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1. empty LINE draw a solid line from one point to another DASH draw a dashed or dotted line from one point to another POINT turn on or off a single point on the plot page PLOT send the current plot page from memory to the printer SYMBOL display a string of text on the plot page COUNT count the number of on points in a part of the plot page This subroutine package is directly usable only if you have the appropriate PRINTRONIX printer but the techniques used are probably useful in developing similar capabilities on other dot matrix devices The total package is about pages long and includes exten Sive comments HARDWARE The subroutines should run on any computer that supports the FORTRAN 77 IF THEN ELSE capability and CHARACTER variables The package could be easily converted to any other high level language Issue 5 CAS NEWSLETTER December 198 11 CAS MEMBERSHIP QUESTIONNAIRE What computer language do you use most often What computer language do you use next most often What computer language would you prefer to use What is the primary type of computer you use What other types of computers do you have access to The following list shows a number of caving related applications that were mentioned in the previous survey responses Please place a C next to any that you are currently using and a F next to any that you realistically plan to use during 1962 __Manhagement of survey data ___ Membership2. 8 National Speleological Society Computer Applications Section CAS Newsletter Somme Same areca aapea conse cane come ann qanca omama cnco amma oopen onoma comet eupne opona omose cumma coven noD amuma onmo omneo angu onmo OENGO GmDSO GNOGD OTDD anche GMONG ORDAS OHDGD GNOG aGMMD ANGGO GOND Gun QMSG OROG ONGD SutUe aout GEDSD NOD GLO 000P MOTD GtUSO CUNDD GuSSD GOOD cut AMMO OMIAS ORMO ADAMO GEND GINS GRMS GOED OMNS GND ante OMMO GRAD Guasente Onpa Gane OMR Welcome to the fifth issue of the CAS Newsletter and the start of its second year of publication Several apologies are in order First the issue is late and it is totally your Chairman s fault with no attempt made to delegate the blame to others Second the printing quality of the last issue was terrible and this was due to a poor ribbon in the computer printer where the Newsletter was prepared Hopefully this issue will be more legible The third and most important apology is for an error in the address of the CAS Treasurer Rich Breisch His address was misprinted not once but THREE times in the issue Since two of the misprints were on the questionnaire and renewal forms it is quite possible that some renewals were lost in the confusion even though Rich notified the Post Office that there might be some misrouted mail for him Anyone that had their renewal returned to them should send it again to the following address Richard L Breisch 2903 1 72 Upshur St San Diego CA 9210
3. Commodore or Sage II new 16 bit machines will feature when they are announced Yet another choice is an S 100 system well proven in the small business environment during the last few years The way you choose between the 100 and 6000 machine besides the obvious difference in cost is to carefully determine what type of software you need the amount of on line memory you need and how much mass storage memory you want with relatively fast access times You need to do your homework because this is where the fast talking salesman will try to snow you with strange new words This is where you can benefit from visiting your local computer club as many different ones as you can find and get some first hand information Check out all three items mentioned above because once you get a particular machine you are somewhat locked in by it s design Monthly computer magazines are also a big help because they can give you an idea of the latest technological advances as well as prices One of my favorite magazines is BYTE Software should determine your machine choice as much as anything There is much more junk or bad software than there is good software Sometimes both are expensive The largest software base runs on an operating system called CP M ail true CP M systems require a 7Z 80 or 8084 8088 type microprocessor The early S 100 microcomputers had Z 80s and the business software was developed using CP M to drive mostiy 8 inch flopp
