of line character to the character having the ASCII hex value of hh This character must be set to a printable character control characters not allowed DP dd DePth count This parameter specifies that a page consists of dd decimal physical lines of output A page may be considered to be the number of lines between the fold if using fan folded paper on a hard copy terminal or a page may be defined to be the number of lines which can be displayed at any one time on a CRT type terminal Setting DP 0 will disable the paging this is the initial value See EJ and PS below for more details of depth T 1 2 FLEX User s Manual WD dd WiDth The WD parameter specifies the decimal number of ch
33. ERMINATE PCHAR LBRA PUT PRINT CHARACTER PCHEK LBRA CHECK PRINTER READY CHECK PARALLEL PRINTER FILE CONTROL BLOCK PIA FDB 01 DEFAULT PORT ADDRESS SIDE FCB 0 INTERFACE SIDE VALUE FCB 0 RESERVED BYTE PFLAG FCB FF PRINTER READY FLAG DR FDB DATA REGISTER OF PIA 0 DDR FDB 0 DATA DIRECTION REG OF PIA CR FDB 1 CONTROL REGISTER OF PIA PRINTER INITIALIZATION OPEN LDX PIA PCR PICK UP PIA ADDRESS LDA 3A SELECT DATA DIRECTION REG STA CR X BY WRITING O IN DDR CONTROL LDA FF SELECT ALL OUTPUT LINES LDA DDR X PUT IN DATA DIRECTION REG LDA 3E SET UP FOR TRANSITION CHECKS STA CR X AND ENABLE OUTPUT REGISTER RTS TERMINATE PRINTER PROCESSING CLOSE LDA 0D PRINT CARRIAGE RETURN 3 10 PARALLEL PRINTER DRIVER C325 C327 C329 C32B C3ZE 6331 C355 C335 C337 339 C33B C33D E33E C342 C344 C347 C349 C34B C34D C350 C352 0 ERROR S DETECTED 8D 2A 34 6F AE A7 86 A7 86 A7 35 34 6D 2B AE 6D 2A 6D 63 35 16 3A 3A 8C 8C 84 36 01 3E 01 90 10 8C 0C 8C 01 05 84 8C 90 E4 DD DO C7 10 23 79 FLEX User s Manual TSC 6809 XASMB PAGE 2 PRINTER OUTPUT CHARACTER ROUTINE PUT BSR BPL PUSHS CLR LDX STA LDA STA LDA STA PULS PIA PCR PUT X PIA PCR PIA PCR DR X 36 CR X 3E CR X X PC TEST FOR PRINTER READY LOOP UNTIL PRINTER READY SAVE INDEX REGISTER SET PRINTER FLAG NOT READY
34. FLEX User s Manual Technical Systems Consultants Inc FLEX User s Manual Copyright 1979 by Technical Systems Consultants Inc PO Box 2574 West Lafayette Indiana 47906 All Rights Reserved COPYRIGHT NOTICE This entire manual and documentation is provided for personal use and enjoyment by the purchaser The entire contents have been copyrighted by Technical Systems Consultants Inc and reproduction by any means is prohibited Use of this manual or any part thereof for any purpose other than single end use is strictly prohibited oT pes PREFACE The purpose of this User s Guide is to provide the user of the FLEX Operating System with the information required to make effective use of the available system commands and utilities This manual applies to FLEX 9 0 for full size and mini floppy disks The user should keep this manual close at hand while becoming familiar with the system It is organized to make it convenient as a quick reference guide as well as a thorough reference manual siie TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER 1 L Introduction 1 1 II System Requirements 1 2 III Getting the System Started 1 2 IV Disks Files and Their Names 1 3 V Entering Commands 1 5 VI Command Descriptions 1 7 CHAPTER 2 I Utility Command Set 2 1 APPEND A 1 ASN A 2 BUILD B 1 CAT D COPY C 2 C4MAT 6 5 CLEAN C26 DATE D 1 DELETE D 2 ECHO Bud EXEC E 2 FIX F 1 I I 1 JUMP J 1 LINK L 1 LIST L 2 NEWDISK N
35. LE TEXT2 TXT TO DRIVE 1 FILE EXISTS DELETE ORIGINAL N FILE TEXT3 TXT TO DRIVE 1 FILE EXISTS DELETE ORIGINAL N FILE TEXT4 TXT TO DRIVE 1 COPIED 2 1 The 0 not zero command be used to route all displayed output from a utility to an output file instead of the terminal The function of 0 is similar to P the printer command except that output is stored in a file rather than being printed on the terminal or printer Other TSC software may support this utility Check the supplied software instructions for more details DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the 0 command is 0 lt file spec gt lt command gt where lt command gt can be any standard utility command line and lt file spec gt is the name of the desired output file The default extension on lt file spec is OUT If O is used with multiple commands per line using the end of line character it will only have affect on the command it immediately precedes Some examples will clarify its use 0 CAT CAT writes a listing of the current disk directory into a file called CAT OUT 0 BAS ASMB BASIC TXT writes the assembled source listing of the text source file BASIC TXT into a file called BAS OUT when using the assembler 0 1 1 The P command is used to direct the output of commands in the Utility Command Set to a parallel printer It is normally used to produce hard copy output from text processors assemblers and other utility programs
36. R DRIVERS There are four routines that must be furnished in all printer drivers 1 An OPEN routine which is called to perform all necessary printer initialization 2 A CLOSE routine which is called to perform all necessary printer cleanup and termination operations 3 A PUT routine which is called to output the next character to the printer and 4 A CHECK routine which is called to determine if the printer is ready to accept another character The assembled printer driver which contains these routines is then combined with the P COR binary file furnished with the operating system For the procedure used to combine these two files see the documentation on P COR section P 2 All four of the required routines may be located anywhere in the space provided for the routines C312 C6FF hex The only requirement is that one of the long branch LBRA instructions in the entry point vector located at C302 C30D hex will branch to the appropriate routine All four routines must end with a return from subroutine RTS instruction All four routines must preserve the contents of the Y and U registers The OPEN and CLOSE routines have no input or output parameterization but must preserve the contents of the Y and U registers The PUT routine expects the character to be output in the A register on entry to the routine while the B X Y and U registers must be preserved The CHECK must return a minus indication if the printer is ready to a
37. SS C322 86 03 LDA 00000011 C324 7 84 5 0 DO MASTER RESET C326 96 11 LDA 00010001 C328 A7 84 STA 0 X SET UP NO PARITY BIT C32A A7 84 TST 1 X 8 DATA BITS 2 STOP BITS 9226 39 RTS CLOSE DOWN PRINTER PROCESSING C32D 86 00 CLOSE LDA 0D PRINT CARRIAGE RETURN WRITE A CHARACTER TO PRINTER C32F 8D OB PUT BSR CHECK WAIT FOR PRINTER READY C331 2A FC BPL PUT C333 34 10 PSHS X C335 AE 8C D6 LDX ACIA PCR GET ACIA ADDRESS C338 A7 01 STA 1 X STORE INTO DATA REGISTER C33A 35 90 PULS X PC 3 12 FLEX User s Manual SERIAL PRINTER DRIVER 10 23 79 TSC 6809 XASMB PAGE 2 CHECK TO SEE IF PRINTER IS READY C33C 34 04 CHECK PSHS B C33E E6 9C CD LDX ACIA PCR GET ACIA STATUS C341 56 RORB C342 56 RORB SHIFT READY BIT C343 56 RORB INTO SIGN FLAG C344 35 90 PULS B PC C346 ENDS EQU END OF DRIVER END 0 ERROR S DETECTED 3 13 FLEX User s Manual XII FORMER P AND PRINT SYS FLEX as originally supplied includes a printer driver that will work with most parallel type printers such as the SWIPC PR 40 Although this printer driver has been superseded a source listing has been included for compatibility purposes If desired these drivers may be used with the PO print command The requirements for this type of driver are as follows 1 The driver must be in a file called PRINT SYS 2 Three separate routines must be supplied a printer initialization routine PINIT at CCCO a check ready
38. TESTS OUT 2 2 CHPTR 00 0 3 CHPTR2 0 COMMAND This output says that TEST OUT is the next file to be printed or that it is in the process of being printed and that 3 copies 1 plus a repeat of 2 of this file will be printed After these three copies have been printed CHPTR OUT will be printed and then CHPTR2 TXT The COMMAND prompt means QCHECK is waiting for one of the following commands COMMAND FUNCTION carriage return Re start printing return to the FLEX command mode Q A Q command will print the queue contents again R N X An R command repeats the file at position N X times If X is omitted the repeat count will be cleared Example R 3 5 D N A D command removes the file at queue position N If N 1 the current print job will be terminated Example D 3 T A T command will terminate the current print job This will cause the job currently printing to quit and printing of the next job to start If the current files RPT count was not zero it will print again until the repeat count is 0 To completely terminate the current job use use the D 1 command N N N command will make the file at position N the next one to be printed after the current print job is finished Typing Q after this operation will show the new queue order Example N 3 5 5 command will cause printing to stop After the current job is finished printing will halt until a G command is issued Q 2 1 FLEX User s Ma
39. X to automatically scan the ready drives for the file specified Hardware limitations prevent the mini floppy versions from searching for ready drives For this reason FLEX has been setup to ALWAYS assume drive 0 and 1 are ready Thus if a mini floppy version of FLEX attempts to search a drive which does not have a disk loaded it will hang up until a disk is inserted and the door closed Alternatively the system reset could be hit and a warm start executed a jump to address CD03 The full size floppy version CAN detect a ready condition and will not check drives which are out of the ready state during automatic drive searching Automatic drive searching causes FLEX to first check drive 0 for the file specified If not there or if not ready in the full size version FLEX skips to drive 1 If the file is not found on drive 1 in the mini floppy version FLEX gives up and a file not found error results In the full size version FLEX continues to search on drives 2 and 3 before reporting an error DESCRIPTION The general syntax for the ASN command is as follows ASN W lt drive gt S lt drive gt where lt drive gt is a single digit drive number or the letter A If just ASN is typed followed by a RETURN no values will be changed but the system will output a message which tells the current assignments of the system and working drives for example ASN THE SYSTEM DRIVE IS 0 THE WORKING DRIVE IS 0 A 2 1 FLEX User
