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October 1982

1. MH a v m lu Amr SANTA JOURN m 7 GOB October 1982 TABLE OF CONTENTS Drive Maintenance odo ncaa DLE uoa E ead eae eared as 4 Interfacing CDC Drives estem eC ene LO e EM rudes 6 MEE Interlace tu ceed ea avi ara A p OR etapa t odes du 8 Jumperme the Oume DT 8 eom rever tes bo 8 BDS C Users Group esto entia Qe extendido upper 13 Flippy Floppies 5 ees duty veaO a tenti med san tactus 15 Changing Your DIOS 2c 2 tunes dues pee te vespa eas 17 Dig Board Ives wor ET RERUM ER UECIHEUEPERVA ESI EE 19 JIRI Pascal REVIEW gots ose etn S EX d duos esed is 20 Curing the ee Prope ss 5252932 ve es Cea Ue Re ag SS eee 20 emt ie din REGULAR FEATURES aR LeHers uecka v nates ae ews 2 WE ine Cleafly ssscoswondts wes 12 FORTHwords edges 14 Aerox 620 NOTES soos ses ver dns 16 Want AS o duci an iae eee 16 On YourOwn 21 Technical Tips 25 ATUM UUTENA NEW PRICES EFFECTIVE ON THE 1ST DAY OF THE COVER MONTH OF THIS MAGAZINE THE BIG BOARD OEM INDUSTRIAL BUSINESS SCIENTIFIC SINGLE BOARD COMPUTER KIT Z 80 CPU 64K RAM For All Sockets Installed And Soldered Add 50 WANT MORE INFO Full Documentation and Schematics 5 PARTIALLY ASSEMBLED KITS ara NGM BO eae Ox deferens S e MOSS QS ARA Se ED THE BIG BOARD PROJECT Three years in the works and maybe too good to be true A tribute to hard head
2. COM 8116 12 50 CRYSTALS 13 9776 MHz 3 00 20 MHz 3 00 5 0688 MHz 3 00 POWER CONNECTOR 3 00 RESISTOR PACKS For the Pair POSTAGE Digital Research Computers PO Box 401565 Garland TX 75040 214 271 3538 e 23022 Yeary Lane N E P O Box 225 Aurora OR 97002 l 125 00 CASH REBATE 22 on your purchase of sS dBASE II YOU PAY 465 00 Other Specials for dBASE II users Your Search is over We have Software Finder Lists Medical over 60 packages listed Sales Trackingand Analysis Real Estate cee eee 590 00 125 00 27 60 125 00 225 00 65 00 is here THE DUTCH CONNECTION WORKED IN PORTLAND IT CAN WORK FOR YOU 5 Megabyte Winchester SASI Adapter for the Big Board 239 50 SASI host adapter and software ready to run with your XEBEC type controller and Seagate 506 type winchester Includes utility programs to test your con troller and winchester and to reconfigure your CP M to make the winchester Drive A Your floppies become B and C NORTH AMERICA APPLIED i 200 California Ave Suite 205 Palo Alto CA 94306 415 325 4800 EUROPE amp FAR EAST TWENTE DIGITAAL Deurninger Str 470A 7522CS ENSCHEDE The Netherlands DEALERSHIPS AVAILABLE Coming Version for the XEROX 820 Inquire CP M is a trademark of Digital Research Corp NEW LOW PRICES x Word Processing Programs 24 95 A unique modular se
3. Lines 3 and 4 are stolen from Arne Note that when you define TERMINAL ROM FORTH complains with a MSG 4 This means that a word with the same name already exists but it still ac cepts this new definition But if TERMINAL is already defined why are we redefining it Well TER MINAL is one of the non standardized FORTH words Thus its behavioris sub ject to the whim of the implementor On many systems TERMINAL will return a true value if any key has been struck ROM FORTH follows the break indication school of thought and re turns a true only when a control C is en tered Arne redefined it to call PFM and leave the keyboard character on the data stack Line 5 defines the SIO initialization word SINIT Note that all of the data is pushed on the stack in reverse order and then the DO LOOP sends it to the SIO First SINIT sends three resets to the SIO This is only important during a warm start when the SIO might be wait ing for the second byte of a two byte se quence Thus a single RESET code would be eaten and if two are good three are probably even better Zilog DMA chips have such long command se quences that you would have to send seven resets to be sure you really reset them The 04 44 control register 04 gets a 44 sets the SIO to 1 stop bit 16 times clock The 03 C1 receive control register 03 gets a C1 enables the receiver and se lects 8 bits per received character and no parity The 05 E8
4. EEE The following folks are reaching you for only 20 cents per word If you would like to reach the same audience send your words and 20 cents for each to Micro Cornucopia INDEX to MICRO CORNUCOPIA Issues 1 6 2 50 postpaid North west Metasystems 1161 Grow Ave NW Winslow WA 98110 1771 s 12 i I have several 1771 disk controller chips available at 12 plus 50 post age each Phil Plumbo 1128 Day ton St Paul MN 55104 Micro Cornucopia Number 8 October 1982 Changing Your BIOS By James Simon Introduction You get the source of the CP M BIOS basic input output system with your Big Board The BIOS is the part of CP M that gets changed when you add a printer port for instance If you have created your own custom BIOS usually called a CBIOS but don t know how to incorporate it back into CP M then read on The example Jim uses is specific to the Big Board but it can be generalized to most CP M systems with a little thought In the following you ll note that there are two 60K CP Ms One is the standard CP M that you would create by combin ing your own copy of CP M with the Big Board CBIOS you got from DRC of Texas If on the other hand you got a com Procedure The following steps should incorpo rate your new CBIOS into your CP M 1 Once you ve made your changes in your CBIOS assemble it into a HEX file called CBIOS HEX 2 Determine the size of your system e g 60K 3 Typ
5. Editor s note At this point you would have the scratch disk in drive A for instance and with PFM enter R0 26 1 drive A track 26H sector 1 Then exchange the alignment disk for the scratch disk Now the professional would force the drive to maintain a high holding current on the stepper motor but it wasn t obvious to me how to do that especially with the new LSI Shugart 801 board With the high holding current on the motor you can do the align ment by simply loosening the two motor lock ing screws and rotating the body of the motor slightly With the high holding current ro tating the body rotates the shaft and moves the head With no holding current the motor body rotates but the shaft remains stationary However with a very steady hand you can rotate the shaft slightly one way or the other to see what gives you the best looking signal while holding the relay not the arm down by hand then rotate the motor body the same amount in the same direction and tighten it down slightly What you are look ing for is a cat eye type signal with two humps of equal amplitude You can leave the 4 Micro Cornucopia Number 8 October 1982 motor locked down and just twist the shaft to see what happens without affecting the align ment Now put the scratch disk back in the drive and read track 26H again Swap the align ment disk back in and see how the signal looks while holding the relay down Re
6. One is used to clock data into and out of the Z80 A SIO O while the other is for systems and applications use B PROM Programming Circuitry The new Cal Tex SBC has circuitry for programming 2716s 2732 A s or pin compatible EEPROMs B CP M CP M with Russell Smith s CBIOS for the new Cal Tex computer is available for 150 The CBIOS is available separately for 25 SINGLE QUANTITY PRICE ATTRACTIVE DISCOUNTS FOR DEALERS AND OEMs CP M IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF DIGITAL RESEARCH TERMS Orders paid for with a cashier s check or bank card will be shipped within three working days Orders paid for with a personal check will be shipped within three weeks Add 5 for packing amp shipping Drive Maintenance By Denny Fox How many times have you seen BDOS ERROR ON A BAD SECTOR and wondered now what In the follow ing article we ll cover the now what for those of you having disk problems Background Since floppy disk drives have a large number of mechanical components to wear or get out of adjustment they usu ally cause much more trouble than the rest of the system Once you get your Big Board up and running it should keep running just about forever with very lit tle attention However your floppies will need some TLC from time to time and disk errors usually indicate that TLC is about due What Happens Inside When you insert a disk and close the door the door closed switch actuates the ex
7. SKEY ADATA P8 10 11 TALK SINIT BEGIN TERMINAL IF KEY SEMIT ENDIF 12 SIO 13 S 14 15 TRGE E E E E AEA CEN D PIN NC EE CELMRNO SUE SESMRESN USE 14 Micro Cornucopia Number 8 October 1982 Flippy Floppies By David Thompson Im sure that most of you already know that punching extra holes in the jackets of single sided disks makes room for more bits But for those of you who aren t familiar which this practice the following should help you double the amount of data you can store per disk FORTHwords continued loops forever transferring data back and forth between the console and the port As a personal project you might extend this to do file transfers Arne has already done some of the work for you in issue 6 DTR should be asserted because many terminals and most modems require it Line 6 sends 05 to the port A baud rate generator setting it to 300 baud Refer to page 8 of the DRC Theory of Operation manualif you want a different baud rate BEN YNIFORTH Actually what you will be doing is adding another set of index holes in the jacket so you can flip the disk over and use the back side that s right this is for single sided drives When folks first hear about this they often wonder why the manufacturers don t punch the extra holes themselves so that all disks would be flippies Scotch Verbatim and I m sure some others do make flippy disks this way Of course then they also test and fo
8. Working with a subset gives you less to learn at first and more to appreciate when you move up As for program compatibility most of the differences lie in the I O utilities For example Q C and C80 automatically give you I O redirection but sadly Az tec C does not I will have to doctor its utilities to make them work like Q C Getting Started Along with a C compiler you will need a text editor and some books I mention the editor because you will use it a lot be sure you can live with the one you pick To get a taste of an applica tion of C and a full screen editor I sug gest you try the package sold by Micro C for 39 As David says where else can you getan editor formatter and C com piler all for under 40 I strongly recommend you get two books The C Programming Language by Kernighan amp Ritchie and Software Tools by Kernighan amp Plauger available either in the RATFOR version or the PASCAL version The programs outlined in Software Tools are the basis for my Pro grammer s Aid Package really a collec tion of word processing programs Edi tor s note If you are at all familiar with the utilities in Software Tools you know what a great help they can be Also note that the RATFOR looks so much like C that many folks mistake one for the oth er What next Once everything is in hand including CP M manuals you probably should edge index the C manual so you can look up information about erro
9. You should see 015 to 020 clearance be tween the arm and the bail over the whole distance If it s less than that take a closelook at the pad it may be missing or worn flat If it s OK adjust the bail If the clearance is more than 020 then check that the foam pad mounted on the bail is not pressing against the disk jack et too hard If there is too much pressure against the jacket the disk will bind and chatter as it turns causing problems 2 Dirty head Oxide is very abrasive and can eat the directory track right off your disks This is usually where you will notice disk wear first since this is where CP M spends a lot of its time Disk heads should be cleaned witha new Q tip and isopropy alcohol Caution Don t grab the head load arm and lift it way up to look at the head and head load pad You could damage the spring which supplies the head load pressure If possible unhook the end of the spring from the arm before lifting it Otherwise don t lift it more than 90 de grees If the head looks clean and shiny you probably shouldn t clean it 3 Friction Note how hard it is to twist the stepper motor shaft when the power is off If the shaft seems stiff compared with another drive then you probably need to clean the lead screw the end bushing or the stepper motor bearings Use isopropyl alcohol followed by a ver rry light application of a verrry light lu bricant Editor s note I ve had good l
10. controlled by the drive select line MONITOR There are some differ ences here Xerox added a T ypewriter RR ODORE E BOALLLLLLOLILIUAAL s 16 NUF Computer Company Inc 99 Pennsylvania Avenue Newton MA 02164 617 964 8041 command which routes to the printer anything that comes in on the keyboard However the screen remains blank and the printer is initialized strangely I have never seen this command used outside of a sales demonstration where it is one of the few things an inexperienced sales person can t screw up The old T com mand memory test is now X All of the other commands are still there and are similar to PFM The initialization code remains simi lar except the SIO B port is initialized with DTR off Why Editor s note A number of other folks had this very same question while trying to interface the 820 with their own printer The only thing I can guess is that Xerox is trying to sell printers KEYBOARD Xerox did not doan out standing job on the 820 keyboard For in stance the down arrow key outputs a control c which of course haults stand ard CP M programs The keyboard is a Maxi Switch and is capable of sending lots of codes with bit 7 set but bit 7 is faithfully cleared by the software They kept the 16 character FIFO for console input Coming Up By the time this is in print I will have an 820 MOD II board to dissect and de scribe in the December issue See you then
11. multiple names for one file 404 La 28 o Cfi wRDATA intelligent directory lister optional multi columns ik Ill move rename files even between users 3 remove delete files with optional verification LowCURR gt 1 a 2 38 C Step g source file compare with resynchronization Mog E set reset file attributes peru s rose K 6 spelling error corrector with 80 000 word dictionary i mi FE CM STEPIN search multiple files for a pattern a HDLD ig 70 tla in memory file sorter optional duplicate line omission T404 PEDA 3 LowcURRE pipe fitting copy input stream to multiple outputs y tr transliterate translate character codes 1k 12 i wc word counter counts characters words and lines secs ED ot Fal 38 P lt 4 HDLD wx word extractor copies each word to a separate line m ze EQUES jQ WRELTRES Each Unicum understands several flags options or switches which control program alternatives No special shell is needed Unica commands are typed to the standard CP M command interpreter The Unica package supports several Unix like facilities such as filename user numbers sc data bas 2 data bas 3 compares files belonging to user 2 and user 3 Wildcard patterns rm v tmp types each filename containing the letters TMP and asks whether to delete the file I O redirection Is a gt proj dir writes a directory listing of all files to file proj dir Pip
12. 2 you see how this circuit is combined with the multiplexing circuit Here is where the index composite read data trackO and ready signals come in from two drives The 74158 multiplexer selects which drive s outputs to pass along to the 1771 The 74158 s selection is controlled by SELO and SEL1 If neither drive is selected the 7438 open collector drivers are disabled which allows you to duplicate the circuit for additional CDCs or allows the parallel connection of Shu gart compatible drives Figure 2 CDC to Shugart Signal Generator and Multiplexor 5826 Southwest Ave St Louis MO 63139 Figure 3 shows how the signals to the drives are demultiplexed The proper bank of 7438 drivers is enabled by the drive select signals SELO and SEL1 from the controller The particular drives I purchased have two signals not available on the Shu garts Write fault and write fault re set are not compatible with the Big Board so I disabled them by tying write fault reset to ground it s active low Finally both head load and step speed are slower on the CDCs I lengthened the head load delay by increasing the value of R44 on the Big Board from 100K to 150K The slower step rate was not a problem Apparently the specifications for the drives are quite conservative If the step speed is a problem you ll have to change the step speed select bytes in PFM 80 After getting past the initial setup and mechanical adjustments I ve ha