4. MD 21045 Vice Chairman Robert Amundson 3802 Highwood Ave Roanoke VA 24012 Treas urmme Richard Breisch 2903 1 2 Upshur St San Diego CA 72106 Secy Linda Baker 3205 Shandwick Pl Fairfax VA 22031 Issue 5 CAS NEWSLETTER December 1981 3 Unfortunately cave files are very sensitive since they provide a summary of the information about the caves of a region often including cave locations and information about formations in the caves It is no surprise that many people who have developed cave files are very reluc tant to distribute them or to discuss them for fear that various types of pressures will be brought to bear to obtain the information in the files Keith D Wheeland of Penn State University 2191 Mt View Ave State College PA 16801 has developed a very comprehensive cave file system that covers the state of Pennsylvania There are at least 50 data fields associated with each cave and the data is stored on an IBM 4341 computer He has produced a 50 page user s manual that describes in detail how to set up and maintain the data base He has offered to wite a paper describing the Pennsylvania Cave Survey and Data Base and we hope to have this paper in the next issue of the CAS Newsletter Anyone else who has worked on a cave files system is encouraged to describe it in an article or supply a program description for the Newsletter In addition to the technical aspects of the system it would be useful
5. 500 look for a used TRS 80 Model i If you have an old tape recorder and a TV and 1150 you can get Issue 5 CAS NEWSLETTER December 1981 a new 48K Apple JL which can be expanded later to a much more powerful system The same money will get you a TRS 80 Model 3 that is not nearly as expandable but has the screen built in For 1650 you can get an IBM Personal Computer 16K that will also plug in to your same old TV and tape recorder Like the Apple JL the IBM will probably be quite expandable in the future as soon as the plug in boards are introduced The IBM is a nice machine but it probably costs around 1000 more than the equivalent Apple JL if you have several accessories on it If you are a tinkerer at heart consider a Big Board kit from Digital Research Computers Garland Tx for 500 Add a power supply keyboard monitor a couple of amp inch drives and make your own box and you have a rather power ful CP M machine for less than 2500 For 3500 consider the Apple 3 versus the IBM The Apple 3 has been out for a year longer than the IBM but early reliability problems now fixed with the Apple 3 slowed software development and some consider the choice a toss up between thesetwo machines If you can afford 5000 and upward you have an even more difficult choice You could purchase a fully loaded Apple 3 or IBM a Fortune 32 16 the new TRS 80 Model 14 said to be available by June 82 or wait to see what the Apple 4
6. assume x change is positive YCHG 1 assume Y change is positive pe Or a IF DELTAX LT O XCHG 1 if x change is neg swap sign IF DELTAY LT O YCHG 1 if Y change is neg swap sign DELTAX ABS DELTAX force positive value of x change DELTAY ABS DELTAY force positive value of Y change c determine which direction x or y is the longest then look c at each dot in that direction and compute the location of the o Ju c dot in the other direction he IF DELTAX GT DELTAY THEN ree distance is longer than y distance SLOPE DELTAY DELTAX 1 0 DO 100 STEPS 1 DELTAX REMAIN REMAIN SLOPE IF REMAIN GT 1 0 THEN TY1 TY1 YCHG REMAIN REMAIN 1 0 ENDIF TXi TX1 XCHE CALL POINT C TX1 TY1 100 CONT INVE ELSE y distance is longer than x distance PE DELTAX DELTAY 1 0 PeOO STEPS 1 DELTAY REMAIN REMAIN SLOPE IF REMAIN GT 1 0 THEN TX1 TX1 XCHE REMAIN REMAIN 1 0 ENDIF TYi TY1 YCHC CALL POINT TX1 TY1 200 CONT INVE ENDIF RETURN Once your program has drawn all the lines that are to be plotted it must call another subroutine perhaps called PLOT that will format the plot lines for your printer and actually send them to the printer The nature of the PLOT subroutine is dependent on your hardware and it issue 5 CAS NEWSLETTER December 1981 will not be discussed here The POINT and LINE subroutines described in this article were recently impleme
7. for applications not necessarily rela ted to cave surveying sharing of computer facilities software to share and specialized hardware developments CAVE FILES One of the most common applications of computers to caving aside from support of mapping efforts has been in the automation of various types of cave files Normally a cave file is some type of inventory of the caves of a region such as a state or county These inventories vary in complexity from a simple list of the caves to a quite comprehen sive list containing detailed geographical geological biological or similar information about each cave Many cave files are simple card image systems but there are several that make use of sophisticated data management systems and allow interactive updates and powerful retrieval capabilities The CAS Newsletter is the official publication of the Computer Applica tions section of the National Speleological Society Fuld membership in the CAS Cincludin a e eh is open to any member of the NSS who is interested in the ape ication of computer technology to the science of Speleology Associate membership is available to non NSS members Annual membership dues are 3 00 and membership includes the CAS Newsletter Requests for membership dare can be sent to any CAS officer listed below Items for publication in the CAS Newsletter should be sent to the Chairman Current CAS Officers Chairman Robert Hoke 8727 12 Hayshed La Columbia