40. all SYS files to the new disk Finally the LINK must be performed Rather than having to type this set of commands each time it was desired to produce a new system diskette we could create a command file called MAKEDISK TXT which contained the necessary commands The BUILD utility should be used to create this file The creation of this file might go as follows BUILD MAKEDISK NEWDISK 1 COPY 0 1 CMD 0V LOW SYS LINK 1 FLEX The first line of the example tells FLEX we wish to BUILD a file called MAKEDISK with the default extension of TXT Next the three necessary command lines are typed in just as they would be typed into FLEX The COPY command will copy all files with CMD OV LOW and SYS extensions from drive 0 to drive 1 Finally the LINK will be performed Now when we want to create a system disk we only need to type the following EXEC MAKEDISK We are assuming here that MAKEDISK resides on the same disk which contains the system commands EXEC can also be used to execute the STARTUP file see STARTUP E 2 1 FLEX User s Manual There are many applications for the EXEC command The one shown is certainly useful but experience and imagination will lead you to other useful applications IMPORTANT NOTE The EXEC utility is loaded into the very upper end of user memory This is done by first loading EXEC into the utility file space then calculating the proper starting address so that it will resid
41. an CDS 1 driver is loaded into the utility command space at C100 The UCAL program then obtains approximately 280 bytes of memory from the top end of the user memory and relocates the CDS 1 driver program into this area The FLEX memory end pointer is updated and the CDS 1 driver program is linked into the resident disk drivers A message is then printed informing the user that the CDS 1 drive is now online The CDS 1 drivers will remain resident until the system is re booted Once the UCAL program is executed any file references with drive specification of 2 is directed to the CDS 1 disk unit The following example shows how UCAL can be used to copy files from an 8 inch DMAF or 5 inch MF 68 diskette to the CalComp CDS 1 disk unit UCAL Marksman Now Online COPY 0 2 TXT FILE STUFF TXT TO DRIVE 2 COPIED FILE MORESTUF TXT TO DRIVE 2 COPIED FILE STILLMOR TXT TO DRIVE 2 COPIED etc The UCAL command has the following restrictions 1 The command must not be used when the system has been BOOTED with a FLEX9S system already supporting the CalComp drive 2 The command must not be used more than once between boots A convenient way to enforce this limitation is to place the command into the startup file 3 This command must not be used in conjunction with the USEMF command U 2 1 VER The VER command is used to display the version number of a utility or program DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the VER command
42. and the escape character to hex 3 The following fully describes all of the TTYSET parameters available to the user Their initial values are defined as well as any special characteristics they may possess BS hh BackSpace character This sets the backspace charcter to the character having the ASCII hex value of hh This character is initially a control H hex 08 but may be defined to any ASCII character The action of the backspace character is to delete the last character typed from the terminal If two backspace characters are typed the last two characters will be deleted etc Setting BS 0 will disable the backspace feature hide FLEX User s Manual BE hh Backspace Echo character This defines the character to be sent to the terminal after a backspace character is received The character printed will have the ASCII hex value of hh This character is initially set to a null but can be set to any ASCII character The BE command also has a very special use that will be of interest to some terminal owners such as SWTPC CT 64 If a hex 08 is specified as the echo character FLEX will output a space 20 then another 08 This feature is very uesful for terminals which decode a hex 08 as a cursor left but which do not erase characters as the cursor is moved Example Say that you mis typed the word cat as shown below CAY typing in one CTRL H hex 08 would position the cursor on top of the Y and delete the Y from the
43. aracters to be displayed on a physical line at the terminal the number of columns Lines of text longer than the value of width will be folded at every multiple of WD characters For example if WD is 50 and a line of 125 characters is to be displayed the first 50 characters are displayed on a physical line at the terminal the next 50 characters are displayed on the next physical line and the last 25 characters are displayed on the third physical line If WD is set to 0 the width feature will be disabled and any number of characters will be permitted on a physical line NL dd NuL1 count This parameter sets the decimal number of non printing Null pad characters to be sent to the terminal at the end of each line These pad characters are used so the terminal carriage has enough time to return to the left margin before the next printable characters are sent The initial value is 4 Users using CRT type terminals may want to set NL 0 since no pad characters are usually required on this type of terminal TB hh TaB character The tab character is not used by FLEX but some of the utilities may require one such as the Text Editing System This parameter will set the tab character to the character having the ASCII hex value hh This character should be a printable character EJ dd EJect count This parameter is used to specify the decimal number of eject Jlines to be sent to the terminal at the bottom of each page If Pause is
44. be entered At this time the location of the file CAT OUT is stored in a buffer called a print queue waiting list If another PSP command is issued before the first is finished the second file will be in the next available location in the print queue After the file name to be printed has been stored in the print queue the PSP program will load the specified printer driver command into the printer reserved area See the RM command If the reserved area is not big enough a message is issued and the program terminates Otherwise the spooling process is started and control returns to the FLEX command interpreter Note that any of the relocatable printer commands may be used including the Q and SP commands Once printing is in progress it is not possible to change printer drivers until the spooling process has completed For example if you have three files that you wish to print on a Qume printer and two on a serial printer you must first spool the three Qume files and allow them to complete printing You can then spool the two files destined for the serial printer P 4 1 FLEX user s manual During printing you can perform flex commands from the terminal such as deleting files copying disks etc While you are using FLEX the Print Spool Program will be printing the desired file PSP will automatically wait for the printer to become ready power up even after the file has been entered into the print queue After printing the f
45. be greatly expanded by simply adding additional utility commands The user should expect to see many more utilities available for FLEX in the future Some of the other important features include fully dynamic file space allocation the automatic removal of defective sectors from the disk automatic space compression and expansion on all text files complete user environment control using the TTYSET utility command and uniform disk wear due to the high performance dynamic space allocator The UCS currently contains many very useful commands These programs reside on the system disk and are only loaded into memory when needed This means that the set of commands can be easily extended at any time without the necessity of replacing the entire operating system The utilities provided with FLEX perform such tasks as the saving loading copying renaming deleting appending and listing of disk files There is an extensive CATalog command for examining the disk s file directory Several environment control commands are also provided Overall FLEX provides all of the necessary tools for the user s interaction with the disk FLEX is a registered trademark of Technical Systems Consultants Inc 1 1 FLEX User s Manual II SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS FLEX requires random access memory from location 0000 through location 2FFF hex 12K Memory is also required from C000 48K through DFFF hex 56K where the actual operating system resides The s
46. bytes 8 inch Double Sided Single Density 2280 sectors 574 560 bytes 8 inch Double Sided Double Density 3952 sectors 995 904 bytes II WRITE PROTECT Floppy disks can normally be physically write protected to prevent FLEX from performing a write operation Any attempt to write to such a disk will cause an error message to be issued It is good practice to write protect disks which have important files on them A 5 inch disk can be write protected by placing a piece of opaque tape over the small rectangular cutout on the edge of the disk 8 inch disks are the opposite i e tn order to write on a full size disk you must place tape over the notch on the rear edge of the diskette To write protect them remove the tape Some 8 inch disks do not have a write protect notch and cannot be write protected III THE RESET BUTTON The RESET button on the front panel of your computer should NEVER BE PRESSED DURING A DISK OPERATION There should never be a need to reset the machine while in FLEX If the machine is reset and the system is writing data on the disk it is possible that the entire disk will become damaged Again never press reset while the disk is operating Refer to the escape character in for ways of stopping FLEX IV NOTES ON THE P COMMAND The various printer commands initially load into the utility command space at C100 A check is then made for a reserved printer driver area See the RM command and if