13. 82 ISSUE 8 10 82 Parallel Print Word Processing Drive Maintenance Drive Motor Cont Two Great Spells Flippy Floppies Shugart Jumpers Two Text Editors Interfacing Drives 1 2 PFM PRN Scribble a Formatter Installing a New BIOS ISSUE 3 12 81 ISSUE 6 6 82 Four MHz Mods EPROM Programmer Configuring Modem 7 Customize Your Chars Safer Formatter Double Density update Reverse Video Cursor Terminal in FORTH MICRO CORNUCOPIA P O Box 223 Bend Oregon 97709 USER S SOFTWARE 20 40 off retail CP M software for list users list Ashton Tate dBase II 700 00 517 00 Microsoft Condor I entry level data base sys 295 00 218 00 Basic 80 Condor II relational dbase sys 595 00 440 00 Basic Compiler Condor III relational w report writer 995 00 735 00 Fortran 80 Digital Research Cobol 80 MAC macro assembler Macro 80 ZSID symbolic debugger for 280 M Sort PL 1 80 Northwest Analytical Statpak CBASIC 2 Oasis The Word spell check amp dict CB 80 true compiler for CBASIC 2 The Word Plus PASCAL MT VERSION 5 5 Sorcim renee Ecosoft Microstat advanced statistics A T c Supervyz simplifies CP M D d e l m Faircom Micro B keyed file accessing cin i OR 1i ease Quickscreen screen builder Hu Een y ica d pA e ee Ratfor Fortran Language Enhancer interactive per module Tiny Pascal I S A Spellguard spelling checker Dunodoh Ithaca Intersystems Pascal Z gau i 2 Key Bits Wordsearch spelling ch
14. Grady Griffin Jr The Qume DT 8 and the Big Board make a handsome couple In my case the marriage has been relatively uneventful and the honeymoon will probably last a long time You ve obviously divorced your self from disk problems Ed How do you marry a Qume to the Big Board without a hitch First the BB disk interface is compati ble with the Qume with one exception The exception is that the low current lineis on pin 6 on the BB and pin 2 on the Qume Fortunately since the BB doesn t use pin 2 and the Qume doesn t use pin 6 all you need to do is jumper pin 2 to pin 6 on the BB J1 Connectors The AC connector Qume J0 is a three pin AMP 1 480700 0 housing with three 350550 1 pins same as Shugart Pin 1 120 VAC Pin 2 System Ground Pin 3 120 VAC neutral The DC connector Qume J5 is a six pin AMP 1 480270 0 housing with six 60619 1 pins also the same as Shugart Pin 1 24V input Pin 2 24V return Pin 3 Logic ground Pin 4 No connection Pin 5 5V input Pin 6 5V return Pins 2 3 and 6 are all connected to logic power supply ground The sys tem and logic grounds should be con nected together at the power supply Procedure Unplug everything and remove the PCB from the chassis Carefully remove the solder from the following pairs of holes B2 B3 B4 S2 S3 top left and S center between IC U3D and USE Carefully remove the traces between the holes S and S2 use a sharp razor blade or
15. buzzing with questions and answers problems and solutions What appeared to be the most interesting group however formed around the tables of potato salad baked beans fresh corn zucchini bread and other Big Board specialties It must have been a most interesting group because everyone seemed so intent Certainly food for thought John Marlin called from Maryland the evening before to say that he was sorry that he couldn t make it But like magic the next morning a local florist showed up with six of the prettiest flower ar rangements We even had flowers up in the computer room Thanks John You d probably like to see pictures of the volleyball game or the presentation semi official get togethers have to have semi official presentations We gave Jim Ferguson a genuine Big Board Game by Parker Brothers It is probably the only copy left in existence I got the camera out but got so wrapped up just trying to spend a few minutes with each person that I just plum forgot And besides picture taking seems to get in the way of what s hap pening by making folks self conscious So I can t show you what happened and for that I apologize We ll definitely give you more notice before the next one so maybe you can come Wanted C and Pascal Software Well now that we are finally support ing C and Pascal we are looking for utili ties and programs written in these lan guages I ve already started working on the fir
16. cable other hardware and demo diskette 1695 5ea I D A C oystems just described a total of 11 520 addressable points 3Similar to TRS 80 commands Letters continued Dear Editor Thank you for sending me the back is sues The article in the September 81 is sue on jumpering the wild Shugart got me up and running Now Iam interested in adding two switches to the front panel of my system so that I could select whether or not the disks would be write protected Do you know how to do this John Appleton 702 101 14th Avenue SE Calgary Alberta Canada T2G 1C6 Editor s note There is a backwards way to get switchable write protection The 801 contains a shorted pair of pads marked WP for write protect and above them an additional pad marked NP for no protect When WP is shorted and NP is not then the drive will not write onto a disk which has its write protect notch uncovered When the WP run has been cut and NP is shorted instead then the drive should write ona protected disk So all you have to do is remove all the write protect tabs from your disks so they are TRS 80 is a trademark of Tandy Corporation Characters are blocks 2 wide by 3 high in an 8 x 10 dot matrix for Switch not included l l l l Available December 31st 1982 l Payment by L Check J Money order Amt i I l Name Address City write prot
17. ing CP M can change this The rate may need to be slowed down for drives other than Shugart 801 s or for tracking down drive problems Change location FF6A from 00 to 02 fora 10 ms rate orto 03 fora 20 ms rate For example while in PFM MFF6A select address FF6A FF6A 00 02 change 00 to 02 FF6B 00 Q get out B now boot CP M Frank Gentges 9251 Wood Glade DR Great Falls VA 22066 703 759 2218 Triac AC Control Two AC motor control circuits have appeared in Micro C issues 2 and 6 but the solid state relay was hard to lo cate and I don t like the mechanical va riety The following circuit is solid state and uses readily available inexpensive com ponents It is not critical and may be laid out any way you please just be careful to notleave 110VAC exposed Although all the parts may be bought from the local Radio shack RS part num bers listed they are also readily avail able elsewhere Basically the circuit is a triac switch driven by an optocoupler which pro vides isolation between the logic and AC portions of the circuit None of the resis tors are critical and the value of R1 may be lowered slightly if the switch doesn t output full line voltage When connected as shown the AC will be on when the input is high If you connect R1 to 5V and the logic input to U2 pin 2 the AC will be on when the input goes low When using this with the Big Board connect U2 pin 2 to TB1 pin 2 ground and co
18. language all you have to do is learn to say BEEEEP EBEN On Your Own continued Ihave since watched a number of very exciting looking new software and hard ware businesses start up complete with substantial thick business plans and attorneys on their boards They were offering me and others substantial participation for getting in on the ground floor Despite all the best plans and all the super talent that they collected none of these startups made it The dreams were glorious but in the end a lot of people who put in a lot of hours were left with nothing but a lot of memories and a lot of debts I ma good one to talk of course There are just over 1000 of you and a dozen ad vertisers bless your hearts keeping Mi cro C afloat A lot of the big dreamers and big publishers have told me that Mi cro C would never be more than a hobby because the audience is too small On the other hand we ve made it through the first year doing what we want to and eating at the same time A lot of those big dreamers have packed their dreams and moved on In fact the first year is really a signifi cant milepost for a new business If it s really solvent not just waiting for that next shot of capital and growing after the first year then chances are very good that it will be around quite a while long er However if you re stuck with a start up 1 Definitely plan to charge enough up front to cover your living expenses u
19. non latching Thermal Protection Klixon sensor shuts down Il 3 volt 3 Odtgut Sr VRS This Item Only Section High efficiency Switching Outside Continental United States Darlingtons call or write for specific freight charges Pacgaging ee E At no extra charge we include i POR AEREE complete schematics and a detailed Weight 21 pounds theory of operation Also included are Size 6 x 5 1 2 x 12 instructions for simple modifications that allow operation of the 12V section at any voltage from 5V to 25V By changing 4 parts the 12 section can be raised to 24 bA with the same regulation and features If you need power for your floppies or hard disk this Mod Kit will fill the bill 24 Volt Mod Kit w instructions 5 00 All units are guaranteed for 30 days after receipt Repair parts and service available MODEMS General DataComm direct connect auto answer originate FCC Type Approved Bell 103 standard tones 300 baud Like new with 90 day warranty Full documentation provided schematics 2 50 extra Normal loopback self checks data in out on both digital and analog basis Compatible with any terminal or computer with RS 232C serial I O port LIMITED SUPPLY 127 50 TERMS Add 1 50 postage we pay balance Orders over 50 00 add 85 for insurance No C O D Texas Res add 5 Tax 90 Day Money Back Guarantee on all items All items subject to prior sale Prices subject to change
20. nucopia of Oregon 11740 N W West Rd Portland Oregon 97229 SUBSCRIPTION RATES 1 yr 6 issues 1 yr Canada amp Mexico 1 yr other foreign 16 00 20 00 26 00 All subscription orders payable in U S funds ona U S bank please ADVERTISING RATES Available on request l CHANGE OF ADDRESS Please send old label and new address SOFTWARE HARDWARE AND BOOK VENDORS We would very much like to review your CP M compatible products for Micro C Please send material to the Review Editor Micro Cornucopia LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Please sound off CP M is a trademark of Digital Research Inc Copyright 1982 by Micro Cornucopia All rights reserved MICRO CORNUCOPIA October 1982 l The Single Board Systems Journal No 8 The Get Together x BSH RY Those of you who didn t make it to the 1st annual semi official Micro C get to gether really missed a great time Over 60 folks came most of them from the West Coast but we even had a few from farther afield There was Jim Ferguson from Texas yep THE Jim Ferguson demonstrating the Big Board II complete with 5 megabyte hard disk There was Andy Bakkers from Holland demon strating his hard disk interface for the original Big Board and he was using a 5 megabyte drive There was Rod Irving and his wife from Australia where Rod is a major hardware and software re tailer He went back with some new products to market All day the place was
21. t know how then this contri bution from Willis Gore is for you This new monitor imple ments the real time clock changes the shift lock to a caps lock lets you access the ROM video RAM bank directly and changes the track table so the board works better with double sided drives He included a routine that lets you overlay the monitor from the disk He has also included the source of the PFM monitor translated into TDL 8080 Z80 mnemonics 2 TERM Willis also sent three terminal routines each less than 1K of object code The terminal routines let you set up the Big Board as a simple terminal as a file receiver or as a file sender Programs send command string to other system to initiate transfer making it easy to interface with large comput ers 3 CHECKS Ralph Sherman really did a professional job on this check balancing package If your mate has been nagging you to do something practical with your BB then send us a check for this one 4 Disk Utilities copy to memory from memory and dump All Users Disks From Micro Cornucopia lt N Woser s DISK 4 RN 2 15 00 each US Can Mex Like all the rest of the user disks this disk is full even though it contains only two packages The documentation on the disk includes step by step instructions for incorporating these into your CP M Including 1 CBIOS This is a custom BIOS contributed by Robert Edi son for those folks who have Tandon Drives It a
22. transmit control register gets an E8 enables the transmit ter asserts data terminal ready DTR and selects 8 bits per transmitted character Line 7 defines SIO which mimics TERMINAL but for SIO port A SIO returns true if there is data available from the SIO Line 8 defines SEMIT which behaves like the standard FORTH word EMIT but sends the output to the SIO Note that SEMIT waits until the transmit buffer empty flag is set before sending data This may not be significant in this simple program but following the FORTH phi losophy we are building tools that we can use in later projects Soon we will be sending assembled strings of bytes If we didn t wait for TBE would guarantee that we would get only garbage out of the SIO Line9 defines SKEY which returns the next available character from the SIO like the standard word KEY Note that SIO must be called prior to calling SKEY or you will read bad data Lines 11 and 12 put it all together TALK initializes SIO port A and then continued next page 0026 2BCD 0000 SINIT E8 05 C1 03 44 04 18 18 18 9 0 DO ACTRL P LOOP IF SKEY EMIT ENDIF 0 END 0 Port A usage on Big Board 12 Aug 82 HEX 1 3 CONSTANT ABAUD 4 CONSTANT ADATA 6 CONSTANT ACTRL 2 1 CONSTANT DAV 4 CONSTANT TBE 3 PSCODE BUILDS HERE 2 DOES EXECUTE 4 PSCODE TERMINAL 06CD 6FFO0 5 6 05 ABAUD P 7 SIO ACTRL P8 DAV AND 8 SEMIT BEGIN ACTRL PG TBE AND END ADATA P 9
23. without notice Foreign order U S funds only We cannot ship to Mexico Countries other than Canada add 3 50 shipping and handling o C ing Clearly Column by Tony Ozrelic Hi I m Tony Ozrelic and I ve taken on the task of doing a C column for Micro C As a little background I ve pro grammed in a number of languages in cluding BASIC APL FORTRAN and assembly for many different systems Although I was originally a hardware engineer I ve found that programming gives me a chance to express some cre ativity Through this column I hope to gener ate more interest in C and help balance some of the emphasis that has been placed on FORTH When I talk about C I m really talking generally about the language unless I specify a particular version Why C Why should you use C as a program ming language Because its forte is sys tems programming The system of course is the environment in which the programs run such as CP M or UNIX Plus the system includes tools such as compilers and utilities With this in mind it seems to me that C was intended to replace assembly lan guage programming rather than high level languages such as BASIC Which C If you d like to get a feeling for the lan guage and its use I suggest that you choose Small C or one of its offspring Small C Q C or C80 Small C is a pretty limited subset of thelanguage see Micro C issue 7 for details but it does give you a feel fo
24. 00 150 00 645 00 350 00 150 00 250 00 250 00 295 00 304 00 93 00 396 00 216 00 93 00 154 00 154 00 185 00 specify language Please specify computer and disk format Enclose 3 for shipping and handling 4 for air ship For 24 hr service send cashiers check or money order Personal checks take 2 weeks Send for free catalog included with each order Ca residents include 6 5 sales tax COD ok call 213 708 8537 If you don t see it CALL we probably have it at the same low prices THANKS to everybody who has ordered from us USER S SOFTWARE 7812 White Oak Ave Northridge Ca 91325 Editorial continued Wanted Heavyweight Software Do you have the urge to write a com piler interpreter data base manager screen editor etc because no one else has really done it right Or even just be cause If so you should take a couple of tranquilizers and go to bed until the urge wears off However if you ve already started such a project or don t need the sleep call or write immediately I ve been working on some very exciting software marketing ideas and they are working astonishingly well for other folks These are BIG ideas ideas that may well dwarf many of today s major software houses or at least put a bunch of us on the map The Micro C Index A number of you have suggested that we do an index of the first year s issues Well David Mitchell showed up at the get together with an index of our first year is
25. 1408L6 D to A Converter Intel Pin Out Low Power 4116 16KX1 200 n s 8 11 50 d 8 Bit 2532 4KX8 450 n s T I P O 4164 5v SST TTI 8 64 00 AD561J D d OU Ter SOCKETS 10 BitS Low Profile SOLDER TAIL 262 144 Khz 1 10 5 000000 1771 Single Density FDC 300 000 1 25 5 616 1791 Double Density FDC 23 50 8 Pin 13 1 00 2 000000 Hhz 2 49 9 90000 14 Pi 10 1 00 3 000 1 15 10 69425 5027 CRT Controller in Programmable 24 x 80 14 95 16 Pin 8 1 00 3 579545 1 00 10 695000 4 433618 1 00 11 088 68B45 Motorola HD46505SP 18 Pin 8 1 00 4444 000 1 25 14 31818 CRT Controller 20 Pin 7 1 00 4 916 Baud Rate 1 99 24 Pin 6 1 00 28 Pin 6 1 00 40 Pin B7ARUC BUY 10 GET 1 00 FREE CHOICE 828123 e tenine 1 99 DIP SWITCHES 828128 5 io eere t s 1 99 74S571 Special 2 75 CRT CONT FDC 8080 SUPPORT 4 Position 5 Position eeeeee 65 Position esee 70 Send for free brochure on Linears Bi Fets i RN Tone Decoders Transistors L E D s B 74S04 39 74S240 1 99 f 7 Position 80 Power Supplies Modems Crystal 8 Position 0 0eeeeeee 90 Oscillators and many more bargains 749138 95 749244 139 TERMS Add 1 50 postage we pay balance Orders over 50 00 add 85 for insurance No C O D Texas Res add 5 Tax 90 Day Money Back Guarantee on all items All items subject to prior sale Prices subject to change without notice Foreign orde