8. survey station The program closes loops sequentially Issue 5 CAS NEWSLETTER December 198 10 The output is listed in table form by individual survey displaying station number X Y and Z coordinates slope distance azimuth inclination and horizontal and vertical distances The original data is also printed as a check Printed totals include slope and horizontal sums for each survey X Y Z horizontal slope error and horizontal and slope percent error for each loop as well as the grand totals of slope and horizontal distances number of shots number of surveys and the average slope percent error at the terminus of the final survey HARDWARE Any computer capable of running WATFIV FORTRAN or of using CHARACTER mode variables Any FORTRAN 77 complier should also be able to run this program PROGRAM DOT MATRIX PLOTTING SUBROUTINES LANGUAGE FORTRAN 77 AUTHOR Bob Hoke 8727 Hayshed La 12 Columbia MD 21045 DESCRIPTION This package is a series of subroutines that allow an applications program to easily use the graphics capability of a PRIN TRONIX model 300 dot matrix printer The plot page is defined as a matrix of points in memory and routines are provided to draw a line between two points draw simple upper case text to determine whether a portion of the plot page is currently empty and finally ta send the completed plot to the printer The following subroutines are provided INIT Initialize a plot page set it to
9. to describe any types of controls placed on the system to prohibit its unauthorized use BUYING A PERSONAL COMPUTER by Peter Lindsley Many CAS members are interested in purchasing a personal computer that can be used to process survey data and do other cave Trelated pro cessing The following article by Peter Lindsley 5507 Boca Raton Dallas TX 75230 describes some of the features to look out for in purchasing a computer The article is reproduced directly from camera ready copy that peter produced on his system BUYING A PERSONAL COMPUTER S Are you thinking of buying a personal computer in the next couple of years Obviously if you ask the guy in the store if now is the time to buy a personal computer his answer will be YES if you buy one of his He may be right but there are some other reasons you should consider if you are interested in buying a personal computer Unless you just follow someone s advice and buy something sight unseen you better consider doing some homework before making up your mind Personal computers cost as much as an automobile and are probably more difficult to finance so you should make sure you get the model you need before plunging in over your head The choice between a 100 toy and a 6000 16 bit machine is like the choice between an old Rambler and a new BMW and you can always get something even better If you want to spend 100 get the new Sinclair ZX 61 kit If you want something for
10. 6 l Cavers and other people are notorious for putting bills aside and then forgetting them The CAS membership renewals have been coming in Slowly and we have decided to give everybody another chance to renew before we prune the mailing list Please check the address label on this issue to see if the number next to your name is 4 This number is the last issue that you will receive Since this is issue 5 if the number on your address label is 4 you have not renewed and this is the freebie issue A copy of the membership questionnaire and renewal form are included in this issue for either renewals or for new members The results of the membership questionnaire were supposed to be be published in this issue but due to the confusion they will be summarized in the next issue A current copy of the CAS membership list will also be in the next issue CAS SESSION AT THE 1982 NSS CONVENTION The 1982 NSS Convention will be held in Bend Oregon from June 27 through July 3 There will be two sessions of special interest on Tues day June 29 The first will be in the morning and will be devoted to the applications of computers in caving Anyone CAS member or not who is doing anything intetesting is encouraged to present a paper slide show discussion or whatever to let others know what is happening I Issue 5 CAS NEWSLETTER December 1981 2 Bob Hoke am chairing the session and there is no set format or agenda It will not be as for