47. cause the rest of the is the EPROM erased check to be bypassed and an N will cause the programming sequence to terminate When verifying the contents of the EPROM after writing a similar output is generated for those bytes which did not program correctly Again the verification can continue by typing Y be bypassed by typing B or exited by typing N If the message SPECIFIED FILE CONTAINS ALL BYTES FF is ever displayed then either the specified input file contains only FF s as data or an incorrect load address was entered The EPROM should not be installed in the programmer until WRITPROM tells you to do so Default Port Addresses If desired the default port addresses can be changed by using the FIX utility on WRITPROM CMD WRITPROM Address Contents 1000 S 09 69A 69K Default Port Address 1002 09 Default Port Address W 1 2 XOUT XOUT is a special form of the delete command which deletes all files having the extension OUT DESCRIPTION The general syntax of XOUT is XOUT lt drive spec gt where lt drive spec gt is the desired drive number If no drive is specified all OUT files on the working drive will be deleted and if auto drive searching is enabled all OUT files on drives 1 and 2 will be deleted XOUT will not delete any files which are delete protected or which are currently in the print queue Example XOUT X0UT 1 X 1 1 The Y command is used to automatically answer Y to prompts produc
48. ccept another character otherwise it must return a plus indication The contents of all of the registers must be preserved by the CHECK routine Since the printer driver will be relocated from the C300 location where it is assembled the driver must be written in position independent code Two good examples of position independent code are the parallel printer driver and the serial printer driver listed in chapter 3 section XI of this manual The following are good rules of thumb that may be used while writing position independent code 1 If an instruction that will be relocated needs to reference a byte of data that will be relocated as well program counter relative addressing must be used All this means is that a PCR must be added to the instruction As an example refer to both the position independent parallel printer driver listed in section XI of chapter 3 and the non position independent parallel printer driver listed in section XII of chapter 3 Look at the references to variable PFLAG COM PFLAG is not position independent 3 7 FLEX User s Manual 2 If the location referenced by a JMP or JSR instruction will be 3 4 relocated do not use JMP or JSR use BRA BSR LBRA or LBSR instead It is okay to use any of the indexed addressing modes in position independend code Instructions that make use of indexed addressing may have operands that look like any of the following 0 X or 5 X or 0 Y and so on I
49. ce hard copy output from text processors formatters and other utility programs DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the SP command is SP n lt command string where n is optional and is the port number of the MP WP interface connected to the tyepwriter and lt command string gt is a valid command line to be passed to FLEX If the port number is not specified it will default to port seven If the SP command is used with multiple commands per line using the end of line character it will only affect the command immediately following it the command line Some examples will clarify the use of the SP command SP CAT This example will produce a printed listing of the catalog of the working drive The port number is omitted and defaults to port seven SP 3 LIST TEXT This example will produce a printed listing of the file TEXT TXT The port has been specified as port number three The SP command initially loads into the utility command space at C100 If sufficient memory has been reserved for the printer driver see the RM command documentation it will be relocated there otherwise it will be relocated into the highest available locations in user memory and the end of user memory pointer will be updated When the command to be printed has completed any user memory allocated to the printer driver will be released 5 4 1 STARTUP STARTUP is not a utility command but is a feature of FLEX It is often desirable to have the o
50. d Any time before typing the RETURN key the user may use one of two special characters to correct any mistyped characters One of these characters is the back space and allows deletion of the previously typed character Typing two back spaces will delete the previous two characters The back space is initially defined to be a control H but may be redefined by the user using the TTYSET utility command The second special character is the line delete character Typing this character will effectively delete all of the characters which have been typed on the current line A new prompt will be output to the terminal but instead of the usual prompt to show the action of the delete character the prompt will be 22 time the delete character is used the new prompt will be 2 2 and signifies that the last line typed did not get entered into the computer The delete character is initially a control X but may also be redefined using TTYSET 1 5 FLEX User s Manual As mentioned earlier the first name on a command line is always interpreted as a command Following the command is an optional list of names and parameters depending on the particular command being entered The fields of a command line must be separated by either a space or a comma The general format of a command line is lt command gt lt list of names and parameters gt A comma is shown but a space may be used FLEX also allows several commands to
51. ddress CD03 The STARTUP file may then be deleted and if desired modified Directing execution to CD03 the DOS warm start address bypasses the DOS STARTUP function 5 5 2 TTYSET The TTYSET utility command is provided so the user may control the characteristics of the terminal With this command the action of the terminal on input and the display format on output may be controlled DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the TTYSET command is TTYSET lt parameter list gt where lt parameter list gt is a list of 2 letter parameter names each followed by an equals sign and then by the value being assigned Each parameter should be separated by a comma or a space If no parameters are given the values of all of the TTYSET parameters will be displayed on the terminal The default number base for numerical values is the base most appropriate to the parameter In the descriptions that follow hh is used for parameters whose default base is hex dd is used for those whose default base is decimal Values which should be expressed in hex are displayed in the TTYSET parameter listing preceded by a Some examples follow 7 TYSET TTYSET DP 16 WD 63 TTYSET BS 8 ES 3 The first example simply lists the current values of all TTYSET parameters on the terminal The next line sets the depth DP to 16 lines and the terminal width WD to 63 columns The last example sets the backspace character to the value of hex 8
52. ddress gt opt Where n is optional and is the port number in which the PROM programmer is installed lt file spec gt is the name of the input file lt load address gt is the beginning address of the input file that will be written to the EPROM and opt are the special options described later which can be selected The default extension on the file is BIN and the default drive is the working drive The default port for WRITPROM is port 4 and the default file load address is 0000 Some examples will clarify the syntax of WRITPROM WRITPROM JUNK WRITPROM 7 JUNK CMD 1 C800 R The first example will write the 2K segment starting at address 0000 of the file JUNK BIN on the working drive to the EPROM on the programmer in port 4 The second example will write the contents of the file JUNK CMD on drive 1 starting at address C800 to the EPROM on the programmer in port 7 using extended retry Capability Specifying the Load Address The load address entered in the command line specifies the beginning address of the 2K byte segment of the file which will be written to the EPROM As an example say that we want to store the 4K program DIAG CMD which resides from DOOO DFFF into two EPROMs which will be used in some type of ROM board or controller application The first EPROM should be written by the command WRITPROM DIAG CMD DOOO second EPROM should be written by WRITPROM DIAG CMD D800 If no address is specified an add
53. do this this feature is not supported on computers using a Control Port for terminal communications At this time output halted typing another escape character will resume output while typing a RETURN key will cause control to return to FLEX and the three plus sign prompt will be output to the terminal It should be noted that line output stopping always happens at the end of a line TOUCH The touch command is used to change the last altered date in a file directory entry to reflect the current date DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the TOUCH command is TOUCH lt file spec where lt file spec gt is the name of the file to be touched If no extension is specified a default of TXT is assumed The directory entry of the file is updated so that the last altered date is set to the current date The contents of the file itself are not altered SEAR USEMF The USEMF command is used to enable access to an MF 68 MiniFloppy disk unit attached to a 6809 computer system with two 8 inch DMAF drives DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the USEMF command is USEMF When the USEMF command is executed a position independent MF 68 driver is loaded into the utility command space at C100 The USEM7 program then obtains approximately 330 bytes of memory from the top end of the user memory and relocates the MF 68 driver program into this area The FLEX memory end pointer is updated and the MF 68 driver program is linked into th
54. e resident DMAF disk drivers A message is then printed informing the user that the MF 68 drives are now online The MF 68 drivers will remain resident until the system is re booted Once the USEMF program is executed any file references with drive specifications of 2 or 3 are directed to MF 68 drives 0 and 1 respectively The following example shows how USEMF can be used to copy files from a 5 inch diskette to an 8 inch diskette USEMF MF 68 Now Online 0 2 0 STUFF TXT TO DRIVE 0 COPIED FILE MORESTUF TXT TO DRIVE 0 COPIED FILE STILLMOR TXT TO DRIVE 0 COPIED etc The USEMF command has the following restrictions 1 The command must not be used when the system has been BOOTED from a 5 inch diskette 2 The command must not be used more than once between boots A convenient way to enforce this limitation is to place the command into the startup file 3 Neither the 5 inch nor the 8 inch NEWDISK command may be run after the USEMF command 4 This command must not be used in conjunction with the UCAL command U 1 1 UCAL The UCAL command is used to enable access to a CalComp Marksman CDS 1 fixed disk unit attached to a 6809 computer system running FLEX9 Not FLEX9S which includes the CDS 1 drivers having two 8 inch DMAF drives or two 5 inch MF 68 drives DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the UCAL command is UCAL When the UCAL command is executed a position independant CalComp Marksm