26. A mis aligned drive will format read and write its own disks just fine but that s it 5 Temperature and humidity condi tions can affect the alignment disk A lit tle apparent mis alignment may be OK if all your drives are the same 6 Re format flaky disks after re align ment Otherwise they probably will con tinue to cause trouble since they may have been formatted or written by mis aligned drives 7 DUMPX program by S J Singer from CP M user group disk 24 is a good tool It does disk validation track sec tor and group reading disk allocation map reading and direct sector editing In addition it does file dumps in hex and ASCII Ihave modified it to validate with a 2 sector interleave instead of 5 to re duce validation time Editor s note Den ny s update of this utility is on user disk 5 IEZUESORUMRICMMIKEEDUONADPUDRCUM UAM INC ENS CMMNMI INC CCIMCM c CDM M C eLa Mc S Y Y cr n L M C H 4 cc mamm t aC ES T CEMM Y CGU ES CI EE REESE CE Micro Cornucopia Number 8 October 1982 5 Interfacing CDC Drives By John Jones Most recently manufactured floppies have Shugart SA800 interfaces and thus are compatible with the Big Board The used CDC drives I purchased however are not compatible with the Big Board without signal translation CDC drives were designed to run with a separ
27. Cornucopia Number 8 October 1982 Within the body are the subroutines that do the work First we define c as a character local to main and usable only by functions called by main Subrou tines getchar and putchar are not de fined because they reside in the standard library which is a set of routines which copy strings open and close files and handle I O The functions main and getchar have no arguments so their parentheses are empty Purchar c must actually put something so we pass along the charac ter that getchar found The statement while c EOF says that the statements between the brackets will be done as long as the character in c is not an end of file character 1 If you compiled this program and en tered A gt COPY it would echo on the screen every char acter you typed on the keyboard actual ly double because PFM also echoes char acters on the screen If you compiled it using C80 or Q C for instance you would be able to redi rect I O So you could enter A gt COPY lt A TEXT FIL gt B TEXT FIL and copy would make a copy of A TEXT FIL on the B drive Don t do this with a file more than 2 or 3 K long be cause it s going to do the copy a sector at a time which is very slow Or if you en ter A gt COPY gt LST you have created a simple typewriter us ing your printer as output This actually works very well because you can edit each line using the CP M e
28. Npur Moc 3010 Triac AC Motor Control Circuit Di k DRIVE Ek MOTOR PLUGS IN HERE To 120V AC Micro Cornucopia Number 8 October 1982 25 a gt A daughter board that plugs into the 1771 socket With this board the system employs automatic density select m Software Publishers Dual Density gives you several choices You can have either 2 5Mhz or 4Mhz Dual Density You can run single or double sided drives You can run 5 drives on the Bigboard by following a few simple steps outlined in the SWP manual A 50 34 pin disk drive adapter board comes free with 5 Dual Density m 8 Dual Density users have up to 674k bytes of user storage per disk 5 4 users have up to 185k bytes per disk m Dual Density software includes DDINIT a double density initialization and verification program DDINIT options 8 formats Format an entire disk or just system tracks Selection of sector skew Choice of whether or not to verify formatting Choice of which drive to be used Has a default which will choose the largest format 9 by 1024 for 8 5 by 1024 for 5 DDSYSGEN a double density sysgen program with three options 1 Reads double density system tracks into memory 2 Writes double density system tracks from memory onto a double density disk 3 Generates a double density system disk complete with a printer driver using your single density CP M our distribution disk and a
29. OARD available for 159 00 m PRICE CUT PFM 3 3 2K SYSTEM MONITOR Thereal power of the Big Board lies in its PFM 3 3 on board monitor PFM commands include Dump Memory Boot CP M Copy Examine Fill Memory Test Memory Go To Read and Write I O Ports Disc Read Drive Track Sector and Search PFM occupies one of the four 2716 EPROM locations provided Z 80 is a Trademark of Zilog TERMS Shipments will be made approximately 3 to 6 weeks after we receive your order VISA MC cash accepted We will accept COD s for the Big Board only with a 75 deposit Balance UPS COD Add 4 00 shipping USA AND CANADA ONLY Digital Research Computers OF TEXAS P O BOX 401565 e GARLAND TEXAS 75040 e 214 271 3538 TRADEMARK OF DIGITAL RESEARCH NOT ASSOCIATED WITH DIGITAL RESEARCH OF CALIFORNIA THE ORIGINATORS OF CPM SOFTWARE 1 TO 4 PIECE DOMESTIC USA PRICE MICRO CORNUCOPIA 11740 N W West Road Portland Oregon 97229 503 645 3253 Editor amp Publisher David J Thompson Technical Editor Ruth Fredine Burt Graphic Design Sandra Thompson Typography Patti Morris amp Martin White Irish Setter Staff Assistant Anna Berry Cover Illustration Gerald Torrey MICRO CORNUCOPIA is the sin gle board systems journal support ing systems programming lan guages and single board systems including the Big Board the Big Board II and the Xerox 820 MICRO CORNUCOPIA is pub lished six times a year by Micro Cor
30. Programmer Two Great Spells Customize Your Chars Two Text Editors Double Density update Scribble a Formatter Terminal in FORTH ISSUE 7 8 82 6 Reviews of C ISSUE 8 10 82 Drive Maintenance Adding 6 K of RAM Flippy Floppies Viewing 50 Hz Interfacing Drives Technical Tips Installing a New BIOS FREE Your choice of a user s disk or the deluxe char acter ROM free if you send an article or software and a ROM or extra disk Screen Editorin SmallC 39 00 44 00 A full function screen editor plus formatter written in Small C and setup for the BB Over 400K on disk including source documenta US Can Other Foreign Mex tion and the Small C compiler Small C This is a simple extension of Small C see pg 6 of issue 7 The source and documentation are on the disk ecc t tm n8 24 00 29 00 Your Fortune in the Microcomputer Business VU S aM es te d ea ique RC REA M en E 26 45 36 45 This two volume set contains the most useful and complete working for yourself infor mation that I ve seen QUANTITY DESCRIPTION PRICE EACH TOTAL TOTAL ENCLOSED U S funds only please payable on a U S bank Make checks payable to MICRO CORNUCOPIA RER PRM 4 User s Disks 15 00 each US Can Mex 20 00 each Other Foreign CP M EFFICIENT CP M COMPATIBLE Insight Enterprises 128 1 Single Board Com puter offers
31. RS DISK 8 1 BDSCIO custom BBI O for BDS C both h and c 2 ROFF powerful text formatter plus sample formatted text 3 YAM Yet Another Modem program in COM and source form 4 SIGNS prints large block letters on screen or printer US Can Other MORE ROMS Mex Foreign Fast monitor ROMs for speed freaks and our famous better than Texas character ROM for screen freaks Fast Monitor ROM 25 00 30 00 Version 2 3 Char ROM 25 00 30 00 Send Big Board number with monitor ROM orders Monitor amp char ROMs 5 00 each if you send a fast ROM and a stamped self ad dressed return envelope Prices include media package amp 1st class postage air mail for Other Foreign NAME ADDRESS CITY STATE ZIP MICRO CORNUCOPIA P O Box 223 Bend Oregon 97709 BACK ISSUES 3 00 each US Can Mex 5 00 each Other Foreign Because of the demand from new subscribers bless their hearts we are keeping back issues in print The following is a list of some of the special articles in each issue ISSUE 1 8 81 ISSUE 2 10 81 Power Supply Parallel Print RAM Protection Drive Motor Cont Video Wiggle Shugart Jumpers 1 2 PFM PRN 1 2 PFM PRN ISSUE 3 12 81 ISSUE 4 2 82 Four MHz Mods Keyboard Translation Configuring Modem7 More 4MHz Mods Safer Formatter Modems Lync amp SIOs Reverse Video Cursor Undoing CP M ERASE ISSUE 5 4 82 ISSUE 6 6 82 Word Processing EPROM
32. Room for 2 or 3 drives amp Big Board 275 Stock horizontal drive cabinet with Borchert Power supply Room for 2 horizontal drives and Big Board 250 The Electronics Shop 131 North Decatur Olympia WA 98502 206 357 6304 206 352 7530 CBBS The Big Board II By David Thompson Its here I have a Big Board II of my very own Now let s see an 18 M byte hard disk is 1200 and the Xebec con troller is 295 That s less than 100 per Mibyte which is equivalent to 60 for a double density 801 The Final Push It s been interesting watching Jim Ferguson Russell Smith and Bill Sieg mund go through all the gyrations re quired to get the Big Board II to market quickly The gestation period on the Big Board I was much longer probably be cause they were waiting for low power Schottky parts to come down in price But this time the primary thing deter mining the schedule appears to be the number of hours in a day There aren t enough believe me I know what happened at Tektronix as we tried to hurry things to market and I ve seen schedules slide so often and so far that it often appears that companies generate project completion times with random number generators and then forget to multiply by two But the BB II is here looks great Bill did a beautiful job building it and as soon as I get this issue to bed to the printer lll finish the system Compatibility One thing that s neat is that CP M
33. S74 LS151 i LS245 1 95 LS85 LS153 LS257 79 LS86 LS154 1 A LS266 59 LS90 LS157 i LS283 99 LS109 LS161 LS290 99 LS123 LS164 LS241 99 LS293 1 75 LS125 LS166 LS242 1 49 LS298_ 89 6501 5 256X4 CMOS Data 78M05 5v 500 MA Z80 2 5 MHZ CPU Retention 2 Volts 22 Pin 200 n s TO 220 Z80DMA DMA Controller Typ 5V Very Low Power 1 50 ae Z80PIO Parallel 6514 J 5 1KX4 CMOS Super Low 7812 i Z80SIO O Chan Ser Power 350 n s Similar to 2114 7815 l i Z80A 4MHZ CPU Same Pin Out 7824 99 280A SIO O 8108 5 1KX8 NMOS 5V 500 NS LM317T TO 220 LM323K 5v 3A AMD2901 4 Bit Slice TO 3 AMD2903 4 Bit Super 4K STATIC RAMS LAS 1412 12v 3A Slice LESS THAN 94 EACH er D a AMD2911 Sequencer MK4104J 4 250 N S 18 Pin Ceramic 7905 TO 3 5v 1A i AMD29705 16 Register Computer Mfg Surplus PRIME Fully Static Easy to Use Has Same Pin Out as TMS4044 but slightly different AY3 8910 Sound Chip with 60 1702A 256X8 1 us timing With Specs Mostek page data manual 2708 1KX8 450 ms 2 45 8 for 8 95 32 for 29 95 DM8131 6 Bit Unified Bus 27A08 1KX8 350 n s 3 95 VERY LOW POWER Comparator DYNAMIC RAM TR1602 UART same as 5280N 5 2107B 4 TMS4060 AY5 1013 i 2716 1 2KX8 5v 350 n s 4KX1 22 Pin i IM6402 5v High speed 2732 4KX8 450 n s Intel P O 4027 4KX1 250 n s 1 75 UART AY5 1013 pin out d 2732A 3 4K x 8 350 n s 4116 16KX1 250 n s 8 10 00 MC
34. X acto knife Be sure you cut the trace running horizontally between the S2 pads not the vertical trace be tween S2 and S1 Install and solder 12 square pins at B2 B3 B4 S2 and S Now reinstall the board and reconnect all the plugs 1010 Rush Scottsville Road Rush NY 14543 Head Load Option There is a programmable shunt at lo cation 1E left center Open the traces on this shunt at locations X HL and Z I replaced the shunt with a 16 pin dip switch Also jumper locations C and D just left of the shunt and at locations DS and Y upper left This completes the head load option and includes an activity LED option so that the LED will only light when the head is loaded Drive Select Options To configure the DT 8 to act as a single drive with a single sided disk in place or as two drives with a double sided disk jumper S3 If you want it to act as a single drive only jumper 2 If you jumper S along with 3 then the DT 8 will not access the back of a single sided disk If you don t jumper S then you can read and write on the back side of a disk that would ordinarily be single sided only A good formatting program format3 on user disk 1 will format and verify the back side for you Drive select for the front side of the disk is set by jumpering one of the op tions DS1 through DS4 if it will be drive A jumper DS1 if drive B then DS2 Drive select for the back side of the disk is set by jumpering B1 th
35. andles all relocation of high level definitions but not CODE words imbedded addresses are difficult to re solve The package is 15 blocks long This capability is pretty exciting since it cuts compilation time by a factor of 10 After I ve had a chance to study the package I ll try to provide a synopsis of the technique so that you can implement it for your FORTH New CP M FORTHs There are at least two new FORTH versions announced in the past couple of months that operate under CP M Micromotion FORTH has been around for the better part of a year now and has a very nice manual Inner Access P O Box 816 Carpinteria CA FORTH is an offering from a group of ex FORTH Inc programmers Also Stackworks is now selling their FORTH directly instead of through Supersoft a wise decision My preference is still standalone FORTH for single users on a single board computer but the ability to interface directly with CP M remains a significant facility Hampton s Application All you terminal users will be tickled to know that this time we are initializing SIO port A Arne used port B in issue 6 Using port A is more difficult be cause you have to do the initialization PFM doesn t initialize it as it does port B In the following listing lines 1 and 2 define the addresses for the port A baud rate generator data control plus the data available DAV and transmit buffer empty TBE flag bits in the con trol register
36. ate cable for each drive which causes two problems First the drives have no drive select input so their output lines are always active Second CDC drives do not have a ready signal to let the controller know that it can access them So to use CDC drives you must 1 Generate a ready signal which cor rectly indicates the state of the select ed drive Multiplex drive output signals so that active signals are received only from the selected drive Demultiplex control signals so that only the desired drive will respond 4 Route the signals in both directions to the proper connector pins N Q The ready signal goes true when there is a disk in the drive and the disk is running at 360 rpm The circuit in Figure INDEX 25 CDC INDEX 1 25 TRk 9 ic eK pt BO RD Dara gt Rp Dara i 4 1is all that is needed to generate this sig nal When the pot is adjusted so that the timing on the monostable is 170 to 175ms the following takes place If the drive doesn t contain a disk the monostable times out resetting the flip flop and causing ready to go false If the disk is rotating at less than normal speed either speeding up or slowing down the monostable will time out between index pulses and ready be false Only when the disk is running at the proper speed will the monostable be retriggered in time allowing ready to be clocked true on the following index pulse In Figure
37. blank disk Five serial drivers and a parallel driver are included or there is a user written driver option Drivers can be modified DDCOPY a double density copy program Copies all files from a source disk to a destination disk Both disks and the disk DDCOPY is run from must be the same density and the same format m Software Publishers Dual Density comes with a thorough instruction manual 199 95 m I i I O Iowna computer Software Systems Software Applications Languages 1 2 3 Hardware Are you willing to be a resource in the areas where your expertise is 4 or 5 love to O probably O maybe 0O no O How are you using the Big Board Home System O Business System O Software Development O OEM O Education O Other c E What kinds of information do you need right now C1 16 00 O 20 00 1st class mail Back issues Specify s 3 00 each NAME ADDRESS cry O Renewal EXPERTISE Guru 5 Novice 0 SUBSCRIPTION FORM 24 It s OK to brag INTEREST Fanatic 5 None 0 EUNDEM ee What are your hardware software needs now In the near future What kind of exciting adventure misadventure are you working on MJ If you get the idea that this document is as interested in enlisting your aid and ideas as it is in getting a sub scription you re right Lots of people are willing to I subscribe lots of peop