11. CSD The wholesale price of a bare Winchester with controller is around 1000 and up 5S 10M bytes and dropping so expect to pay less next year If you can afford a personal computer and start looking at what is available be forewarned that this interesting field is habit forming As soon as you look you may find yourself buying and that s not the end There are numerous magazines books and new software that you may want to purchase not to mention accessories such as modems and printers If you just need a little push to rationalize your extravagent purchase consider the possible tax advantages If you purchase a new computer for business use in 1981 and after you may claim a 10 investment tax credit For 1982 the IRS has defined the depreciation life of a computer as 5 years with zero value at the end of that time If you use the equipment in a research environment the lifetime is reduced to 3 years The best part is that if you purchase the equipment on or before December 31 you can still depreciate for the whole tax year DRAWING LINES ON A DOT MATRIX PRINTER by Bob Hoke A lot of people are getting personal computers and are purchasing one of the numerous dot matrix printers that are on the market Many of these printers are capable of operating in a graphics mode where the user s program can cause individual dots to be printed or not printed There are typically about 60 dots per inch although some printers have more The
12. amp mailing lists ___Word processing __ Typesetting __ Survey data reduction __ Stick map plotting Statistical analysis Hydrologic modeling Blunder identification Cave File management _ Cave development simulation ___Avutomatic data acquisition Cave map loop closure __ Automatic map plotting __ Home computer survey processing ___ Programmable calculator Cave location studies ___ Interactive graphics Other nn LC ON Other Is there a function that you feel the CAS should be performing but is not If so please explain City State Prov LIP Please send the completed questionnaire to Richard Breisch 2903 1 2 Upshur St San Diego CA 92106 Issue 5 CAS NEWSLETTER December 198 i2 National Speleological Society COMPUTER APPLICATIONS SECTION Membership Application Full membership in the CAS including voting rights is open to any member of the NSS who is interested in the application of computer technology to the science of Speleology Associate membership is avai lable to non NSS members Annual membership dues are 3 00 and member ship includes the CAS Newsletter The completed application should be sent to Rich Breisch 2903 1 72 Upshur St San Diego CA 92106 Please make checks payable to NSS CAS Is this a renewal yes no Type of membership desired Full Associate NAME Please print ADDRESS CITY STATE PROV ZIP NSS NUMBER required for full membership
13. en in bastardized FORTRAN 77 will turn on a point on an 8 x 10 inch 60 dots per inch plot page SUBROUTINE POINTCIX IY c define our plot page as 480 dots wide by 600 dots high c we will store 8 dots per 8 bit byte INTEGER 1 PAGE 60 600 c first make sure the dot is within the page ignore attempts c to plot points that lie outside of the page IF IX LT O OR IX GT 479 RETURN IF IY LT O OR IY GT 599 RETURN co we are now ready to turn on the appropriate bit Assume that the C TURNON function turns on a single bit in a byte m bit 1 leftmost bit 8 rightmost IBIT IX IX 8 8 1 PAGE IX 8 1 IY 1 TURNON IBIT Cc the desired bit in our plot page buffer is now turned on RETURN Now that we have a simple way to turn on a bit we will write a Issue 5 CAS NEWSLETTER December 19781 8 subroutine called LINE that will turn on all of the points between two points using multiple calls to POINT The parameters to line are the X Y coordinates of the end points of the line For example CALL LINE O 0 60 150 will draw a line from the origin to point 60 150 SUBROUTINE LINE X1 Yi X2 Y2 IMPLICIT INTEGER A Z REAL AIN SLOPE ne TX1 X save x coordinate of starting point TY1 Y1 Save y coordinate of starting point DELTA X2 X1 compute change in x direction DELTAY Y2 Y1 compute change in y direction REMAIN 0 5 start out with 1 2 i XCHG 1