55. e right up against the end of the user memory space Next EXEC is moved to that location and a new end of memory is set to just below EXEC When the EXEC file is finished if the user has not further changed the memory end location EXEC will reset it to the original value E 2 2 FIX The FIX command is used to modify binary files that are stored on the disk Since the FIX command loads the file into an internal buffer it is possible to modify binary files that have several segments or that load into system locations DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the FIX command is FIX lt input file name gt lt output file name gt where lt input file name gt is the name of the file you wish to modify and lt output file name gt if specified is the name of the file into which the modified copy will be written The default extension for FIX is BIN and the drive defaults to the working drive If the output file is not specified the modified binary file will replace the input file When you run the FIX command the computer will load the binary file into it s internal buffer memory If for some reason the file cannot be loaded into memory an error message is produced and the file is left unmodified After the file has been loaded FIX will respond with a prompt character and will then accept one of the following single letter commands Add a new block of data to the file This command requires a pair of addresses specifyin
56. e spec gt lt file spec gt etc Again the surround optional items File spec denotes a file name as described earlier The action of the GET command is to load the file or files specified in the list into memory for later use If no extension is provided in the file spec BIN is assumed in other words BIN is the default extension Examples GET TEST GET 1 TEST TEST2 0 where the first example will load the file named TEST BIN from the assigned working drive and the second example will load TEST BIN from drive 1 and TEST2 BIN from drive 0 MON MON is used to exit FLEX and return to the hardware monitor system such as S BUG The syntax for this command is simply MON followed by the RETURN key NOTE to re enter FLEX after using the MON command you should enter the program at location CD03 hex 1 7 UTILITY COMMAND SET The following pages describe all of the utility commands currently included in the UCS You should note that the page numbers denote the first letter of the command name as well as the number of the page for a particular command For example B 1 2 is the 2nd page of the description for the 15 utility name starting with the letter B COMMON ERROR MESSAGES Several error messages are common to many of the FLEX utility commands These error messages and their meanings include the following NO SUCH FILE This message indicates that a file referenced in a particular command was not found on the
57. ed according to the characters they match For example if all TXT and CMD files were cataloged the TXT types would be listed together followed by the CMD types In summary if the CAT command is not parameterized then all files on the assigned working drive will be displayed If a working drive is not assigned auto drive searching mode the CAT command will display files C 1 1 FLEX User s Manual on all on line drives If it is parameterized by only a drive number then all files on that drive will be displayed If the CAT command is parameterized by only an extension then only files with that extension will be displayed If only the name is used then only files which start with that name will be displayed If the CAT command is parameterized by only name and extension then only files of that root name and root extension on the working drive will be displayed Learn to use the CAT command and all of its features and your work with the disk will become a little easier The current protection code options that can be displayed are as follows D File is delete protected delete or rename prohibited W File is write protected delete rename and write prohibited blank No special protection C 1 2 COPY The COPY command is used for making copies of files disk Individual files may be copied groups of name similar files may be copied or entire disks may be copied The copy command is a very versatile utility
58. ed by various FLEX utilities This facility is especially useful when writing EXEC files DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the Y command is Y lt command string where lt command string gt is a valid command line to be passed to FLEX If the Y command is used with multiple commands per line using the end of line character it will only affect the command immediately following it Some examples will show the usefulness of the Y command Y DELETE JUNK TXT DELETE 0 JUNK TXT Y ARE YOU SURE Y This example shows how to delete a file without having to reply to the ARE YOU SURE prompt This is especially useful in EXEC files Ina similar vein you can perform COPY commands that automatically overwrite existing files as shown in the following example Y COPY 0 1 PROG FILE PROGI TO DRIVE 1 COPIED FILE PROG2 TO DRIVE 1 FILE EXISTS DELETE ORIGINAL Y ARE YOU SURE Y COPIED FILE PROG3 TO DRIVE 1 FILE EXISTS DELETE ORIGINAL Y ARE YOU SURE Y COPIED Y 1 1 GENERAL SYSTEM INFORMATION I DISK CAPACITY Each sector of a FLEX diskette contains 252 bytes of user data since 4 bytes of each 256 byte sector is used by the system The various capacities of disks are as follows 5 inch Single Sided 340 sectors 85 680 bytes 5 inch Double Sided 680 sectors 171 360 bytes 8 inch Single Sided Single Density 1140 sectors 287 280 bytes 8 inch Single Sided Double Density 1976 sectors 497 952
59. efault to port seven If the S command is used with multiple commands per line using the end of line chracter it will only affect the command immediately following it in the command line Some examples will clarify the use of the S command S CAT This example will produce a printed listing of the catalog of the working drive The port number is omitted and defaults to port seven S 3 LIST TEXT This example will produce a printed listing of the file TEXT TXT The port has been specified as port number three When using dual serial ports the port side may be specified by using an A or B suffix to the port number The suffix is separated from the port number by a hyphen or slash character If the suffix is omitted the A side of the port is used For example a port specification of 5 B will use the B side of port number five The S command initially loads into the utility command space at C100 If sufficient memory has been reserved for the printer driver see the RM command documentation it will be relocated there otherwise it will be relocated into the highest available locations in user memory and the end of user memory pointer will be updated When the command to be printed has completed any user memory allocated to the printer driver will be released The serial data output to the printer is 8 bit ASCII with two stop bits and no parity The S command does not use an ACK protocol however it will honor the data terminal ready li
60. ers such as TTYSET parameters or the assigning of a system and working drive If the STARTUP command consisted of the following line TTYSET DP 16 WD 60 ASN W 1 ASN CAT O each time the system was booted the following actions would occur First TTYSET would set the depth to 16 and the width to 60 Next assuming the end of line character is the the ASN command would assign the working drive to drive 1 Next ASN would display the assigned system and working drives on the terminal Finally a CATalog of the files on drive 0 would be displayed For details of the actions of the individual commands refer to their descriptions elsewhere in this manual As it stands it looks as if the STARTUP feature is limited to the execution of a single command line This is true but there is a way around the restriction the EXEC command If a longer list of operations is desired than will fit on one line simply create a command 5 5 1 FLEX User s Manual file containing all of the commands desired Then create the STARTUP file placing the single line EXEC lt file name gt where lt file name gt would be replaced by the name assigned to the command file crea A little imagination and experience will show many uses for the STARTUP feature By directing STARTUP to a file that does not have a return to DOS command it is possible to lockout access to DOS You can correct the problem by hitting the RESET button and beginning execution at a
61. g the lower and upper bounds of the block to be added The block is initially cleared to zeros For example to add a sixteen byte object code block at location 0700 type B 0700 070F Added blocks may be modified with the memory examine and change function E Exit All data that was modified is written back to the output file on the disk The resulting file has all of thp object code blocks that were present in the original file plus any new blocks that have been added There may be exactly one transfer address in the file and it will be the last block in the file If no output file name was specified th e exit command will delete the old binary file and write a new file in its place L Display File Limits This command will display the transfer address and the limit addresses of each contiguous block of object code in the file M Memory Examine and Change This command is used to examine or modify a byte in the file It cannot be used to extend the file by adding additional bytes See the detailed description below N Next line This command displays the next sixteen bytes of the binary file It is normally used after the V or P commands see below F 1 2 FLEX user s manual Peek at the file This command allows you specify a single address and have that address and few surrounding bytes displayed in a format similar to that of the V command see below Specify the transfer address For example to change