38. business or other appli cation that does not absolutely require floating point Includes source which assembles under ASM 2 REZ This is the Z80 version of the famous disassembler RESOURCE Originally from the CPMug it disassembles 8080 and Z80 object files It was contributed by Gary Kauf man 20 00 each other foreign All The Users Disks Contain Documentation On Disk In DOC Files OTHER GOODIES US CAN MEX Other Foreign FORTHIN ROM 65 00 70 00 in fast ROM 80 00 85 00 This is standard FIG FORTH in three 2716 s FIG FORTH is standalone FORTH so you don t use CP M at all If you have disks FIG FORTH handles the disk I O If not you can still enjoy a most fascinating language A simple FORTH line edi tor and a decompiler are available on disk FORTH editor amp decompiler disk 15 00 20 00 TINY BASICIN ROM 35 00 40 00 infast ROM 45 00 50 00 This two ROM set takes control of the system just like FORTH does handling its own I O loading Basic programs and object code routines on and off the disk or out of the third ROM This little Basic is great for controller and utility applications Your choice of a user s disk or the deluxe char acter ROM free if you send an article or software and a ROM or extra disk FREE US CAN MEX Other Foreign Your Fortune in the Microcomputer Business dovevo v ee e 26 45 36 45 This is the best most complete collecti
39. ch drives the stepper motor not available on the new Shu garts and can force it to remain turned on then you can set your alignment quickly by simply loosening and twist ing the body of the motor slightly Be careful however because you ll over heat the stepper motor if you leave it on too long With a scratch disk seek to track 0 then seek out to track 38 decimal 26h which is the alignment track Put the alignment disk into the drive Load the head onto the alignment track On Shugart 800 801 s you can load the head electrically by jumpering the anode of CRI to gnd Editor s note on my 801 schematic it is listed as CR10 Be sure that you are really going to ground since this line is carrying 24 volts Now adjust the triggering and verti cal gain both channels together to present a trace which just about fills the screen with the cat s eye alignment pattern looks like an 8 on its side A perfectly aligned drive will give a pattern with peaks of equal height Un equal peaks indicate drive mis align ment To change the alignment loosen the stepper motor hold down clamp s just enough to free the motor housing to turn not too much Carefully turn the motor housing this is where you low current folks would turn the shaft and then move the motor housing an equal amount until the cat s eye pattern on the scope has equal peaks Then carefully tighten the motor hold down Re check to make sure the drive was
40. configured for the BB I will run on the II only single density of course That s most encouraging because it means that monitor addresses are the same and that much of the monitor specific software should run with little or no change I ll let you know for sure when I get my sys tem put together Graphics I have been bugging Jim Ferguson to write an article on how to generate graphics software for the BB II So far though he has been busy finishing up the theory of operation section of the manual so I guess the article will have to wait until he gets that finished However I can tell you this just from looking over the CRT schematic The new video section has 4K of static RAM two 6116s 2K are used to store the dis played characters while the other 2K contain the seven attribute bits corre sponding to each character The 6845 chip controls the operation while the 8002A contains the alphanu meric and graphic characters Plus the 8002 creates the various attributes Attributes include underlining re verse video blinking and graphics each controlled by one bit from the attribute RAM so you can select any combination of attributes such as blinking reverse video graphics The graphics is not the dot variety but rather a set of shapes probably not unlike the TRS 80 with which to build screen characters 18 600 Hz There are two versions of the 8002 the A and the B The 8002A generates 7X9 dot matrix characters w
41. costs 8 BDS C Users Group sponsors CNET which will eventually be a nation wide network of C users connected via com puter and telephone The main CNET node is run by Steve Passe Box 629 Englewood CO 80151 303 761 4378 The network phone number is 303 781 4937 300 baud 8 bit no parity The group also provides an update service for owners of BDS C Updates cost 8 00 Contact BDS C Users Group Robert Ward Box 287 Yates Center KS 66783 316 625 3554 READ THIS FIRST I am experi enced at electronics assembly and am set up to produce finished and tested Big Boards you can be proud of If yours arrives with any defective parts I ll test it and find the problem Negotiating for spares is between you and Digital Research Normal assembly time is about two weeks Total charge is 100 or 60 if you have already bought the kit with the sockets installed postage Include 5 extra for return Idaho residents add 3 sales tax I also repair botched Big Boards for a price to be determined upon inspection Send your kit or have Digital Research send it to Jay Papillon 871 N Eisenhower Moscow Idaho 83843 If you have any questions or wish references as to the quality of my work call 208 885 7093 weekdays evenings call 208 883 0847 Micro Cornucopia Number 8 October 1982 13 FORTHwords Column by Arne Henden amp Hampton Miller 7415 Leahy Road New Carrol
42. d abso lutely no problems with the drives Editor s note SeeJohn Clark s letter to the editor for information on how he in terfaced an apparently Shugart com patible version of the CDC EENE Figure 1 Ready Generator within dotten lines BIG BOARD 7438 p3 33 READY 4 7438 pE Xo INDEX 4 8 Lee lt aa rcg 1 Pee L FROM SELD m FIGURE 3 6 Micro Cornucopia Number 8 October 1982 BIG cu CDC CONNECTORS Bring the flavor of Unix BOARD d 1438 s m ile als 9 mm to your Z80 CP M system 1404 o r ae ea with Unica 1K a 5 WRITE HD l Da 433 C STEP 1 Unicum a thing unique in its kind especially an example of writing Tos T Unica the plural of unicum i ik L 38 e CX stepin 1 TheUnica aunique collection of programs supporting many features of the 1 VESNIBUD D E Unix operating system never before available under CP M The Unica are wR Dara Bi a 38 Y A Len CURR 1 more than software tools they are finely crafted instruments of surgical 7404 quality Some of the Unica are iK PEDS SH HDD 1 binary file compare display differences in hex Step BO of en cat catenate files vertically 1404 Qj lt a WRELTRES 1 copy one or more files even between users Aok mapper ne free aia y space k g file identification by unique numbers s q 8 iim E Sel wRITE RM horizontal file catenation and column permutation Srepin M E rt create file links
43. d it run on my system has refused to leave without a copy except the guy who fixes my VW but he doesn t even own a computer Mark Despain men tioned that I was going to have trouble explaining to folks just how impressive ZCPR is He s probably right See the Micro C ad for more informa tion Repeating a Winner The folks at Aztec C called to say they were astounded with the response to their 50 discount in Micro C So they are continuing the special 149 price for our readers All the feedback I ve gotten from users so far indicates that Aztec C beats Whitesmith s hands down on the BB See their ad on the back cover Happy Computin v David Thompson Editor amp Publisher 24 Micro Cornucopia Number 8 October 1982 TECHNICAL TIPS Spiffying up the AC motor control I want to suggest adding two compo nents to Jim Showker s relay circuit Add 50 to 100 ohms in series with the 22ufd capacitor to limit the discharge current so you don t weld the contacts togeth er Also add a diode 1N4001 or similar in parallel with the relay coil to discharge the voltage generated as the coil s field collapses Tibor Deveny 12 Nesbitt St Nepean Ont Canada K2H 8C6 TO DRIVE MOTORS toon 202 l 1 T24V 1N4001 2N2222 AC Motor Control Circuit Setting your your own step rate The PFM monitor sets up the 1771 disk controller for a 6ms track to track step ping rate A simple patch prior to boot
44. d renowned software hunters Including 1 CAT is a directory cataloging package It keeps track of which disk contains which software It sets up a file and lets you list the directories of all your disks or display all the disks that contain a particular file or all the disks that contain TXT or whatever files plus much more You ve got to try it to believe it Contributed by Don Bell from a Pascal Z user disk 2 MODEM7A COM amp MODEM7B COM Already confi gured for BB ports A and B by Gary Kaufman 3 PACMAN Gordon Banks and Gary Kaufman both sent me PACMAN C and COM This really works like the com mercial game Caution don t even whisper a word about this to kids over3 or you ll have to stand in line to use you BB 4 FAST This little screamer from Gordon doubles the speed of any program that accesses the disk a lot like ASM MAC etc 5 NOLOCK NOP s out the shift lock feature on the BB so you can send nulls to other systems without casing your own trom Gordon again 6 VERIFY Brett Berg sent in this one It checks a disk and tries to restore bad sectors It reports any sectors it is trying to restore It leaves the data intact or even more intact on the disk Brett says this is better than the 100 commercial rou tines 7 SQ USQ squeeze and unsqueeze files All Users Disks 15 00 each US Can Mex Especially For The Big Board USER S DISK 2 Especially for folks with single drive systems and those wh
45. diting com mands before hitting lt CR gt which acti vates the printer Or A gt COPY gt TEXT FIL lets you use copy to create a text file and it s very easy to use Next time we will look at expanding this simple copy program into a filter so that you can process data to your heart s content and spend more time at the fridge The BDS C Users Group By David Mitchell In early 1980 John Nall contacted Leor Zolman creator of BDS C to ask about a users group When Zolman said there was no users group Nall offered to start one Nall ran the group for about a year be fore he had to bow out due to other com mitments At that time Robert Ward the present coordinator and newsletter edi tor took over When I joined in the summer of 1980 there were 75 members It was a loose organization with no dues and a spo radic newsletter but already there were three disks in the library Dues are 10 per year which buys six issues of the newsletter There are about 1000 members There are 18 volumes in the user group library with a broad mix of software in cluding C functions in source form com plete text editors and the source for PIS TOL a new FORTH like language by Ernest Bergmann written in BDS C BUYING A BIG BOARD Let me put it together for you 1161 Grow Ave NW Winslow WA 98110 There are also an additional 10 volumes containing Kernighan and Plauger s Software Tools in RATFOR Each vol ume
46. dynamite CCP that s absolutely ad dicting 3 ZCPRBLOC it tells you the base of your CCP Nice US Can Other Mex Foreign FORTH IN ROM 65 00 70 00 in fastROM 80 00 85 00 This is standard FIG FORTH in three 2716 s A simple FORTH line editor and a decompiler are also available on disk FORTH ed amp decompiler disk 15 00 20 00 TINY BASIC IN ROM 35 00 40 00 in fastROM 45 00 50 00 This two ROM set takes control of the system just like FORTH does handling its own I O loading Basic programs and object code rou tines on and off the disk without CP M or out of the third ROM This little Basic is great for controller or utility applications USER S DISK 5 1 CAT disk cataloging routines 2 MODEM7A MODEM7B Modem 7 for ports A and B 3 PACMAN play the most popular arcade ame at home 4 FAST buffers the disk to speed up as semblies etc 5 NOLOCK get rid of PFM upper lower case switch 6 VERIFY cleanup and verify a flaky disk USERS DISK 6 1 RUNPAC source and hex for 8080 runtime 2 PRINTPRN routine to print Crowe listings 3 REZ 8080 Z80 disassembler USERS DISK 7 1 CHNGPFM all those PFM mods you wanted todo 2 TIME data and time accessable by operator and program 3 Disk utilities copy to memory from mem ory and dump 4 TERM 3 terminal routines with source 5 CHECKS complete checkbook package example file USE
47. e MOVCPM 60 4 The system will come back with SAVE 36 CPM60 COM 5 Type SAVE 36 CPM60 COM NOTE the number 36 is deter mined by the size of your system 6 Type DDT CPM60 COM This loads a copy of your current CP M into the TPA The jump table for the BIOS should be at 1F80 You can check this by typing L1F80 You should see a C3 jump every third byte If you get this then proceed 7 Now before the next steps you re going to calculate a bias and an off set 8 Take the memory size you put in MOVCPM 60K subtract 20K from it and turn it into a hex number So 60K 20K 40K 40K 40 1024 40 960 A000 hex If you created your own 60K CP M you will use A000H as your bias in the following 8 Garces Dr San Francisco CA 94132 By David Thompson pletely configured CP M from DRC your CP M is different The configured ver sion has 200 hex reserved space in high memory for disk deblocking though I don t believe any of the double density packages use that space it isn t large enough to hold 1024 byte sectors Any way the MOVCPM routine has been modified to automatically offset every thing down by 200 hex and thus the space for your transient programs is 200 hex 512 bytes smaller This is why many people refer to the configured CP M available from DRC as 59 5K CP M even though the command was still MOVCPM 60 Anyway back to incorporating your newly modified CBIOS no matte
48. e blanking This allows a second character set in the 2716 The second set is selected by Bit 6 of the System PIO port Setting the at tribute bit bit 7 still causes the character to blink SYSTEM PIO Bits 0 1 and 2 are used as disk selects but with a twist They are not decoded Bit 0 controls drive A bit 1 controls drive B and bit 2 handles disk side select If you want stereo you can output a 03 to the port and select both drives simultaneously Bit 3 is K B Rdy Bit 4 is used by the system to sense whether it has 5 or 8 drives connecting a 5 drive pulls this line low Bit 5 is still not connected to the bell bit 6 selects which character set you re using and Bit 7 still handles memory bank select Keyboard PIO This circuit is un changed except that the keyboard strobe polarity is no longer selectable SIO SIO A is unchanged but SIO B no longer is jumperable it has been ded icated as a printer port AUX PIO Unchanged DISK CONTROLLER Still the old friend 1771 However CLK RDY FD DATA and XTDS are connected to a quad 2 input mux the 8 5 sense bit selects which lines go to the 1771 This is how they set whether the disk controller receives 2Mhz or 1Mhz and whether the external data separator is used 5 drives do their own data separation The RDY line is the same as the Big Board for 8 drives but for 5 drives Xerox has set up a timer tripped by the index pulse The 5 drive motors are
49. e sure the processor is getting a clock pin 6 a reset pulse when you hit the reset button pin 26 and make sure it is generating a refresh signal pin 28 and an instruction fetch pin 27 Simple parts swapping sometimes finds subtle problems very quickly but don t swap without reason Even good sockets can get flakey if you exercise them too much You d be surprised how much you can learn with a simple scope or a logic probe if you just poke around for a while Dear Editor I wanted to ask you about the PR pro gram on USR disk 1 My MX 80 printer is dropping characters two at a time My printer has a 2K buffer and the problem doesn t occur until after the first 2K char acters I have a Diablo 1640 that doesn t drop characters but the horn blows at the end of every line Kenneth Schurr JR 529 Candlewood Dr Liberty NC 27298 Editor s note The PR routine was written for the MX 80 with the 80 character buffer though it works properly on almost all other printers The routine appends two null 00H characters to each ODH CR and OAH LF It does this because I was losing two characters at the end of each line You see when the MX 80 drops the clear to send CTS line indicating that it doesn t want any more characters it really will not accept any more period However the following two characters are already in the SIO buffer and though the SIO notifies the processor that the line has dropped the SIO goes ahead a
50. ecker Nexus Zip screen amp print formwriter Lexisoft Spellbinder word processor Lynx linker Microtax Level I fed individual Select w Superspell Level II A Crosstalk Modem to CP M file fed part shi Move It micro to micro comm Micro aaa BULA ae BERENS Pay Quickscreen screen eae dus 3 i ess The Protector encode decode encryption ieee EY a aa Adventure International 1 12 WORDSTAR MAILMERGE Datasoft My Chess chess game DATA STAR data entry ret amp update Infocom Deadline WORDMASTER text editor Zork I SUPERSORT I sort merge Zork II SPELLSTAR spell check dict ISM Mathemagic CALCSTAR electronic spread sheet BIG BOARD USERS users 350 00 395 00 500 00 750 00 200 00 195 00 495 00 75 00 150 00 395 00 295 00 259 00 292 00 369 00 554 00 160 00 155 00 366 00 56 00 111 00 292 00 218 00 78 00 86 00 431 00 105 00 431 00 409 00 255 00 62 00 208 00 128 00 90 00 100 00 500 00 150 00 500 00 475 00 295 00 95 00 260 00 149 00 80 00 160 00 200 00 80 00 68 00 32 00 27 00 105 00 185 00 366 00 111 00 68 00 128 00 137 00 96 00 37 00 45 00 37 00 37 00 74 00 100 00 200 00 250 00 100 00 85 00 40 00 35 00 160 00 250 00 595 00 150 00 99 95 149 00 149 00 129 00 49 95 59 95 49 95 49 95 99 95 600 00 1000 00 295 00 395 00 195 00 495 00 250 00 1000 00 750 00 443 00 738 00 218 00 340 00 169 00 271 00 154 00 615 00 462 00 495