14. mal as the International Congress and I hope that there will be time for informal discussions following the various pre sentations If you are interested in presenting material at the session please let me know so that I can set up a schedule for the session We are open to any suggestions for topics of suggestions for speakers The second Convention session that will be of interest to CAS members is on Tuesday afternoon and will cover a variety of topics in the management of large cave projects Since many CAS members are involved in one or more of the large cave projects this session should be interesting and useful The session will be chaired by Paul Stevens 5964 Seabright Rd Springfield VA 22152 and he is interested in any suggestions for topics to be discussed It is expected that the compu ter and large cave sessions will complement each other and not cover the same material Paul suggests that people bring material from their projects that might be discussed such as maps histories training manuals lead lists trip reports etc BRITISH COUNTERPART TO CAS Rane Curl sends word that there seems to be some interest in Bri tain to the formation of an organization similar to the CAS Nigel J Dibben 97 Worth Clough Poynton Cheshire is distributing a question naire to anyone interested in caving and computers and he plans to distribute the results to those who respond Topics of interest include experience with computers ideas
15. nted on a PRINTRONIX dot matrix printer attached to a UNIVAC computer The original development of POINT and LINE was done by Mike Belch a non caver and I used them to implement a cave plotting program Two examples of the output from the program are shown below The left example is part of an 800 foot per inch plot of Organ Cave WV and the right example is part of a 50 foot per inch plot of the same cave Note that straight lines are slightly jagged due to the relati vely low resolution of the printer in graphics mode 60 dots per inch horizontally 72 dots per inch vertically The text in the plots was printed with a SYMBOL subroutine that uses POINT and the dotted lines were done with a DASH subroutine that is similar to LINE except that it draws various types of dashed lines pr Poe Y L A a PE T22fo8 126 VEG seeme etrese curre PORES SEE iome knee SERED CETTE CRED CURED SPNSS me CBIR Sale mum meos OT COE SOIT CORSE FTE CE BOOT rano ON EPR gt OEE SETS VEST MENTS ERED Oh Crore CRED OUTED amre neeme emee PROGRAM NEWASK LANGUAGE IBM WATFIV FORTRAN AUTHOR George Dasher 55 Kalafat Mobile Village Buchannon WV 26201 DESCRIPTION This is a simple lean in quick out quick survey pro gram Input can be either metric or English units and output can be either regardless of the input units Multiple surveys are allowed and each can have either a manuvaliy entered starting point or can reference a previously entered
16. se printers are capable of producing moderate quality graphics output and they are certainly adequate for most cave mapping projects This article describes how to write a subroutine that will draw a line between two points on the plotter page The technique described here is general in nature and cannot be applied directly to any printer but it should be adaptable to any dot matrix printer that provides the capability to address individual dots on a line The technique is not applicable to printers that only provide a small number of graphics characters since these printers do not provide sufficient resolution t print a credible line at an arbitrary angle gt Dot matrix plotting techniques require that a memory buffer be t S ie MES i Eo r a m as 4 Pe EN Issue 5 CAS NEWSLETTER December 1981 7 used to store the dots that will later be displayed on the printer and this can use a lot of memory For example if a printer has a resolu tion of 60 dots per inch and we want to display a plot page that is 8 x 10 inches then 8 x 60 x 10 x 60 288 000 bits or 36 000 bytes will have to be used to store the image of the plot page While many of the larger personal computers have this much memory it will not always be practical to have a single large buffer to store the entire plot page When this is the case the plot program must be designed to make several passes through the data to be plotted and only select a por
17. tion of the page in each pass For example we could plot the top one inch of our 8 x 10 page requiring a buffer of only 28 800 bits or 3 400 bytes by ignoring all plot points that are not within the 1 inch high by 8 inch wide window we are interested in After this piece of the final page is built up in memory and sent to the printer we repeat the process for the next 1 x B piece of the page and so on until we have processed plotted all 10 pieces of the page Note that this technique saves memory but requires several passes through the data to be platted Now that the general technique of building up a plot page in memory has been discussed we can look at how a simple line can be l drawn to connect two points on the plot page In reality the techni que simply involves turning on the dots that fall on the line that connects the points In out discussion we will assume that the origin of the plot page is in the lower left corner and that the location of a point is expressed as the number of dots to the right of the origin and the number of dots above it For example 60 150 would be the point 2 5 inches above and 1 0 inches to the right of the origin on a page with 60 dots per inch i We will first describe a subroutine called POINT that will be used to turn on a single dot on the plot page in memory For example CALL POINT 60 150 will set the bit for the point at 60 150 to a 1 The following subroutine writt