62. he format is also omitted and defaults to B 12 characters per inch horizontal and 6 lines per inch vertical Q 3 LIST TEXT This example will produce a printed listing of the file TEXT TXT The port has been specified as port number three No format is specified and the default B will be assumed Q 1 1 FLEX User s Manual Q F ROFF LETTER In this example no port number is given so the default of seven will be selected Format F has been selected so the printed output will be spaced 15 characters per inch horizontal and 8 lines per inch vertical This format provides 88 lines per 11 inch page and matches the Qume GOTHIC 15 printwheel number 82090 The Q command initially loads into the utility command space at C100 If sufficient memory has been reserved for the printer driver see the RM command documentation it will be relocated there otherwise it will be relocated into the highest available locations in user memory and the end of user memory pointer will be updated When the command to be printed has completed any user memory allocated to the printer driver will be released Q 1 2 QCHECK The QCHECK utility can be used to examine the contents of the print queue and to modify it contents QCHECK has no additional arguments with it Simply type QCHECK QCHECK will stop any printing that is taking place and then display the current contents of the print queue as follows QCHECK POS NAME TYPE RPT 1
63. ich already exists in the directory the message FILE EXISTS will be displayed on the terminal Keep in mind that RENAME only changes the file s name and in no way changes the actual file s contents One last note of interest Since utility commands are just like any other file it is possible to rename them also If you would prefer some of the command names to be shorter or different all together simply use RENAME and assign them the names you desire R 1 1 RM The RM command is used to Reserve Memory in which to load printer drivers that are too large to fit in the actual printer driver area This command is primarily intended to permit the use of large printer drivers such as the QUME driver with programs like BASIC that use all available memory DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the RM command is RM size or RM where lt size gt is a decimal number indicating the amount of memory to be reserved for the printer drivers If not specified the size parameter defaults to 512 bytes If memory has previously been reserved for printer drivers the RM command will adjust the amount of memory available as necessary In order to get rid of the reserved memory it is only necessary to run the RM command with a size value of zero If the second form of the RM command is used the amount of reserved memory will be reported Flex itself reserves approximately 56 bytes of memory for printer driver code and defines the prin
64. ile the second Y will answer the ARE YOU SURE question BUILD STARTUP I YES DELETE DATA DAT Upon booting the disk FLEX will execute the STARTUP file and perform the following operation delete the file DATA DAT receiving all answers to any questions from the input file YES TXT rather than from the terminal See the description of the STARTUP command for more information on STARTUP 1 1 1 JUMP The JUMP command is provided for convenience It is used to start execution of a program already stored in computer RAM memory DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the JUMP command is JUMP lt hex address gt where lt hex address gt is a 1 to 4 digit hex number representing the address where program execution should begin The primary reason for using JUMP is if there is a long program in memory already and you do not wish to load it off of the disk again Some time can be saved but you must be sure the program really exists before JUMPing to it As an example suppose we had a BASIC interpreter in memory and it had a warm start address of 103 hex To start its execution from FLEX we type the following JUMP 103 The BASIC interpreter would then be executed Again remember that you must be absolutely sure the program you are JUMPing to is actually present in memory J 1 1 LINK The LINK command is used to tell the bootstrap loader where the FLEX operating system file resides on the disk This is necessar
65. irst file the second file in the queue will be printed if there is one etc The print queue may be examined or modified at any time by using the QCHECK utilty NOTE There are several things that the user should be aware of when using the printer spooling 1 Any file that is in the print queue may not be deleted renamed or changed in any way until it has been printed or removed by the QCHECK print queue manager utility 2 Disks which contain the files in the print queue should not be removed while the files are still in the queue 3 Non Spooling print commands like P cannot be used while files are waiting in the print queue 4 Any paper or cassette tape load or any other operation which requires that the computer accept data at precise time intervals should not be executed during a printer spooling operation 5 In order for printer spooling to work in a non S 09 computer system an MP T or MP T2 interface must be installed in 1 0 port five and be strapped to provide IRQ interrupts 6 The PSP command is not supported by FLEX9S 7 The PSP command will function only with FLEX 9 0 Version 2 6 or above If in doubt check with VER FLEX SYS P 4 2 PROT The PROT command is used to change a protection code associated with each file When a file is first saved it has no protection associated with it thereby allowing the user to write to rename or delete the file Delete or write protection can be added to a file by
66. is VER lt file spec gt where lt file spec gt is the name of the program you wish to check The default extension is CMD and the drive defaults to the working drive As an example VER 0 CAT would display the version number of the CAT command from drive 0 on the terminal V 1 1 VERIFY The VERIFY command is used to set the File Management System s write verify mode If VERIFY is on every sector which is written to the disk is read back from the disk for verification to make sure there are no errors in any sectors With VERIFY off no verification is performed DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the VERIFY command is VERIFY ON or VERIFY OFF where ON or OFF sets the VERIFY mode accordingly If VERIFY is typed without any parameters the current status of VERIFY will be displayed on the terminal Example VERIFY ON VERIFY The first example sets the VERIFY mode to ON The second line would display the current status ON or OFF of the VERIFY mode VERIFY causes slower write times but it is recommended that it be left on for your protection V 2 1 WRITPROM The WRITPROM command is used to write the data contained in a disk file to a 2716 compatible EPROM using a SWTPC MP R EPROM programmer WRITPROM first checks the EPROM to be sure that it is erased writes the data then verifies the contents DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the WRITPROM command is WRITPROM n lt file spec oad a
67. names which started with the characters VE were to be cataloged then VE would be in the match list If only files whose extensions were TXT were to be cataloged then TXT should appear in the match list A few specific examples will help clarify the syntax CAT CAT 1 A T DR CAT PR CAT 0 1 CAT 0 1 CMD SYS The first example will catalog all file names on the working drive or on all drives if auto drive searching is selected The second example will catalog only those files on drive 1 whose names begin with A and whose extensions begin with T and also all files on drive 1 whose names start with DR The next example will catalog all files on the working drive or on all drive if auto drive searching is selected whose names start with PR The next line causes all files on both drive 0 and drive 1 to be cataloged Finally the last example will catalog the files on drive 0 and 1 whose extensions are CMD or SYS During the catalog operation before each drive s files are displayed a header message stating the drive number is output to the terminal The name of the diskette as entered during the NEWDISK operation will also be displayed The actual directory entries are listed in the following form NAME EXTENSION SIZE PROTECTION CODE where size is the number of sectors that file occupies on the disk If more than one set of matching characters was specified on the command line each set of names will be group
68. ne if it is connected to the interface 5 1 1 SAVE The SAVE command is used for saving a section of memory on the disk Its primary use is for saving programs which have been loaded into memory from tape or by hand DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the SAVE command is SAVE lt file spec gt lt begin adr gt lt end adr gt lt transfer adr gt where lt file spec gt is the name to be assigned to the file The default extension is BIN and the default drive is the working drive The address fields define the beginning and ending addresses of the section of memory to be written on the disk The addresses should be expressed as hex numbers The optional lt transfer address gt would be included if the program is to be loaded and executed by FLEX This address tells FLEX where execution should begin Some examples will clarify the use of SAVE SAVE DATA 100 1FF SAVE 1 GAME 0 1680 100 The first line would SAVE the memory locations 100 to 1FF hex on the disk in a file called DATA BIN The file would be put on the working drive and no transfer address would be assigned The second example would cause the contents of memory locations 0 through 1680 to be SAVEd on the disk in file GAME BIN on drive 1 Since a transfer address of 100 was specified as a parameter typing GAME BIN in response to the FLEX prompt after saving would cause the file to be loaded back into memory and execution started at location 100 If an attem
69. ng the LINK command A very convenient way to get the above process performed without having to type all of the commands each time is to create a command file and use the EXEC command Consult the EXEC documentation for details It is not necessary to make every disk a system diskette It is possible to create working diskettes disks which do not have the operating system on them for use with text files or BASIC files Remember that a diskette can not be used for booting the system unless the operating system is contained on it and it has been linked To create a working disk simply run NEWDISK on a diskette It will now have all of the required information to enable FLEX to make use of it This disk however does not contain the disk operating system and is not capable of booting the system N 1 2 The N command is used to automatically answer N to prompts produced by various FLEX utilities This facility is especially useful wnen writing EXEC files DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the N command is N lt command string gt where lt command string gt is a valid command line to be passed to FLEX If the N command is used with multiple commands per line using the end of line character it will only affect the command immediately following it The N command is particularly useful when performing COPY operations that you do not wish to overwrite any existing files N COPY 0 1 TEXT FILE TEXT1 TXT TO DRIVE 1 COPIED FI