51. ected and then set up a single pole double throw toggle switch so that you can short either WP or NP Dear Editor I have a Big Board running with an 8 CDC disk drive and it seems to work fine The following is a simple circuit that generates a ready signal from the out puts of the CDC The rest of the signals are compatible john Clark 59 Royal Oak Drive Welland Ontario Canada L3L 5W1 CDC DRIVES UNIT SELECT 1 READY 1 UNIT SELECT 2 READY 2 State Zip Shipping included in price Will be available soon outside USA Shipped via UPS 6 to 10 weeks after your order received We re Moving Just when you thought things had settled down here at Micro C we pull up and move Bend is a really neat place to live It s on the eastern edge of the Cascades and the western edge of a high desert It doesn t have much in the way of com puter industry yet and the population is only 17 000 but it s the largest communi ty in that part of Oregon TIl be filling youin on the move in the next issue We don t have our new phone number yet but our mailing address after Octo ber 31 will be Micro Cornucopia P O Box 223 Bend Oregon 97709 BIG BOARD RoY Micro Cornucopia Number 8 October 1982 P 0 Box 280298 Dallas Texas 75228 214 271 5546 Visa MasterCard American Express STATIC RAM 21L02 1KX1 250 n s I LS138 LS243 1 49 Low Power zx z LS42 LS139 Ls244 99 L
52. ed no compromise high performance American engineering The Big Board gives you all the most needed computing features on one board at a very reasonable cost The Big Board was designed from scratch torun the latest version of CP M Just imagine all the off the shelf software that can be run on the Big Board without any modifications needed Take a Big Board add a couple of 8 inch disc drives power supply an enclosure C R T and you have a total Business System for about 1 3 the cost you might expect to pay FULLY SOCKETED FEATURES Remember all this on one board 64K RAM 24 x 80 CHARACTER VIDEO Uses industry standard 4116 RAM S All 64K is available to the user our VIDEO and EPROM sections do not make holes in system RAM Also very special care was taken in the RAM array PC layout to eliminate potential noise and glitches 64K KIT BASIC 1 0 G11 GHOTSONIA L2VINOO 3dOHn3 ONY AN SIZE 8 2 x 13 IN SAME AS AN 8 IN DRIVE REQUIRES 5V 3 AMPS 12V Q 5 AMPS With a crisp flicker free display that looks extremely sharp even on small monitors Hardware scroll and full cursor control Composite video or split video and sync Character set is supplied on a 2716 style ROM making customized fonts easy Sync pulses can be any desired length or polarity Video may be inverted or true 5 x 7 Matrix Upper amp Lower Case FLOPPY DISC CONTROLLER Uses WD1771 controller chip with a TTL Data Separator for enhanced
53. ee Be verrry careful of new startups Asa beginning consultant you are most likely to wind up with the shaky little outfit that will have money as soonas When I went out on my own the first time about 12 years ago I was so strapped for cash and anxious for busi ness that I didn t look carefully at the outfits I was working for or wonder why I was getting all those interesting jobs I didn t get paid for a lot of them and San dy and I didn t eat very well for a while continued next column Just Beep Beep Beepin Along By J B Korrubel My son and daughter insisted that I install a bell on the Big Board so their Basic programs can sound off they are absolutely enthralled with Tiny Basic in ROM and are programming every min ute they get This bell circuit is a simple 74121 pulse stretcher I installed it in my keyboard by running a wire from U111 pin 9 to pin 18 on the keyboard connector J2 and then picking the signal up again at the key board end of the cable The combination of 33K and 33ufd gives a time constant of about 1 sec Cut ting the capacitance in half cuts the time in half Total parts cost including the Sonalert tone generator is only about 3 50 ORYX Welbeloond Rd Constantia 7800 South Africa U111 pin 4 5V t5V 33K lov Beeper Sonalert ete Editor s note If your Big Board has been kind of quiet lately this is the way to give it voice Now to speak its
54. ee voltages are present and proper Touch the chips to see if some seem significantly hotter or cooler than the rest They should all run a little warm to the touch Check the address and data buffers and the MUXs by connecting a logic probe or a scope onto an address or data line and hitting the reset button Do this for all the lines into and out of U54 U57 U58 and U59 to make sure each moves when you hit reset See sche matic 3 in your Big Board documentation Obviously if you see a line moving on one side of one of these chips and not on the other then you need to swap the chip and see if that moves the problem and then go from there After all this check all the lines at the RAM chips and at the processor If this doesn t locate the problem you ll probably need to find a logic analyzer and see how far the system is getting into the initial ROM boot routine See issue 4 page5 fora list of the first 16 bytes in the ROM If you don t have access to a logic analyzer good luck Most of the problems have been with sockets the TI open frame sockets have been particularly undependable solder joints or bridges shorted or open board runs RAM chips and LS parts in that order In fact most pros go over hand soldered boards with a magnifying glass and a bright light joint by joint before applying power There is also a possibility that your proc essor is not running properly usually leaves garbage on the screen B
55. el tine 1000 terminal The Hazeltine cost me 150 at Selec tronics 1207 25 South Napa St Phila delphia PA 19146 This terminal pro vided not only a home for the system but also a power supply CRT display and a very versatile keyboard The power supply provided every thing the Big Board needed with power to spare but I had to do some circuit trac ing to determine the following pinouts Supply Pins Ground 3 4 9 13 14 19 5V 10 15 18 20 5V 17 12V 7 12V 16 15V 16 Pascal Review continued RMAC or MACRO 80 REL files into INT format files so that they can be called as external procedures which is a real time saving addition They provide simple trace and activity analysis for debugging and program speedup The activity analyzer creates a histogram showing the amount of time spent executing each portion of the pro gram Things I Dislike When the compiler finds an error in a line it reports the error next to the line but it doesn t point to the actual Also JRT Pascal only lets you pass values from one subrange integer variable to a func tion variable of the same type and sub range i e variable type checking is more rigid than most which is not nec essarily bad However allin all I would say that JRT systems Pascal is very well worth the 31 75 I spent It provides me with all the features of Pascal and then some Plus it has some debugging capability and can call external procedures a
56. ems are also available 600 00 FULLY TESTED amp ASSEMBLED INSIGHT ENTERPRISES CORPORATION 373 N Western Avenue Suite 12 Los Angeles California 90004 213 461 3262 TERMS Shipments will be made 2 4 weeks after receipt of your order All orders are prepaid or COD Add 4 00 shipping LEAP INTO A NEW DIMENSION WITH AZTEC CII NI Full implementation of C with standard floating point library and I O subroutines UNIX VER 7 compatible Produces relocatable 8080 optional 0Z80 assembler code Relocating assembler and linker supplied with package or use Microsoft M80 and L80 SID ZSID debugger interface FAST COMPILATION AND EXECUTION AZTEC CII FOR CP M 199 Special price for Micro C subscribers 149 MANX software systems Box 55 Shrewsbury N J 07701 201 780 4004 Also available for Apple DOS HDOS CP M 86 PC DOS ma Goodbye BASIC PL 1 COBOL hello PASCAL Now to make this most advanced language available to more micro users we re slashing our price to an amazing 29 95 This astonishing price includes the complete JRT Pascal system on 8 SSSD diskette and the comprehensive new user manual Not a subset it s a complete Pascal for CP M Check the features Separate compilation of external procedures Auto loading 14 digit FLOATING POINT arithmetic True dynamic storage Verbal error messages Fast one step compiler no link needed Graphing procedures Stat
57. es Figure 3 Big Board to CDC Demultiplexer U N IV E R S A L 12 Green Ball Brothers monitor with enclosure measuring 19 x EN CLOSURE 16 5 x 14 Room inside to mount a Ferguson single board computer dm b sr free gt lst creates a map of disk B extracts those lines in the map which contain the word free and prints them on the listing device weed or small SS 50 S 100 system Power supply available see be low Requires 15 volts DC 1 5 amps noncomposite separate sync input A sync separator schematic is available It is also possible to mount a single 8 disk drive or two of the new slim line 8 disk drives in this enclosure All units are used and have been 100 tested Shipping weight 35 ASCII Keyboard used with enclosure to match above monitor 77 keys 7 lighted pushbuttons on off sw Requires 5 volts DC Schematic included In cludes shift tab control and cursor control keys Size 19 x 4 x 5 The Unica are written in XM 80 a low level language which combines rigorously checked procedure definition and invocation with the versatility of Z80 assembly language XM 80 includes a language translator which turns XM 80 programs into source code for MACRO 80 the industry standard assembler from Microsoft It also includes a MACRO 80 object library with over forty software components subroutine packages which are called to perform services such as piping wildcard matching outpu
58. for yourself in one evening 8 hours and now I can t find it It was one of those sessions where I sit down and words start flowing from my finger tips Sometimes that kind of material doesn tlook so great when I go back and look at it later that s the real test for any thing I write But it had been one of those terribly rare evenings where the ideas come in finished form Anyway this issue s subject was go ing to be Making sure you get paid So Tl discuss that However I m really interested in how you should treat mail order customers I ve been getting quite a bit of mail about dealers who are doing pretty well and dealers who are not doing so well with their customer relations I ll take one shot at the mail order problem before getting on with this issue s topic If you get into the mail order business you should plan on giving your cus tomers MORE than they EXPECT both product and service If you can t do that then you are giving at least some of your customers LESS than they EXPECT It s going to cost you real time and money to give people more In fact you re going to lose real out of pocket dollars on some transactions However in the long run it S very important You need to main tain a person to person relationship rather than becoming dealer cus tomer Getting Paid Last time we discussed how much you should charge Once you ve set the fee and your client has agreed you re not necessarily home fr
59. he above functions without relying on universal I O THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY FOUR CHARACTERS TOTAL You heard right made up of 128 characters presently acces sible on the Big Board e PLUS 128 more composed of 64 graphic e 13 border or axis 19 Greek 11 math 8 foreign language 9 pronunciation e and 4 special characters PLUS an entire set that is switch selectable in place of the character set GRAPHICS Big Board Owners Take Notice Finally True Graphics pee DEMO DISK Sample Programs Demonstrate e DESIGNS e GEOMETRIC SHAPES PICTURES ANIMA TION LINE AND BAR GRAPHING PIE CHARTS GAMES AND COMPUTER SKETCHING The programs are written in Basic and machine language on an sssd 8 diskette ALSO included on the diskette are the fully documented assembly and machine language routines for the graphic com mands written in 2 80 mnemonics PLUS full firmware documentation and instructions for burning your own character set NO MODIFICATIONS to the printed circuit are required The graphic board plugs directly into the character eprom and U75 sockets Then only five solder connections two jumpers and a new video crystal included will put you in touch with true graphics P O Box 13456 Salem Or 97309 Graphics just what my Big Board has been looking for Assembled and tested including interconnect
60. istic procedures Activity analyzer prints histogram of program use Advanced assembler interface THIS IS THE SAME SYSTEM WE SOLD FOR 295 So how can we make this offer why the unbelievable deal Very simply we think all software is overpriced We want to build volume with the booming CP M market and our overhead is low so were passing the savings on to you AND AT NO RISK When you receive JRT Pascal look it over check it out We invite you to compare it with other systems costing ten times as much If you re not completely satisfied return the system with the sealed diskette unopened within 30 days and your money will be refunded in full THAT S RIGHT COMPLETE SATISFACTION NOW A COMPLETE CP M PASCAL FOR ONLY 29 95 60446 NO93HO QN38 Ezz XO8 O d jeusnor sujejs S pigog ejDurs 94L FICOQONYOD OWDI G 6 ON Nwa WO puepzoq GIIVd qgoVvlsOd sn JILVA Wing GUARANTEED OR YOUR MONEY BACK In addition if you want to copy the diskette or manual so long as it s not for resale it s o k with us Pass it on to your friends BUT ACT TODAY DON T DELAY ENJOYING PASCALS ADVANTAGES AT 29 95 THERE S NO REASON TO WAIT To JRT Systems ive 1891 23rd Avenue San Francisco CA 94122 O K You ve sold me I can t resist your unbelievable offer Send me JRT Pascal by return mail understand that if l m not completely satisfied can return it within 30 days with the sealed disket
61. ith descenders the 8002B generates 5X7 characters without descenders Because of the ad ditional horizontal traces required to dis play 24 lines of 7X9 characters the hor izontal on your monitor must be able to run at 18 600 Hz which is quite a bit fast er than the standard 15 750 Hz for the 5X7 display We re not talking about 15 Mhz or 18 Mhz bandwidth which is a measure of the monitor s ability to reproduce the characters crisply This is the horizontal frequency rate Some monitors designed for the standard 15 750 will run quite happily at 18 600 The horizontal hold control sim ply adjusts the frequency of the horizon tal by moving a slug into or out of the oscillator coil By cranking the slug most of the way out of the coil you can some times get synchronization at the 18 600 Hz rate I don t have brand names at this point but those of you who have the BB IL and have off the shelf monitors dis playing the 7X9 characters should drop me a note so I can pass the information along I ve heard that someone is working on a color graphics board for the STD bus but don t call me about it this is all I know Hopefully that someone will con tact me when he gets done Documentation The BB II is presently being shipped with a short manual on monitor com mands an assembly manual and sche matics These are all marked prelimi nary but they are quite readable with just an occasional hand added correc tion i M
62. le have ideas and we d like to encourage lots of people especially you to take an E hour or two and put ideas and needs and accomplish ments down on paper or disk Then we can pass them along to others and that s what this journal is all about Send me six issues 1 yr of MICRO CORNUCOPIA I understand that I can cancel at any time and receive a refund for the balance of the subscription Issue 1 was published in August 1981 U S Canada amp Mexico 1 20 00 U S funds O Back issues Specify s 3 00 each U S funds Other Foreign O 26 00 U S funds O Back issues Specify s 1 5 00 each U S funds STATE ZIP PHONE JJ MICRO CORNUCOPIA P O Box 223 Bend Oregon 97709 r r All The Users Disks Contain Documentation On Disk In DOC Files USER S DISK 1 1 Two fast disk copiers 2 A Z80 assembler 3 Two disk formatters 4 Othello 5 A serial print routine l 6 Modem software USER S DISK 2 1 Two single disk copy programs both with source 2 The source of the Crowe Assembler 3 New Crowe com file with larger symbol table 4 New CBIOS for CP M 1 4 and 2 2 amp boot 5 Disk mapper with source USER S DISK 3 1 ROM programmer software 2 Disk file CRC checker 3 Source of new fast copy 4 Utility isolates bad disk sectors 5 Reset bit 7 unWordstar a file 6 Print fancy page headings USER S DISK 4 1 CBIOS custom bios for Tandon Drives 2 ZCPR