18. us of 20 24 or more bits 3 16 or 32 bits used for internal operations and 4 populated with the new 64K RAM memory chips will be powerful indeed One of the most interesting new processors the Motorola 68000 has a 24 bit addressing capability which means 16 777 216 locations or 16 7M bytes or 2 raised to the 24th power Of course not to be outdone by the 68000 processor the 8 bit machines have come up with some new tricks called bank switching which allow addressing several banks of memory but not at the same time You can buy the Apple 3 with 256K on the main board and can plug in 255K total in the IBM when they start shipping memory boards The 68000 is the processor to watch for as the new machines are announced in 1982 consider holding out for one of these machines and buy it with minimum memory Fill it up next year when g price of b4K RAMs drops h e third area you should study as part of your homework is to determine how much mass storage you need and how fast you want to talk to it The 100 Sinclair can store it s programs on magnetic tape as can a large mainframe computer The problem is speed not storage cost or room Tapes take a long time to load on personal computers and they are not always particularly reliable Once you have experienced the speed and ease of a disk drive you will have to work one into your budget Unfortunately they are not cheap Expect to pay 500 and up for the first floppy disk drive
19. which includes the special controller circuitry that allows the _ computer to address the data stored on the disk One of the disadvantages of the TRS 80 Model 3 machine is that the first Issue 5 CAS NEWSLETTER December 1981 6 disk drive costs over 800 The standard sizes of floppy disks are 5 1 4 and 8 single or double sided and single or double density The density determines the amount of data the disk will hold and there is almost NO standard format density to allow exchange between machines The closest thing to a standard format is the single density single sided 8 disk IBM 3740 format and you guessed it the IBM personal computer can t even read this format yet A single density i disk holds about 90K bytes TRS 80 Model 1 and a double double 8 disk holds about 1 2M bytes TRS S0 Model 16 Two disk drives are nice for copying disks and for many programs that access the disk often The IBM Pascal language requires two drives for program development The latest technology in disk drives is the hard disk usually implemented without removable disks The new buzz word is Winchester drive named after one of the early models which offered 30 30 megabytes on a dual disk and most of the personal computers will be bringing out a Winchester drive in the future Profile the Apple 3 SM byte Winchester sells for around 3500 It will mix files so you don t have to have a separate unit for DOS CP M and U
20. y disk drives WORDSTAR perhaps the best word processor software runs only on CP M dBASE II perhaps the best relational data base software runs only on CP M You can run CP M on most of the small personal computers if lm Issue 5 CAS NEWSLETTER December 1981 59 properly modified including IBM Apple Zenith and some of the TRS 80 models The second most plentiful group of software is available for the Apple using their DOS format folk that appreciate larger computers don t stoop to call it a Disk Operating System Most of this software is available at low cost compared to other software A new operating system that is popular in some sectors is the UCSD Pascal system but only a few people have learned the language and the software is rather sparse at the present time Except for the Apple the available machines usually limit you to one or two types of software so make sure you buy the one you need The Apple is highly adaptable ta many different microprocessors and will run almost any software with proper modifications The amount of on line memory is a new area for consideration Most personal computers sold today implement an 8 bit microprocessor with a 16 bit address bus This means they can uniquely identify 65 556 memory locations which is the same as 64K bytes or the number 2 raised to the 16th power New machines that implement one of the new microprocessors with 1 8 or 14 bit data bus 2 address b
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