70. nual G 6 command will re start printing after an 5 command has been used to stop it K A K command will kill the current print process All printing and queued jobs will be removed from the queue The files are not deleted from disk The QCHECK command is not supported under FLEX9S and Multi User Basic 0 2 2 RENAME The RENAME command is used to give an existing file a new name in the directory It is useful for changing the actual name as well as changing the extension type DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the RENAME command is RENAME lt file spec 1 gt lt file spec 2 gt where lt file spec 1 gt is the name of the file you wish to RENAME and lt file spec 2 gt is the new name you are assigning to it The default extension for file spec 1 is TXT and the default drive is the working drive If no extension is given on lt file spec 2 gt it defaults to that of lt file spec 1 gt No drive is requird on the second file name and if one is given it is ignored Some examples follow RENAME TEST1 BIN TEST2 RENAME 1 LETTER REPLY RENAME O FIND BIN FIND CMD The first example will RENAME TEST1 BIN to TEST2 BIN The next example RENAMEs the file LETTER TXT on drive 1 to REPLY TXT The last line would cause the file FIND BIN on drive 0 to be renamed FIND CMD This is useful for making binary files created by an assembler into command files changing the extension from BIN to CMD If you try to give a file a name wh
71. ocumentation it will be relocated there otherwise it will be relocated into the highest available locations in user memory and the end of user memory pointer will be updated When the command to be printed has completed any user memory allocated to the printer driver will be released The parallel data and handshake conforms to the CENTRONICS interface standard This standard has been widely adopted for use with 8 bit ASCII printers and is available on nearly all paralle printers P 1 1 P COR The P COR file is a command file that can be used to construct customized printer driver commands It contains the relocation and memory management routines required to use position independent printer drivers DESCRIPTION P COR is never used as a command by itself Special internal checks are made to insure that a printer driver has been properly appended to the P COR file In order to use P COR you must write a position independent printer driver that begins at memory address C300 and may extend up to location C6FF thus allowing the driver to be up to in length This is normally sufficient space for any reasonable printer driver For more information on writing a position independent driver see section X in chapter 3 Once the printer driver has been written and assembled you must use the append command to combine the P COR file with the printer driver To clarify this procedure consider the following example A serial printe
72. on the disk If no defective sectors were detected the total should be 340 or 1140 for single sided mini or full size disks respectively A double sided disk would yield twice that number Sometimes during the NEWDISK process a sector will be found defective in an area on the disk which is required by the operating system In such a case NEWDISK will report FATAL ERROR FORMATTING ABORTED and FLEX will regain control You should not immediately assume the disk to be useless if this occurs but instead remove the disk from the drive re insert it and try NEWDISK again If after several attempts the formatting is still aborted you should assume the disk is unusable N 1 1 FLEX User s Manual CREATING SYSTEM DISKETTES A system disk is one from which the operating system be loaded Normally the system disk will also contain the Utility Command Set UCS The following procedure should be used when preparing system disks 1 Initialize the diskette using NEWDISK as described above 2 COPY all SYS files desired to the new disk 3 COPY all CMD files to the new disk It should be noted that steps 2 and 3 can be done with one command COPY 0 1 SYS CMD 0V LOW assuming that the new disk in in drive 1 and that the operating system and all commands and their overlays are desired the 0V copies overlay files and LOW copies the utility SAVE LOW 4 Last it is necessary to LINK the file FLEX SYS to the system usi
73. perating system do some special action or actions upon initialization of the system during the bootstrap loading process As an example the user may always want to use BASIC immediately following the boot process STARTUP will allow for this without the necessity of calling the BASIC interpreter each time DESCRIPTION FLEX always checks the disk s directory immediately following the system initialization for a file called STARTUP TXT If none is found the three plus sign prompt is output and the system is ready to accept user s commands If a STARTUP file is present it is read and interpreted as a single command line and the appropriate actions are performed As an example suppose we wanted FLEX to execute BASIC each time the system was booted First it is necessary to create the STARTUP file BUILD STARTUP BASIC The above procedure using the BUILD command will create the desired file Note that the file consisted of one line which is all FLEX reads from the STARTUP file anyway This line will tell FLEX to load and execute BASIC Now each time this disk is used to boot the operating system BASIC will also be loaded and run Note that this example assumes two things First the disk must contain FLEX SYS and must have been LINKed in order for the boot to work properly Second it is assumed that a file called BASIC CMD actually exists on the disk Another example of the use of STARTUP is to set system environment paramt
74. pt is made to save a program under a file name that already exists the prompt MAY THE EXISTING FILE BE DELETED will be displayed Y response will replace the file with the new data to be saved while a N response will terminate the save operation Sometimes it is desirable to save noncontiguous segments of memory To do this it would be necessary to first SAVE each segment as a separate file and then use the APPEND command to combine them into one file If the final file is to have a transfer address you should assign it to one of the segments as it is being saved After the APPEND operation the final file will retain that transfer address 5 2 1 FLEX User s Manual SAVE LOW There is another form of the SAVE command resident in the UCS It is called SAVE LOW and loads in a lower section of memory than the standard SAVE command Its use is for saving programs in the Utility Command Space where SAVE CMD is loa Those interested in creating their own utility commands should consult the Advanced Programmer s Guide for further details 5 2 2 SBOX The SBOX command is used to configure Flex to run with various configurations of memory and 1 0 The selected configuration is then reported to the programmer DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the SBOX command is SBOX lt parameter gt lt value gt where lt parameter gt is one of the keywords described below and lt value gt is a string appropriate to the keyword
75. ption Page P 3 PROT file spec gt options Description Page P 5 PSP lt file spec gt lt print command gt Default Extension OUT CMD Description Page P 4 Q lt command gt Description Page Q 1 QCHECK Description Page Q 2 RENAME lt file spec 1 gt lt file spec 2 gt Default Extension Description Page R 1 RM lt size gt Description Page R 2 4 2 FLEX User s Manual READPROM lt file spec gt Default Extension BIN Description Page R 3 5 lt gt Description Page 5 1 SAVE lt file spec gt lt begin adr gt lt end adr gt lt transfer adr gt Default Extension BIN Description Page 5 2 SAVE LOW Description Page 5 2 2 SBOX lt parameter list gt Description Page 5 3 SP lt command gt Description Page 5 4 STARTUP Description Page 5 5 TOUCH lt file spec gt Default Extension Description Page T 2 TTYSET lt parameter list gt Description Page T 1 UCAL Description Page U 2 USEMF Descriptio page 0 1 VER Default Extension CMD Description Page V 1 VERIFY lt ON or OFF gt Description Page V 2 WRITPROM lt file spec gt lt address gt Default Extension BIN Description Page W 1 XOUTL lt drive spec gt Description Page X 1 Y lt command gt Description Page Y 1 4 3 NOTES 4 4 FLEX User s Manual
76. r driver A listing of this driver can be found in Chapter 3 section XI named SERIAL has been assembled In order to make a print command out of this driver the following command line must be entered APPEND P COR SERIAL BIN SERIAL CMD The result is a print command that functions like the P command To use the new SERIAL command enter SERIAL n lt command string where n is the port number you have set the default and lt command string gt is any command string to be passed to Flex P 2 1 PO The PO command is the older version of the P command and has been included for comparability purposes DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the PO command is PO lt command string gt where lt command string gt can be any standard utility command line If PO is used with multiple commands per line using the end of line character it will only have affect on the command it immediately preceeds Some examples will clarify its use P0 P0 LIST MONDAY CAT 1 The first example would print a CATalog of the directory of the working drive on the printer The second example will print a LISTing of the text file MONDAY TXT and then display on the terminal a CATalog of drive 1 this assumes the end of line character is a Note how the PO did not cause the CAT 1 to go to the printer The PO command tries to load a file named PRINT SYS from the same disk which PO itself was retrieved The PRINT SYS file which i