63. lso supports a parallel printer and looks like it was written for the Crowe Assembler 2 ZCPR This replacement for the CCP really makes CP M a lot nicer For instance if you try to run a program thatis not on the present drive it automatically looks on drive A for the pro gram I m absolutely addicted to this feature because it means that every COM file on A my system drive is effectively on every other disk in the system Think about that Plus the TYPE LIST ERA and SAVE commands have all been sub stantially improved This CPMug winner was setup for the BB by Gordon Banks and Gary Kaufman 3 ZCPRBLOC run it and it tells you the base of your CCP Nice ond USER S DISK 8 The specials here include a super powerful modem program a beautiful text formatter very much like Unix s run off and custom I O for BDS C all contributed by Gordon Banks Rex Buddenberg provided the the block letter printer Including 1 YAM This modem program is far superior to modem7 but uses a compatible protocol YAM includes almost every option imaginable It turns the Big Board into a paging intelli gent terminal complete with printer interface YAM provides an optional CRC and enhanced error recov ery and transfer abort logic It handles batch transmission of files baud rates to 9600 directory listing disk changes trans fer time calculations and much more 2 BDSCIO Custom BB I O for BDS C both h and c 3 ROFF Powerful text for
64. lton MD 20784 301 552 1295 This is another one of our famous two man columns I have some news in the FORTH world to present and Hampton has another application to de scribe In the Journals A friend handed me one of the most useful articles that I have seen in a while FORTH from A to Z an 8 page directory printed in the January 1982 is sue of Digital Designs The FORTH direc tory lists all commercial suppliers of FORTH as of Fall 1981 The article lists several distributors and packages that I had never heard of along with the latest FORTH Inc prices Very illuminating and worthwhile fireside reading Z 80 FORTH News Laboratory Microsystems Z 80 FORTH is probably the most widely dis tributed CP M FORTH One of its prob lems however has been that it is com patible with Fig FORTH rather than FORTH 79 Ray Duncan has announced that version 2 of his FORTH will be FORTH 79 standard and should be re leased by the time that you read this He is rewriting his PC FORTH manual and it s therefore possible that the Z 80 FORTH manual is also getting a facelift These items are all welcome news Joe Barnhart Santa Rosa CA contrib uted some very useful routines for Z 80 FORTH While the actual coding cannot be used for ROM FORTH or UN IFORTH the basic idea is worth consid ering Joe has created a method of doing a binary overlay that is the ability to save and load precompiled FORTH code The package h
65. matter plus Sample formatted text 4 SIGNS Prints large block letters on screen or printer 20 00 each other foreign All The Users Disks Contain Documentation On Disk In DOC Files Your choice of a user s disk or the deluxe char acter ROM free if you send an article or software and a ROM or extra disk US CAN MEX Other Foreign Small C 24 00 29 00 This is a simple extended version of Small C For more infor mation see issue 7 page 6 The documentation is on the disk 6 6 9 0 9 9 f c 9 c 9 9 9 9 9 9 c 9 9 e s f Screen Editor in Small C 39 00 44 00 A simple but full function screen text editor plus a text format ter all written in Small C by Edward Ream This package in cludes the editor and formatter COM files setup for the Big Board Small C itself and source code for all With the docu mentation this is over 400K on a flippy disk Edward is selling this package for 50 you can buy it from us for 39 and Ed gets a royalty Where else can you get an editor a formatter a C compiler and source for all for under 40 9 9 o9 9 c 9 o o t s n BACK ISSUES 3 00 each US Can Mex 5 00 each Other Foreign ISSUE 1 8 81 ISSUE 4 2 82 ISSUE 7 8 82 Power Supply Keyboard Translation 6 Reviews of C RAM Protection More 4 MHz Mods Adding 6 K of RAM Video Wiggle Modems Lync amp SIOs Viewing 50 Hz 1 2 PFM PRN Undoing CP M ERASE Technical Tips ISSUE 2 10 81 ISSUE 5 4
66. n t pulled out of alignment by tightening the screws Don t tighten the screws too tight you may have to do this several times to get it right Shugart states that the lobes must be within 70 percent of each other however it is easy to get them much more closely matched Now check for slop in the positioning mechanism by seeking to track 76 then back to 38 Note the alignment Seek to track 0 then back to 38 You have to do the seeking on the scratch disk remem ber Note the alignment if you see a dif ference coming in from different direc tions and it is not too great re align and split the difference so it is equal and op posite A large difference indicates wear or binding in the mechanism Final notes Hopefully the above procedure will put your ailing drive back in business but you should also be aware 1 If you change head alignment dras tically you may not be able to read your old disks 2 If you can validate a new disk pref erably a Dysan on all drives freely ex change disks with your friends and suc cessfully read different manufacturer s distribution disks your alignment is probably OK Some new disk formats have deleted data marks on track 0 which may be flagged as errors 3 Some disk problems can be caused by poorly designed disk formatting pro grams 4 On multi drive systems check all drives to make sure one isn t off one way and another off the other way causing exchange problems
67. nd assembly language programs I like it BEN 7 Jonson Place Ardsley NY 10502 I then traced out the video circuit and tested my findings by hooking it up to another computer The display worked fine Video pinout Signal Pins Ground 1 5 10 15V 7 from power supply Video 8 Horizontal 6 Vertical 9 The keyboard was very complete pro viding upper and lower case characters shiftlock with indicator TTY typewriter switch and more The keyboard originally supplied in verted data so Iremoved the 7403s in IC 7 and IC 11 and replaced them with 7408s Pin 1 of IC 7 was originally pulled high to generate an inverted keyboard pulse signal I tied one ofthe three rocker switches to the eighth bit so I could set the bit low at powerup and then high for special functions Keyboard pinout Signal Pin Ground 15 16 31 32 5V 13 29 12V 30 Bit 0 3 Bit11 Bit2 19 Bit3 2 Bit 4 6 Bit 5 17 Bit 6 4 Pulse 18 So after a little patient tracing I had my Big Board in a neat package complete with keyboard video and power sup ply All together it gives the system a very professional look REMINDER We ve cured our housing problem too Catch us at our new address after October 31st MICRO CORNUCOPIA P O Box 223 Bend Oregon 97709 Micro Cornucopia Number 8 October 1982 On Your Own By David Thompson Hopefully when you re on your own you ll be better organized than I am I wrote a whole series on working
68. nd dumps out the last two characters Since my MX 80 drops the CTS line whenever it sees a CR or LF I simply appended two nulls to either of these charac ters to flush the SIO s buffer Most printers will accept a few more char acters after they drop the CTS line so they don t have this problem and most of these printers ignore null characters except your 1640 Randy Dickinson mentioned that his SIO was not dumping out characters after the CTS line went low The only thing I could see different on his listing is that he is setting something called auto enable in control regis ter 3 He sends a OE1H to that register Hopefully we ll have more about initializing the SIO shortly Dear Editor I would like to offer a few points about disk maintenance Adjustments should not be made without the manufacturer s mainte nance manual and a good adjustment alignment diskette The easiest and most effective mainte nance project is replacing the head load pad Shugart PN 50542 available from Hamilton Avnet and cleaning the head with alcohol CAUTION avoid bend ing the head load arm out too far or you will damage the spring And do not lu bricate the stepper motor lead screw Also do not loosen the stepper motor plate painted screw heads on the Shu garts it will affect azimuth and head penetration and these are not field ad justable Jim Chamberlain PO Box 81 Pittsford NY 14534 Dear Editor Wha
69. nnect the HI input R1 to TB1 pin 7 This switch has worked silently and reliably and has never glitched the sys tem Parts list U1 6A 200V triac RS 276 1001 0 99 U2 MOC3010 optocoupler RS 276 134 2 19 C1 0 1mfd 200V non polarized C2 RS 272 1053 0 59 R1 4 1 4 watt OK not critical Mark L Hopkins 1035 Franklin Road Apt O 5 Marietta GA 30067 Driving stubborn drives The 7406 drivers between the 1771 and the floppies do not provide enough drive in some situations Replacing the 7406 open collector with a 7416 high volt age will usually cure the problem The 7416 is pin for pin compatible Hampton Miller Of FORTH fame Additional food for thought Editor s note The following is probably more technical than most of you can swallow However if you would like to experience the some of the flavor of the get together you might pass the following along to the resident culinary guru It s really great Micro C Get Together Zucchini Bread Makes two minidrive size loaves 3 eggs 1cup veg oil 2 cups grated zucchini 2 cups brown sugar 3 tsp vanilla 3 cups whole wheat flour 1 tsp salt 1 4 tsp baking powder 1 tsp baking soda 3 4 tsp nutmeg 3 tsp cinnamon 1 cup chopped nuts Mix the dry ingredients then add the rest Add zucchini last Bake at 350 de grees for 1 hour For glass pans set oven at 325 David Mitchell 1161 Grow Ave NW Winslow WA 98110 u2 HT LO U Locic I
70. ntil the first milepost 2 Set definite mileposts time wise and project wise that call for additional pay ments 3 Stop working if you don t get a pay ment I realize that this is something you need to look at on a case by case basis but don t count on all those investors who are lined up to finance the com pany They aren t investors until they ve signed the check and I ve wit nessed a lot of non signings 4 On the other hand don t let this stop you from jumping into your own enter prise with both feet Better you should go broke on your own ideas right Plan to pay for the best marketing le gal and business advice you can get and then follow it I ve watched a lot of really good designers learn an awful lot about running a business in a very short time but not short enough If you need capi tal to get started then either get twice as much as you will possibly need before starting or do something smaller that you can pay for as you go that s how we started Micro C But whatever you do enjoy Micro Cornucopia Number 8 October 1982 21 ES USER S DISK 1 T Over 200K of software especially for the Big Board Including 1 Two fast disk copiers 2 The manual for Small C 3 A Z80 assembler 4 Two disk formatters 5 Othello 6 A serial print routine 7 Modem software e USER S DISK 5 This disk is a potpourri of significant software collected from the far reaches of the globe by worl
71. o want to try their hand at extending an assembler Also a new CBIOS with parallel printer interface Returns to default drive on reboot stifles head banging supports CP M 2 2 and 1 4 Step by step instructions for the simple incorporation into your CP M Including 1 Two single disk copy programs both with source 2 The source of the Crowe Assembler 3 New Crowe com file with larger symbol table 4 New CBIOS for CP M 1 4 and 2 2 amp boot 5 Disk mapper with source M S USERS DISK 6 This disk contains one of the more significant new contribu tions to the public domain The runtime package for 8080 has 51 functions to handle all those details that take so long to write Including 1 RUNPAC This is the run time utility package written by Dennis Baker for his 8080 assembly language programs Even though it occupies only 1 951 bytes in memory this utility package handles 51 functions including 4 byte addition sub traction multiplication and division string evaluation num ber formatting opening a file closing a file getting a record keyboard input chaining and running a COM file finding a string in a group and converting days to date It handles up to 8 channels of disk I O each having a 512 byte buffer and a file control block in high memory Runpac uses signed integer binary arithmetic with provisions for deci mal I O This gives maximum numeric range for 4 byte varia bles This package should handle any
72. o your mother Hi MOM is usually sufficient continued on page 24 Dear Editor I have just finished building a new board and during the process of debug ging I noticed that 5V from the RAM protection circuit was showing up in strange places It turned out that the small electrolytic or tantalum capaci tors supplied by DRC with the kit had no insulation around the metal cans So when I installed them down tight they shorted to runs on the board I cured the problem by heating the sol der at the leads and lifting them slightly above the board Now however Iam now faced with a screen full of alternate characters Doug Henry 30 W 211 Claymore Ln Naberville IL 60540 Editor s note A screen filled with two alternate charac ters usually means that PFM isn t running properly out of high memory which usually means a problem with the RAM or with the processor s ability to interface with it Note that only the top 16K of RAM needs to be working to use the PFM monitor so you can start off by swapping the two rows of RAMs nearest the edge of the board to check for a single bad chip If the swap doesn t cure the problem verify that there is continuity between the RAM pins and the corresponding pads under the board Check with a magnifying glass for bad solder joints Use your ohm meter to check for shorts between adjacent pins Then power up the system and check the RAM supply pins to make sure all thr
73. oard In fact if you look through the Official Xerox 820 CP M System Manual you ll notice many simi larities between the Big Board monitor and the 820 monitor Unfortunately there are enough small differences that the addresses in the two monitors don t match past the keyboard FIFO Xerox took the BB logic added 5 inch floppy circuitry removed some useful jumpers re laid out the board for their cabinet and changed all the IC designa tions and plug numbers In the process they ended up with one of the most solid basic systems on the market to the surprise of none of the BB users Since Xerox owns Shugart the drives come from Shugart and since Xerox owns Diablo etc Inter cabinet cabling is shielded with copper foil real copper not metallized and all the connectors have huge all metal shells bonded to the copper foil RFI EMP Not Bloody Likely Differences CPU How different can a Z 80 at 2 5 MHz be Nothing significant here They added a good 5 V power up reset and a jumper on the system clock which lets them use automated test equipment ATE CTC Nothing here either All the same MEMORY They left off the third and fourth PROM sockets VIDEO They have removed the com posite video parts and the jumpers and just hardwired it to match their monitor They added a jumper on the video oscil lator that sets it up for ATE The charac ter generator has an output enable so the ROM does not provid
74. on word delete multi line transfer string search delete replace Full Z 80 assembler using Zilog Mostek mnemonics Structured programming constructs and support for the undocumented index register instructions are included A completely revised 160 page User s Manual Broken into logica function divisions it includes many ex amples and its intended as a complete tutorial Version 1 no floating point 50 Version 2 floating point 85 Unified Software Systems P O Box 2644 New Carrollton MD 20784 301 552 1295 Micro Cornucopia Number 8 October 1982 15 Xerox 820 Notes Column by John P Marlin Jr Introduction By David Thompson This is the first installment of a regu lar column in Micro C We were lucky to have someone like John volunteer to take on this project since he is quite fa miliar with both the 820 and the Big Board In this column he does an overview of the hardware differences between the two systems In fact this information should be especially useful now because Xerox recently dumped a large number of assembled and tested boards on the surplus market they are gearing up for the 4 MHz double density upgrade For instance the Rondure Company 2522 Butler Street Dallas TX 75235 214 630 4621 sells these 820 boards for 435 00 each I don t know anything about them I just saw their ad in Com puter Shopper Origin The Xerox 820 R System is an off shoot of the Big B
75. on of working for yourself information I ve found and I ve heard nothing but good comments from those who have received it This two volume set is a perfect for those blustery fall evenings when you snuggle up in front of the fire and dream of great riches MORE ROMS Fast monitor ROMs for speed freaks and our famous better than Texas character ROM V2 3 for screen freaks Fast Monitor ROM 25 00 25 00 30 00 30 00 Send Big Board number with ROM orders Monitor amp char ROMs 5 00 each if you send a fast ROM and a stamped self addressed return envelope MICRO CORNUCOPIA P O Box 223 Bend Oregon 97709 ES USER S DISK 3 This is the disk for folks who are building Jim Monesmith s ROM programmer Two versions of programmer software plus a disk file CRC checker Also contains a sophisticated disk utility DU77 and source for a substantially updated fast copy routine plus more Including 1 Unmodified ROM programmer 2 ROM programmer with CRC 3 Disk file CRC checker 4 Source of new fast copy 5 Utility isolates bad disk sectors 6 Reset bit 7 unWordstar a file 7 Print fancy page headings s USER S DISK 7 This disk is for those of you who aren t satisfied with the PFM monitor aren t able to communicate with a mainframe sys tem or aren t able to keep a checkbook balanced Including 1 CHNGPFM If you ve wanted to revise the PFM monitor but haven t had the time or don
76. ore information coming We ll have more information on the BB II as it becomes available Stay tuned we re just getting started EEE Micro Cornucopia Number 8 October 1982 WRAM Computers SUMMER SALE 3M DISKETTES 740 0 8 CASE 110 00 744 10 5 CASE 744 0 5 CASE 113 95 F O B PORTLAND OR WITH HUB RINGS DEMONSTRATOR SALE Star Horizon Drive with IO 120 CRT 2495 00 North 48K 2 Soroc North Star HD 18 Hard Disk 18 megabyte 2895 00 Hewlet Packard HP 85 1695 00 Teletype TTY 43 RO 500 00 WRAM Computer Corp P O Box 19281 Portland OR 97219 503 244 2168 Dealers for Morrow North Star Godbout Tarbell PMMI A C E TALLY and 3M Prices good thru Sept 21 1982 JRT Pascal Review By James Simon 8 Garces Dr San Francisco CA 94132 The first thing I asked myself when I saw the price of JRT Pascal was How good could it be for 29 95 The second thing I asked myself was What is wrong with it Well after reading the user guide which is at no risk since you can return the package within 30 days and geta refund as long as the disk enve lope is unopened I decided to check it out I discovered that JRT Pascal is very good and there is very little wrong with it What It Can Do JRT Pascal is a standard Pascal with a few extensions It compiles to an INT file which is then executed with their run time system The run time system and compiler can handle e
77. ory banks The first memory bank has eight 4164 DRAMs that provide 60K of user space and 4K of monitor space The second memory bank has two 2Kx8 SRAMs for the memory mapped CRT display and space for six 2732As 2Kx8 static RAMS or pin compatible EEPROMS The third memory bank is for RAM or ROM added to the board via the STD bus Whether bought as a bare board a full kit or assembled and tested it comes with a 250 nS 2732 EPROM containing Russell Smith s superb Monitor B Multiple Density Controller for SSIDS Floppy Disks The new Cal Tex single board computer has a multiple density disk controller It can use 1793 1797 or 8877 controller chips since it generates the side signal with TTL parts The board has two connectors for disk signals one with 34 pins for 5 25 drives the other with 50 pins for 8 drives Vastly Improved CRT Display The new Ferguson SBC uses a 6845 CRT controller and SMC 8002 video attributes controller to produce a display rivaling the display of quality terminals There are three display modes Character block graphics and line graphics The board emulates an ADM 31 with 24 lines of 80 characters formed by a 7x9 dot matrix B STD Bus The new Ferguson computer has an STD Bus port for easy system expansion E DMA The new Ferguson computer has a Z80 A DMA chip that will allow byte wise data transfers at 500 KBytes per second and bit serial transfers via the Z80 A SIO at 880 Kbits per second with minimal proce
78. panding clutch forces the disk hub over the drive cone and the disk begins to spin At this point the index sensor records the passage of the index hole producing one pulse for each revolution of the disk When you do a seek read or write the disk is pressed against the head by the head load pad released by a small relay This soft pad shapes the media slightly to increase the contact area be tween the disk and the head A stepper motor positions the head on the correct track by rotating a lead screw some newer drives use a taut band When the operation is finished the head load bail part of the relay picks up the head load pad allowing the disk to move away from the head As you can see there are a number of mechanical things that have to work properly for the disk access to be suc cessful Things to Check The following are things you should check if you are having drive problems 1 Worn or missing head load pad A very worn head load pad may cause the head load arm to ride against the bail substantially reducing the head load pressure Also a hard or worn head load pad cannot shape the disk over the curved head so the contact area is smaller To check the head load pad for wear turn your system off insert an old scratch disk and close the door With one finger press down the relay allowing load arm to lower With the other hand twist the stepper motor shaft so that the head moves across the entire disk
79. peat the process if necessary When finished tighten down the motor lock Note that because there is no holding current you must be careful when swapping disks to avoid moving the head This process is more tedious than the high current method but it gets the job done with out modifications to the drive If you don t have an alignment disk or your scope doesn t have external sync you can still do a reasonable job First connect the scope input to the differential test points insert a new factory formatted disk preferably Dy san and have PFM read track 26H as above Now while holding down the relay not the arm turn the stepper motor shaft slightly one way or the other for maximum signal When I say slightly I mean that the movement should be almost imperceptible Finally turn the body of the stepper motor the same number of degrees in the same direc tion that you turned the shaft This will be a less exact way of alignment but it correlated almost exactly with my offi cial alignment disk and it allowed me to check tracks 0 and 76 also If you compare the size of the signal on two different drives you can get a relative idea of how well each drive is working and whether one needs a new head load pad etc High Current Alignment If you want to align drives quickly and easily then you will want to increase the holding current so that you lock the mo tor and shaft together If you can locate the transistor whi
80. power versatility and speed while occupying no more space than d weekly news magazine The heart of this board is the Zilog Z80 A 4MHz CPU and 128K of RAM To further bolster its prowess the entire Z80 A e Zilog Z80 A microprocessor Zilog Z80 A peripheral controllers DMA DART PIO CTC full implementation of the Zilog inter rupt priority daisy chain no wait states for true 4 megahertz operation e 128K dynamic RAM VE CP M V2 2 is available for 150 00 family of peripheral controllers CTC DART DMA and PIO have been incorporated in its design The 128 1 uses the Fujitsu MB8877 double sided double density floppy disk controller Standard Features include Fujitsu MB8877 double sided double density 5 25 8 floppy disk controller chip 16K track buffer two 2 RS 232 serial ports with soft ware programmable baud rates e standard Centronics parallel interface smart winchester controller interface expansion bus allowing access to all vital board signals chip to communicate simultaneously with 5 25 and 8 drives up to four of each 16K of track buffer is provided to ensure fast disk access power requirements 5 volts 1 5 amps single connector for power and external reset e CP M compatible e extensive CBIOS available BOARD DIMENSIONS 8 x 10 75 x 650 MOUNTING HOLES 156 DIA 250 in from each corner Winchester 8 inch and mini floppy syst
81. r U S funds only We cannot ship to Mexico Countries other than Canada add 3 50 shipping and handling P 0 Box 280298 Dallas Texas 75228 e 214 271 5546 Visa MasterCard American Express Computer Mfg Dumps New Equipment Forget that the company that bought these TRIPLE OUTPUT power supplies paid over 300 00 each in truck load quantity Disregard the advanced engineering and high efficiency switching outputs Overlook the built in overvoltage protection and tight regulation Don t even consider the little extras like thermal shutdown status LED s and built in fuses With all that out of mind ask yourself if a Triple Output Power Supply with good regulation and high current capability is worth our low price If your answer is yes or maybe then go ahead and read the details If your answer is no then you must not need a power supply This is the perfect supply for almost any computer application and gives you one supply that can drive logic bipolar and MOS circuitry Read the specs and think about owning one but don t thinktoo long We have a limited quantity and this is a one time buy 2 FEATURES eee eon Output voltages 12V 7A 5V 10A remote sense 12V 7A Regulation 2 Line amp Load Ripple 200mv full load Fuses 3 one primary two DC sections Input 117VAC Overvoltage Protection SCR type all 3 outputs Overcurrent Automatic foldback
82. r C s strengths without overwhelming you with details The first CI tried was the Tiny C inter preter It was interactive but very slow AfterIgot my Big Board I started writ ing programs in Small C I wanted to be able to market the software for both the BB and the Apple which meant that C was the only choice assembly language obviously wouldn t do it About a year ago I bought the Q C compiler from the Code Works it got rave reviews from friends It has been an excellent compiler with a good utility and runtime library and an outstanding manual The COM files do get to be a bit long probably a result of the utility li brary However I would rather have a bulky library than do without these utili ties L A Software 6708 Melrose Los Angeles CA 90038 Meanwhile I started writing a version of the Q C compiler for the Apple in cluding a cross assembler written in M80 macros and an 8080 instruction inter preter for the 6502 I was 90 finished with the project when the Aztec C folks came out with their full fledged version which runs on both the BB and the Ap ple Aztec C generates files that are about the same size as Q C They run about 10 to 15 faster than Q C and of course support much more of the language The Aztec manual is somewhat terse but not as unreadable as parts of the CP M man uals Still if you re beginning you ll get a friendlier introduction by starting with one of the simpler versions
83. r messages and utilities quickly Then create a sub mit utility to handle your compilations This way you can go raid the refrigerator while your program is compiling Al though this is an incentive to compile larger programs when you are hungry Here s a submit file for Q C the com ments in lower case are not necessary compile 1 c for M80 CC 1 C M assemble it with M80 M80 1 M erase the mac file ERA 1 MAC link in runtime library L80 1 CRUNLIB 1 N E erase the rel file ERA 1 REL If you saved the above file as C SUB and you wanted to compile a file called SORT C all you d need to do is have SUBMIT COM on the disk with every thing else and put the disk in drive A Now enter A gt SUBMIT C SORT and go raid the fridge A Simple Program Whew I ll bet you thought we d never get here The following program doesn t appear to do much but it s actually quite useful It copies text from one place to another include qstdio h main 1 char c c getchar while c EOF putchar c c getchar If you change the include statement to match your version this program will run on almost any C compiler The in clude statement calls the Q C I O pack age C80 will run if you remove the in clude and add a define EOF 1 in its place Discussion Note that main is the first function called in a C program The body of main is enclosed in brackets 12 Micro
84. r which version of CP M you have By James Simon calculation If you have a DRC confi gured CP M then you will use 9E00H because your bias is 200H smaller remember the 200H in the bias calculation in the source of your BIOS 9 Take this bias 9E00 for example and type HD580 9E00 DDT will re spond with 7380 3780 The first number is the sum of the two the second is the difference We will use the difference as an offset in the fol lowing calculation Look up page 7 of your CP M alteration guide to see where the D580 came from 10 Type ICBIOS HEX 11 Type R3780 or whatever your dif ference turned out to be to read in the file with an offset 12 Type control C we are done chang ing CP M so get out of DDT 13 Type SYSGEN 14 Type carriage return you will use what s in memory 15 Type A if you want to put the new system on the A disk You are done so type another carriage return hit the reset button and then try a boot Good luck aa Micro Cornucopia Number 8 October 1982 BIG BOARD XEROX 820 EPROM PROGRAMMER Our convenient Eprom Programmer needs only 5 V D C and Standard ribbon eable to spare PIO No transformers It s compatable with 2716 2732 2732A and others with adaptors It s safe all power is controllable by software Can run on User Group software Fully socketed with ZIF for EPROM and all doeumentation ineluded Assm amp Tested 125 Ki
85. rd For drive 0 Cut SI DI DS2 DL1 J13 RHL Jumper J14 DL2 LC6 SE2 L1 SSI HIA DS1 HS1 HL1 HL3 J6 For drive 1 Cut SI DL1 DS1 J13 RHL Jumper J14 DI DL2 LC6 SE2 L1 SSI HL4 DS2 HS1 HL1 HL3 J6 Add a 220 or 330 ohm termination dip in location 215 marked on the board and jumper J12 if you are supplying 5V If you are supplying 15V then don t jumper J12 You should also note preferably at the store whether the drive can read both single and double sided disks or if it can read only single sided And how you be doin that boss you ask If the drive has two sets of yellow and black wires that snake up opposite side _of the drive from the circuit board to two LEDs then it will read and write both hold onto that one and quickly look for another one If it has only one set of wires then it will only read double sided I have one of each and they are both model 750 If you are as lucky as I was and get both kinds make the one that reads both drive 0 and make the one eye drive 1 If each drive has 2 LEDs then cut SI and DI on both drives besides follow ing the above instructions If each drive has 1 LED then cut SI and jumper DI on both The MFE 700 has an AC motor while the 750 has a 24V DC motor The 700 draws 1 1 amps at 24V the 750 draws 1 5 amps This should get you started if you have any problems get in touch with me BEN 8 Jumpering The Qume DT 8 By T
86. reliability IBM 3740 compatible Supports up to four 8 inch disc drives Directly Z 80 CPU Running at 2 5 MHZ Handles all 4116 RAM refresh and supports Mode 2 INTERUPTS Fully buffered and runs 8080 software SERIAL I O OPTIONAL Full 2 channels using the Z80 SIO and the SMC 8116 Baud Rate Generator FULL RS232 For synchronous or asynchronous communication In synchronous mode the clocks can be transmitted or received by amodem Both channels can be set up for either data communication or data terminals Supports mode 2 Int Price for all parts and connectors 49 compatible with standard Shugart drives such as the SA800 or SA801 Drives can be configured for remote AC off on Runs CP M 2 2 TWO PORT PARALLEL I O OPTIONAL Uses Z 80 PIO Full 16 bits fully buffered bi directional User selectable hand 9MN NOQNO1 3oYUUil ISHNHO105 Zp shake polarity Set of all parts and connectors for parallel 1 0 19 95 BASIC 1 0 Consists of a separate parallel port Z80 PIO for use with an ASCII encoded keyboard for input Output would be on the 80 x 24 Video Display BLANK PC BOARD 149 The blank Big Board PC Board comes complete with full documentation including schematics the character ROM the PFM 3 3 MONITOR ROM and a diskette with the source of our BIOS BOOT and PFM 3 3MONITOR REAL TIME CLOCK OPTIONAL Uses Z 80 CTC Can be configured as a Counter on Real Time Clock Set ofall parts 9 95 CP M 2 2 FOR BIG B
87. rmat the back side and charge almost double for the disk Punching the Index Holes First you need an empty disk jacket froma single sided disk This means you are going to have to sacrifice one disk I chose an old Verbatim by grabbing it in the hub area and simply pulling it out of the jacket It kind of crinkles and crackles death sounds as you pull it out but grit your teeth and do it Once it s free you can use it to do everything you ve ever wanted to do with a disk Hang it on the wall by putting a thumbtack through track 0 as an example to keep other disks in line or be practical and use it as a placemat under the dog s dish Now use the empty jacket as a stencil to mark an additional set of index holes on the flippy to be First place the empty jacket and the disk label to label and mark the location of the new hole with a felt pen Then place them back to back and mark the second hole Now punch the holes with your handy dandy ticket punch I got a Gem punch by McGill Company at the local five and dime it was less than two bucks Keep the disk jacket in its enve lope as much as possible during this process you don t want to touch scratch or bend the part of the disk that the head will read Use needle nose pliers to remove any backing material left in the hole or get the new BASF disks which don t have backing near the holes Once you finish you can use your disk formatter to format the back side If