77. ress of 0000 is assumed If an address is specified that does not exist in the file the message SPECIFIED FILE CONTAINS ALL BYTES FF will be displayed when attempting to write the EPROM since no part of the file will be loaded into WRITPROM s write buffer W 1 1 Options R Retry Specifying the R option in the command line will instruct WRITPROM to do multiple re trys on programming This feature should only be used when the normal programming sequence fails to program an EPROM correctly C Check 25 volts option is used to turn on the 25 volts on the MP R board SURE THAT NO EPROM IS INSTALLED WHEN USING THIS OPTION Entering any character thru the keyboard will turn off the 25 volts and return control the the operating system To be sure that a file that always exists on the disk is used for the input file the following sequence should always be used to invoke the C option WRITPROM WRITPROM CMD C Remember that this option is for diagnostic purposes only and is normally not used Error Messages A number of messages can be displayed if an error is encountered during the programming procedure Most of the messages are self explanatory If an EPROM which is not completely erased is used during the is the EPROM erased test any bytes that are not erased will be displayed by the message BYTE AT ADDRESS IS DATA CONTINUE Entering a Y will cause WRITPROM to check the next byte Entering a B will
78. river assumes a parallel port having an address of E01C which is the default address for port seven in a 09 computer system It makes use of the CENTRONIX handshake and although position independent is essentially equivalent tp the non relocatable driver listed in section XII The serial driver assumes an acia at address 01 also defaulting to port 7 and transmits with 8 data bits no parity and two stop bits The baud rate is set at the interface By comparing the position independent and non relocatable parallel print drivers it will be simple to write your own custom printer drivers Just remember to use program counter relative addressing for all variables defined within the printer driver itself 3 9 FLEX User s Manual PARALLEL PRINTER DRIVER C300 C300 C302 C305 C308 C30B C30E C310 C311 C312 0000 0000 0001 6313 C316 C318 C31A 210 C320 C322 C316 C323 0050 16 16 16 16 E10C 00 FF AE 86 86 86 86 86 A7 39 86 000 001 001A 002F 8 F8 3A 01 FF 84 3E 01 00 10 23 79 TSC 6809 XASMB PAGE 1 THE FOLLOWING PRINTER DRIVER WAS WRITTEN IN POSITION INDEPENDANT CODE AND IS DESIGNED TO BE APPENDED TO THE P COR FILE TO MAKE A PRINTER COMMAND CR X SET UP ADDRESSES AND DRIVER LENGTH ORG C300 MUST START AT C300 FDB ENDS POPEN LENGTH OF DRIVER ENTRY VECTORS LBRA PRINTER INITIALIZE PQUIT CLOSE PRINTER T
79. rogram in RAM or ROM memory This program is called a bootstrap loader If you are using a Southwest Technical Products disk system and the S BUG monitor there are bootstraps stored in this ROM which you can use They are executed by simply typing a D for the full size floppy or a U for the mini floppy Those users of other hardware or monitor ROM should use the boot supplied with the hardware if compatible with FLEX A sample boot for the SWTPc mini system is given here for reference If the system does not boot properly re position the system disk in the drive and re execute the bootstrap loader 0100 B6 E018 START COMREG TURN MOTOR ON 0103 86 00 LDA 0 0105 B7 014 STA DRVREG 0108 8E 0000 LDX 0000 010B 3D OVR MUL DELAY FOR SPEED UP 010C 30 LEAX 1 X 010E 26 FB BNE OVR 0110 C6 OF LDB 0F RESTORE 0112 F7 E018 STB COMREG 0115 8D 2B BSR RETURN 0117 F6 018 LOOP1 LDB COMREG 011A C5 01 BITB 1 011C 26 F9 BNE LOOP1 011E 86 01 LDA 1 0120 B7 EO01A STA SECREG 0123 8D 1D BSR RETURN 0125 C6 8C LDB 8C READ WITH LOAD 0127 F7 018 STB COMREG 012A 80 16 BSR RETURN 012C 8E C000 LDX C000 012F Cb 02 LOOP2 BITB 2 DRQ 0131 27 05 BEQ LOOP3 0133 B6 01B LDA DATREG 0136 A7 80 STA 0 X 0138 F6 E018 LOOP3 LDB COMREG 013B C5 01 BITB 1 BUSY 013D 26 FO BNE LOOP2 013F 7E C000 JMP C000 0142 8D 00 RETURN BSR RTN 0144 39 RTN RTS 3 6 FLEX User s Manual X REQUIREMENTS FOR RELOCATABLE PRINTE
80. rol terminal When address CDIE is called a carriage return and line feed will automatically be generated and data output will begin at the location pointed to by the index register Output will continue until a hex 04 is seen The same rules for using the ESCAPE and RETURN keys for stopping output apply as described earlier The accumulator and register status after using PSTRNG are as follows ACC Changed during the operation 3 4 FLEX User s Manual ACC B Unchanged X Contains the memory location of the last character read from the string usually the 04 unless stopped by the ESC key Y U Unchanged NOTE The ability of using backspace and line delete characters is a function of your user program and not of the FLEX 1 0 routines described above STAT at CD4E This routine is used to determine the status of the input device That is to see if a character has been typed on the input terminal keyboard Its function is to check for characters such as the ESCAPE key in FLEX which allows breaking of the output This routine returns an EQual condition if no character was hit and a Not Equal condition if a character was hit No registers except for the condition codes may be altered For additional information consult the Advanced Programmer s Manual 3 5 FLEX User s Manual IX BOOTING THE FLEX DISK OPERATING SYSTEM In order to read FLEX from the system disk upon powering up your system you must have a short p
81. roperly all user program character input output subroutines should be vectored thru the FLEX operating system rather than the computer s monitor Below is a list of FLEX s 1 0 subroutines and a brief description of each All given addresses are in hexadecimal GETCHR at CD15 This subroutine is functionally equivalent to S BUG s character input routine This routine will look for one character from the control terminal 1 0 port 1 and store it in the A accumulator Once called the input routine will loop within itself until a character has been input Anytime input is desired the call JSR GETCHR or JSR CD15 should be used GETCHR automatically sets the 8th bit to 0 and does not check for parity A call to this subroutine affects the processor s registers as follows ACC A loaded with the character input from the terminal B X Y U not affected PUTCHR at CD18 This subroutine is used to output one character from the computer to the control port 1 0 port 1 It is functionally equivalant to the output character routine in S BUG To use PUTCHR the character to be output should be placed in the A accumulator in its ASCII form For example to output the letter A on the control terminal the following program should be used LDA 41 JSR CD18 The processor s registers are affected as follows ACC A changed internally B X Y U not affected PSTRNG at CDIE PSTRNG is a subroutine used to output a string of text on the cont
82. rt signal These sequences begin with a backslash character followed by an upper case letter or symbol The control value of the symbol is sent to the terminal For example the sequence NG sends a control G character Two other escape sequences available are 0 which sends a null character control shift P and n Lower case N which sends a carriage return line feed to the terminal E 1 1 EXEC The EXECute command is used to process a text file as a list of commands just as if they had been typed from the keyboard This is a very powerful feature of FLEX for it allows very complex procedures to be built up as a command file When it is desirable to run this procedure it is only necessary to type EXEC followed by the name of the command file Essentially all EXEC does is to replace the FLEX keyboard entry routine with a routine which reads a line from the command file each time the keyboard routine would have been called The FLEX utilities have no idea that the line of input is coming from a file instead of the terminal DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the EX command is EXEC lt file spec gt where lt file spec gt is the name of the command file The default extension is TXT An example will give some ideas on how EXEC can be used One set of commands which might be performed quite often is the set to make a new system diskette on drive 1 see NEWDISK Normally it is necessary to use NEWDISK and then copy all CMD and
83. s and advancing to the next location or of exiting the examine and change function a To display the next sequential address and data type a space b To display the previous address and data type the up arrow C To change the data stored at the displayed location simply enter the new data as two hexadecimal digits If a non hex value such as 3Q is entered the data will remain unchanged and the memory change function will step to the next sequential address F 1 2 d If a delete character control X or a backspace character control H is typed the current address and data is redisplayed e To exit the Memory Examine and Chance function type a carriage return F 1 3 The I command allows a utility to obtain input characters from a disk file rather than the terminal DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the I command is I lt file spec gt lt command gt where lt file spec gt is the name of the file containing the characters to be used as input and lt command gt is the FLEX utility command that will be executed and that will receive that input from lt file spec gt The default extension on lt file spec gt is For example say that on a startup you always wanted the file DATA DAT deleted from the disk without having to answer the ARE YOU SURE questions This could be done in the following manner BUILD YES YY The first Y will answer the DELETE 0 DATA DAT question wh
84. s supplied with the system diskette contains the necessary routines to operate a parallel printer connected to port seven of a 09 computer system For complete details on these routines refer to section of this publication P 3 1 PSP The Print Spool Program provides FLEX with the ability to output stored data to a printer at the same time that it is performing other tasks This method of printing is called Printer Spooling This feature is especially useful when it is necessary to print a long listing without tying up the computer DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the Print Spool Program is as follows PSP lt spool file gt lt print command gt lt repeat count gt where lt spool file gt is the name of the file to be printed normally produced by the 0 command lt print command gt is the name of the print command that will be used to drive the printer and lt repeat count gt is the number of additional copies of print you require The default extension of the spool file is OUT and the default extension for the print command is CMD For example say that your disk had a very large number of files on it and a printer catalog listing was desired A file containing the output information should first be created by using the 0 command such as 0 CAT OUT CAT CMD or 0 CAT CAT see the description of the 0 command when printer output is desired the command PSP CAT OUT P CMD or PSP CAT P should