88. rough B4 if the back will be drive C then jumper B3 and so on Editor s note the front side of the disk is the side you would normally use on a single sided disk the side opposite the label If you are using more than one drive on your system you will need to remove the terminators two 16 pin resistor packs from all but the last drive on the 50 line cable This is important no mat ter what brand drive you re using Second Editor s intrusion My Qume has been an absolutely dependable drive but it is noisy because I m giving it a 6ms step rate I understand that it gets absolutely silent at ms 3ms is not available on the 1771 I SN eal Micro Cornucopia Number 8 October 1982 For Business School Engineering and Fun BLOCK GRAPHICS Based on TRS 80 graphic characters TRUE 8x10 dot matrix characters This is the real thing Machine language routines include e POINT Graphics such as SET e RESET TEST CHARACTER Graphics with direct video access such as e PEEK POKE PRINT Q COMPLIMENT rectangular areas of the screen These functions will INTERACT with the video DIRECTLY from the calling program or via two separate BUFFERS for fast full screen swaps Do ANIMATION SPECIAL EFFECTS even MULTIPLEX information etc UNIVERSAL I O allows access by any language that can PEEK and POKE into main memory and CALL machine language routines Note many languages can use DIRECT I O with t
89. ssor overhead When a hard disk subsystem is added the DMA chip makes impressive disk performance possible CAL TEX COMPUTERS INC 780 E TRIMBLE ROAD 504 e SAN JOSE CA 95131 408 942 1424 695 FULL KIT 245 PC BOARD WITH EPROM amp PALS SIZE 8 75 x 15 5 POWER 5V 3A 12V Q 0 1A E SASI Interface for Winchester Disks Our Big Board Il implements the Host portion of the Shugart Associates Systems Interface Adding a Winchester disk drive is no harder than attaching a floppy disk drive A user simply 1 runs a fifty conductor ribbon cable from a header on the board to a Xebec controller that costs only 295 and implements the con troller portion of the SASI interface 2 cables the controller to a Seagate Technology ST 506 hard disk or one compatible with it and 3 provides power for the controller card and drive Since our CBIOS contains code for communicating with hard disks that s all a user has to do to add a Winchester to a system E Two Synchronous Asynchronous Serial Ports With a Z80 A SIO O and a Z80 A CTC as a baud rate generator the new Ferguson computer has two full RS232 C ports It autobauds on both A Parallel Keyboard Port Four Other Parallel Ports for User I O The new Cal Tex single board computer has one parallel port for an ASCII keyboard and four others for user defined I O E Two Z80 A CTCs Eight Programmable Counters Timers The new Ferguson computer has two Z80 A CTCs
90. st C users diskandIhave a number of volumes from the Pascal Z user group that contain a lot of interesting software Don Bell sent me volumes 5 15 and they contain a wealth of interesting Pascal software Charlie Foster 7963 Center Parkway Sacramento CA 95823 puts the Pascal Z disks together and from the way Don talks about him they are prac tically neighbors Charlieis a super guy Contact Charlie if you are interested in participating in the Pascal Z user group I haven t talked to Charlie yet but I plan to so say hi for me if you talk to him It appears that quite a bit of the Pascal Z software was transmutilated from UCSD Pascal So in turn we should be able finagle the more interesting stuff in to something JRT Pascal can digest Contributing to Micro C User Disks We really appreciate all the submis sions of software for the user disks both the public domain material that you find particularly useful and software that you wrote or modified When you contribute software that you wrote or modified please include the following information as comments at the beginning of the program Your name and address phone number is nice too the date it was last revised the name of the compiler or assembler it was written for the compiler assembler linker command lines necessary to cre ate a com file a list of features you d like to see added and anything else you d like to mention However try to avoid long letters t
91. sues 1 6 I was really sur prised that we had covered so many dif ferent things in 6 small issues Kinda makes me tired just looking at it See his want ad in this issue for information on how to get the index Information Wanted If you have been using a data base package like dBASE II or a standard ac counting data filing type package please put your experiences down on paper or disk and send them in User Disks I ve spent a couple of very interesting weeks putting together all the software that evoked a WOW or GOLLY GEE WHIZ THAT S NEAT when it arrived Asaresult we now have user disks 4 8 that s right 5 new disks chock full of all the mouth watering goodies that you didn t know you needed until now All are configured for the Big Board and all were contributed by folks like yourself who said WOW I m sure that disk 5 Pacman will be very popular it s really a challenge and it really plays remarkably like the commer cial game A particularly impressive submission for assembly language programmers is RUNPAC runtime package by Dennis Baker It is an assembly language run time environment that is so powerful that it s almost like working in a high lev el language But the object code over head is only 2K Dennis uses this envi ronment when writing software for commercial clients so itis thoroughly de bugged Then there is the new CCP called ZCPR disk 4 Everyone who has watche
92. t 49 85 Bare Board 35 DISK CONTROL UNIT Stop listening to your drives spin Our DCU reduees media drive wear It s safe and turns drives off during inaetivity The DCU is no bigger than a eredit card and easy to install within your disk drive Will not generate any glitehes DCU is now offered for virtually all popular drives and eomes with manual Assm amp Tested 39 95 Kilo 69393929 95 STATE TYPE OF DRIVE AND SYSTEM WITH ORDER OPTRONICS TECHNOLOGY P O Box 81 Pittsford N Y 14534 716 377 0369 NY residents add local tax Include 1 50 for postage and handling Xerox is a registered Trademark of Xerox Corp N price before rebate SP Less rebate e dBASE User s Guide Quickscreen Quickcode dUTIL Word Processing Worksheets Languages Footnote 110 Supercalc 198 CB 80 419 Grammatik 125 Plan 80 415 CBasic 2 98 MailMerge 80 CalcStar 180 Basic 80 252 Palantir 430 ADA 195 Proofreader 105 Data Base Managers PL 1 80 420 Spellbinder 267 Condor I 213 CP 125 Spelicheck 200 DataStar 210 Unica 90 Speliguard 212 dBASE II special SpellStar 150 Milestone 245 Miscellaneous The Word eo Selector IV 215 Supervyz 60 Pi Q Wordstar 282 Selector V 356 Smartkey 39 CP M Power 75 Accounting Communications NW Stat Pak 356 SSG 450 Crosstalk 110 MatheMagic 72 Palantir 664 Remote 110 dPATCH 155 Lyne 90 HARD TO GET PARTS The Easy Way
93. t formatting and device independent I O with buffers of any size from 1 to 64k bytes The source code for each Unicum main program but not for the software component library is provided With the Unica and XM 80 you can customize each utility to your installation and write your own applications quickly and efficiently Programs which you write using XM 80 components are not subject to any licensing fee Extensive documentation includes tutorials reference manuals individual spec sheets for each component and thorough descriptions of each Unicum Update policy each Unica owner is informed when new Unica or components become available At any time and as often as you like you can return the distribution disk with a 10 handling fee and get the current pen of the Unica and XM 80 with documentation for all new or changed software The Unica and XM 80 which requires MACRO 80 are priced at 195 or 25 for the documentation The Unica alone are supplied as COM executable files and are priced at 95 for the set or 15 for the documentation Software is distributed only on 8 floppy disks for Za0 CP M version 2 systems All orders must be paid in advance no COD s or purchase orders please Quantity discounts are available Shipment outside of the US or Canada costs an additional 20 Bank checks must be in US funds drawn on a US bank Knowlogy Wilsonville Oregon 97070 Shipping weight 8 Modular power supply missing reg
94. t is the status of the Big Board Add On I paid for documentation and a bare board 3 months ago T J Aartsma Dept of Chemistry Florida State Univ Tallahassee FL 32306 Editor s note I wish I knew Tom Brandt owner and sole proprietor of E C R L has told me that he is shipping boards but I ve gotten a number of queries from folks like yourself who have been waiting quite a while for their orders In July he indicated that he would be bring ing one of the add ons over to demonstrate but I haven t seen it yet I m sure Tom is not trying to take advantage of anyone but he is a much better engineer than businessman In fact this is a good example of how important it is to keep people posted when problems arise or things are delayed continued on page 9 2 Micro Cornucopia Number 8 October 1982 895 ASSEMBLED amp TESTED BIG BOARD II 4 MHz Z80 A SINGLE BOARD COMPUTER WITH SASI HARD DISK INTERFACE Jim Ferguson the designer of the Big Board distributed by Digital Research Computers has produced a stunning new computer that Cal Tex Computers began shipping in June Called Big Board II it has the following features BW 4 MHz Z80 A CPU and Peripheral Chips The new Ferguson computer runs at 4 MHz Its Monitor code is lean uses Mode 2 interrupts and makes good use of the Z80 A DMA chip B 64K Dynamic RAM 4K Static CRT RAM 24K E E PROM or Static RAM Big Board II has three mem
95. t of software tools designed to make your word processing chores faster and easier PROGRAMS INCLUDE Text formatter generates justified text for manuals letters etc Print utility for program listings rough drafts non justified prin ting jobs File encryption decryption protect your files against ac cidental display or casual probing x File transliteration word line counting and more 9 programs in all BIG BOARD SOFTWARE 19 95 TIME amp DATE Real Time Clock programs designed for BB s with a Z80 CTC chip installed Time programs time date stamp files and more X is a disk copy program so easy to use that you ll never use PIP again to copy files x ARK maintains an archive of up to 64 single density 8 disks on a master disk no more looking thru dozens of disks for one program Get organized 8080 280 8080 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE TRANSLATOR 29 95 Why go nuts hand translating 8080 mnemonics into Z80 mnemonics or vice versa Our XLT macro processor does the work for you For CP M 2 2 8 single density disk systems 48k RAM or more USER S MANUALS ONLY 3 00 ea BUY ALL THREE FOR 49 95 Send check or money order to 6708 Melrose L A Software Calitondia 90038 California residents add sales tax CP M is a trademark of Digital Research Copyright 1982 L A Software For Sale Bare Big Boards parts disk drives in stock Integrand 700DV vertical drive cabinet with power supply
96. te unopened for a full refund Payment is enclosed by O Check O Mastercharge CJ VISA Amount Shipping outside North America 6 CA residents add sales tax Card Exp Signature Name Address City State Zip CP M is a Digital Research trademark A 52K CP M system is required
97. the formatter returns an error message then you probably didn t get the holes placed quite right or cleaned out well enough It doesn t hurt to enlarge the holes Results I have found very few backs that didn t work as well as the fronts but the disk manufacturers don t encourage flipping because they don t test the backs of single sided disks That s OK I have some 3M s that obviously didn t get their fronts tested either BEN UNIFORTH is the best implementation of the FORTH language available at any price and it is now available specifically customized for the Big Board Just look at these standard features Options include fast disk copy formatting variable sector size MetaFORTH cross compiler games Programmer s All source code is supplied except for a small kernel You can easily modify add or delete functions Adheres to the FORTH 79 international standard Fully optimized for the Z 80 Stand alone No operating system is needed Excep tionally reliable disk 1 O with error checking and fast access Full IEEE compatible single precision floating point software All functions are included such as square roots sines and logarithms Manual source code listings disks and much more All versions distributed on IBM 3740 standard eight inch single density floppy disk Postage paid within the continental U S foreign orders slightly more Prices Versatile cursor addressed editor Menu driven with tabulati
98. uck spraying a little silicon lubricant on to a Q tip and then using the Q tip as an applicator Too much or too heavy a lubricant at tracts dirt and gets sticky In fact the Shugart maintenance manual states that Shugart drives should only be cleaned not lubricated 4 Miscellaneous things Look for a loose or worn belt a defective door closed switch or a worn or broken ex panding clutch in the center hub Oth er things not as easy to find include a bad track 0 sensor bad index sensor or mis 6616 Sheridan Ave S Richfield MN 55423 adjusted track 0 or track 76 stops A drive not ready error can be caused by a bad door closed switch or switch ad justment or a defective index sensor Aligning the Head If all the above items appear OK but you are still seeing errors then you probably should check the head align ment You will need a dual input oscil loscope with external triggering an alignment disk a way to load the head and a way to step the head The PFM monitor will step the head to the proper track on a scratch disk via the R com mand The alignment disk does not have its tracks marked Scope setup Scope channel 1 to differential read amp Shug tp 1 Scope channel 2 to differential read amp Shug tp 2 Probe shields to ground Shug tp 5 6 External trigger on the index pulse Shug tp 12 Timebase 20ms div Vertical deflection 100mv div Sum the two vertical channels
99. ulator card fits inside above monitor enclosure Includes large transformer that outputs 8 5 volts 17 amps 18 volts 1 5 amps each 15 volts 1 5 amps for monitor three large capacitors 1 18kuf 2 8kuf 1 30 amp 2 3 amp bridge rec tifiers The transformer and rectifiers capacitors make a perfect unregulated SS 50 S 100 power supply The schematic for the regulator card is available Shipping weight 254 D amp W ASSOCIATES PO Box 60 Rome NY 13440 315 339 2232 or 337 7968 ALL ITEMS Please call either number evenings only SENT VIA UPS COD Visa Mastercard customers call 503 639 3420 for next day shipment CP M is a trademark of Digital Research Unicum and Unica are trademarks of Knowlogy Unix is a trademark of Bell Telephone Labs XM 80 is a trademark of Scientific Enterprises Z80 is a trademark of Zilog Inc MEFE Interface By Rick Gerson Ontario Cancer Institute 500 Sherbourne St Toronto Ontario Canada M4X 1K9 The rumor is that MFE Keewaydin Dr Salem NH went under recently Why I don t know But I do know that many of their double sided Shugart compatible drives are available on the surplus market for as little as 200 each I bought two and then burned a great deal of midnight oil trying to decipher the 87 jumpers on their boards Now that I ve figured them out the drives work very well and they are deliciously smooth and quiet So what follows is the recipe for MFE soup a la grandeboa
100. xternal procedures and functions As space is needed the external procedures and functions are swapped out to disk This happens dy namically and is transparent to the user Externals can be on any disk So in effect you can write programs that fill more than one disk The extensions to Pascal include dy namic strings and two types of random access files The size of dynamic strings can be from 1 to 64K bytes and of course since they are dynamic the actual space they take up depends on what they hold Five built in procedures and functions are available for string processing They are CONCAT concatenates n strings COPY extract portion of a string DELETE delete portion of a string INSERT insert one string into another LENGTH return current string size POS search string for a pattern The type of file processing available includes sequential and random access via relative record number and relative byte address JRT systems also provides an 8080 as sembler which generates code that you can use as an external procedure They provide three sample assembly proce dures setbit resetbit and testbit In ad dition to this simple assembler JRT pro vides a utility program that converts continued next column 20 Curing The Housing Problem By Bob Barber Once got my Big Board up and run ning I figured it would be nice if it were in an enclosure instead of being strung all over the place So I picked up a Haz

October 1982

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