85. t is okay to use the immediate addressing mode in position independent code An immediate value is one preceded by the number sign character The following table describes the location where all item of the printer driver must be assembled C300 6302 C305 C308 C30B C30E C310 C311 C301 Two byte count of the number of bytes in the driver This count includes all of the bytes between C302 and the end of the driver C304 LBRA OPEN PRINTER INITIALIZE C307 LBRA CLOSE PRINTER TERMINATE C30A LBRA PRINT CHARACTER C30D CHECK PRINTER READY CHECK C30F Port address of the printer interface The default port address should be assembled into these locations If a port number is supplied on the command line a new port address will be stored here by the P COR processing Interface Side designator If a side is specified in the command port specification the sign bit of this byte is set A side specification of A will result in 80 B will be 81 etc Reserved byte assemble a zero into this location C312 C6FF Space for printer driver routines These routines must fit within the space provided The entire space does not need to be used 3 8 FLEX User s Manual XI PARALLEL AND SERIAL PRINT DRIVERS The following parallel and serial print drivers are provided to assist the programmer in the creation of position independent relocatable print drivers for use with the P COR file The parallel d
86. ter vector locations While this is sufficient to run simple parallel or serial printers it is not enough memory to hold drivers for more complicated devices for example serial printers requiring buffers and line protocol The RM command allows the user to reserve a memory area for the printer drivers that will be off limits to programs like BASIC that use all available memory Note that it is NOT necessary to use the RM command to use the printer commands like P and Q Some examples of using the RM command follow RM 700 RM RM 0 The first example will reserve 700 bytes of memory for use as a printer area The second example will display that 700 bytes are reserved and the third example will free the memory reserved for the printer R 2 1 READPROM The READPROM command is used to read the data from a 2716 compatible EPROM in a SWTPC MP R EPROM programmer to a binary disk file Its primary use is for copying and modifying the contents of EPROMs DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the READPROM command is READPROM n lt file spec gt Where n is optional and is the port number in which the PROM programmer is installed and lt file spec gt is the name to be assigned to the output file The default extension on the file is BIN and the default drive is the working drive The default port for READPROM is 4 Some examples will clarify the use of READPROM READPROM JUNK READPROM JUNK 1 The first example will store
87. the contents of the EPROM on the programmer in port 4 to the file JUNK BIN on the working drive The second example will read the EPROM on the programmer in port 7 and store its contents in the file JUNK BIN on drive 1 If an attempt is made to save a program under a file name that already exists the prompt MAY THE EXISTING FILE BE DELETED will be displayed A Y response will replace the file with the new data to be saved while aN response will terminate the save operation The output file generated by READPROM will be 2048 2K bytes in length with a load address of 0000 No transfer address will be assigned to the file The EPROM should not be installed in the programmer until the READPROM command tells you to Default Port Addresses If desired the default port address can be changed by using the FIX utility on READPROM CMD READPROM Address Contents C100 S 09 69A 69K Default Port Address C102 09 Default Port Address R 3 1 The S command is used to direct the output of commands in the Utility Command Set to a serial printer It is normally used to produce hard copy output from text processors assemblers and other utility programs DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the S command is S n lt command string where n is optional and is the port number of the serial interface connected to the printer and lt command string gt is a valid command line to be passed to FLEX If the port number is not specified it will d
88. using the PROT command DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the PROT command is PROT lt file spec gt option list where the lt file spec gt designates the file to be protected and option list is any combination of the following options D D will delete protect a file A delete protected file cannot be affected by using the DELETE or RENAME Commands or by the delete functions of SAVE APPEND etc W A W will write protect a file A write protected file cannot be deleted renamed or have any additional information written to it Therefore a write protected file is automatically delete protected as well C A C will Catalog protect a file Any files with a C protection code will function as before but will not be displayed when a CAT command is issued X X will remove all protection options on a specific file Examples PROT CAT CMD XW Remove any previous protection on the CAT CMD Utility and write protect it PROT CAT CMD X Remove all protection from the CAT CMD utility PROT INFO SYS C Prohibit INFO SYS from being displayed in a catalog listing P 5 1 The Q command is used to direct the output of commands in the Utility Command Set to a Qume Sprint 3 printer attached to an MP QP 1 0 interface It is normally used to produce hard copy output from text processors assemblers and other utility programs DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the Q command is Q lt n gt lt format gt
89. ve 0 for the file If the file is not found drive 1 will be searched and so on When the system is first initialized the auto drive searching mode will be selected At this time all drive defaults will be to drive 0 It is sometimes convenient to assign drive 1 as the working drive in which case all file references except commands will automatically look on drive 1 It is then convenient to have a diskette in drive 0 with all the system utility commands on it the system drive and a disk with the files being worked on in drive 1 the working drive If the system drive is 0 and the working drive is 1 and the command line was LIST TEXTFILE FLEX would go to drive 0 for the command LIST and to drive 1 for the file The actual assignment of drives is performed by the ASN utility See its description for details 1 6 FLEX User s Manual VI COMMAND DESCRIPTIONS There are two types of commands in FLEX memory resident those which actually are part of the operating system and disk utility commands those commands which reside on the disk and are part of the UCS There are only two resident commands GET and MON They will be described here while the UCS is described in the following sections GET The GET command is used to load a binary file into memory It is a special purpose command and is not often used It has the following syntax GET lt file name list gt where lt file name list gt is lt fil
90. y each time a system disk is created using NEWDISK The NEWDISK utility should be consulted for complete details on the use of LINK DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the LINK command is LINK lt file spec gt where lt file spec gt is usually FLEX The default extension is SYS Some examples of the use of LINK follow LINK FLEX LINK 1 FLEX The first line will LINK FLEX SYS on the working drive while the second example will LINK FLEX SYS on drive 1 For more advanced details of the LINK utility consult the Advanced Programmers Guide L 1 1 LIST The LIST command is used to LIST the contents of text or BASIC files on the terminal It is often desirable to examine a files without having to use an editor or other such program The LIST utility allows examining entire files or selected lines of the file Line numbers may also be optionally printed with each line DESCRIPTION The general syntax of the LIST command is LIST lt file spec gt lt line range gt options where the lt file spec gt designates the file to be LISTed with a default extension of TXT and lt line range gt is the first and last line number of the file which you wish to be displayed All lines are output if no range specification is given The LIST command supports two additional options If N option is given line numbers will be displayed with the listed file If a P option is given the output will be formatted in pages and
91. ystem also assumes at least 2 disk drives are connected to the controller and that they are configured as drives 0 and 1 You should consult the disk drive instructions for this information FLEX interfaces with the disk controller through a section of driver routines and with the operator console or terminal through a section of terminal 1 0 routines III GETTING THE SYSTEM STARTED Each FLEX system diskette contains a binary loader for loading the operating system into RAM There needs to be some way of getting the loader off of the disk so it can do its work This can be done by either hand entering the bootstrap loader provided with the disk system or by using the boot provided in ROM if appropriate to FLEX As a specific example suppose the system we are using has SWTPc s S BUG installed and we wish to run FLEX The first step is to power on all equipment and make sure the S BUG prompt is present gt Next insert the system diskette into drive 0 the boot must be performed with the disk in drive 0 and close the door on the drive Type D on the terminal if using a full size floppy system or U if a minifloppy system The disk motors should start and after about 2 seconds the following should be displayed on the terminal FLEX X X DATE MM DD YY The name FLEX identifies the operating system and the X X will be the version number of the operating system At this time the current date should be entered such as 7 3 79

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