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1. from the menu From the printer menu select your printer in my case the Diablo 1620 From the protocol menu I chose the ETX ACK protocol as this is implemented on the Diablo I selected port drivers from the next menu The Big Board ports are of course direct i o not memory mapped WordStar then asks if you want the install program to try to find your ports or accept them from you The port configuration of the Big Board is such that WordStar cannot find your ports properly so you must specify them The port addresses for SIO port A B are output 04 05 output status 06 07 ready bit 04 04 mask 04 04 input 04 05 input status 06 07 ready bit 01 01 mask 01 01 The installation program will ask for these bytes in hex in order given here and they should be entered as given for your port You will then be asked if your 1360 Scaife Hall University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh PA 15261 installation is complete The answer should be no as there are a few more very useful patches that you can make When you answer this question no N you are asked to give the locations you wish to change Refer to your WordStar documentation for the exact locations as the locations I give here refer to version 3 0 and your version may differ First WordStar has an initialization area into which you can patch a routine to initialize your serial port If you do not do this inside WordStar it will be neces s
2. STRATA 10 1 982 December TABLE OF CONTENTS BBH EPROM Programi 22 ae A qud sage Rake 4 Bie Board FIXES s Due TP ESQ S Oba SUN wen eee 8 Relocating Your C PIM iussa eR ER UE axo eie eer 9 The Disk is the Media pend sane be bua eh 12 Serial DHVeri esce 14 Talking Serially 22 hene 15 Pascal Z Review LAE pendens Donee Oe eu oc ga VM A 19 bn ging Up WordStats bed dd 23 A Cheap RAM 24 Cp 1 2 9 v u e S M yy REGULAR FEATURES Letters NOM 2 Xerox 820 Notes TEMPLUM 10 FORTHwords 14 C ing Clearly dude reu 22 Technical Tips soos 25 On Your Own 27 WantAds i ocv RENE a 27 FU TERTII UNIFORTH UNIFORTH is the best implementation of the FORTH language available at any price and it is now available specifically customized for the Big Board Big Board 1I and other single board computers Just look at these standard features 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 optimzied for the Z 80 Stand alone No operating system is needed Excep tionally reliable disk 1 with error checking and fast access CP
3. US CAN MEX Other Foreign Your Fortune in the Microcomputer ee 26 45 36 45 This is the best most complete collection 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 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 From Micro Cornucopia 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 USER S DISK 7 This disk is for those of you who aren t satisfied with the PFM monitor
4. How are you using the Big Board Home System O Business System O Software Development O OEM O Education Other What kinds of information do you need right now EXPERTISE Guru 5 Novice 0 INTEREST Fanatic 5 None 0 TRETEK ETERA What are your hardware software needs now What kind of exciting adventure misadventure are you working on 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 subscribe lots of people have ideas and we d like to encourage lots of people especially you to take an 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 journalis all about Inthenearfuture i 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 0 20 00 U S funds Back issues Specify 5 3 00 each U S funds 0 16 00 0 20 00 1st class mail Back issues Specify 5 3 00 each NAME gt ADDRESS CITY L Renewal Other Foreign 26 00 U S funds O Back issues Specify s 5 00 each U S funds STATE _ 1 MICRO CORNUCOPIA Box 223 Bend Oregon
5. we modulo 4k move H to message area and L MOVE2 converts a HEX byte to two ASCII characters and moves them into the message area get high nibble into low and move it restore entire byte only low part of interest convert to ASCII put it in the message area advance to next slot Z861 6 Jaquiny etdoonusoy oI VERIF 1 5 wo LD LD LD LDIR HL ROMLOC DE ROMCPY ROMSIZ OMOUT DI LD A 8 OUT SYS1 A EI JP VERIFY BRNEND EQU BITSOK DEFS 1 ROMOK DEFS 1 DEPHASE VERIFY LD A BITSOK OR A JP Z BITNG LD DE CRLF CALL PMSG LD A TRUE LD ROMOK A LD HL SRCMEM LD DE ROMCPY VLP LD DE CP HL CALL NZ REPORT INC HL INC DE LD A H ENDCK JR C VLP LD A ROMOK OR A JP Z FINIS l LD DE VERMSG CALL PMSG JP FINIS Ist we copy the burned PROM into ROMCPY 3 PROM destination byte count move it Now switch out the PROMS and go back to CP M for verification switch out the PROMS go the verification goes false on 0 to 1 transition request goes false on bad verify we report try else do the verification put crif assume ok source start PROM copy we we get a PROM byte match if not 524 1 past end eatch all bytes we if not ok no reporting to be done else report success and quit 5 this area conta
6. Dr Dobb s Journal In case you haven t been following the computer magazines closely each mag azine tends to have a monthly theme The first issue devoted to FORTH was the August 1980 issue of BYTE This sin gle issue probably doubled the number of FORTH users Since then Dr Dobb s Journal DDJ has had two FORTH issues first in Sep tember 1981 and again in September 1982 This latest FORTH spectacular is one of the best mix of applications I have seen They have included Joe Barnhart s bi nary relocating linking FORTH loader mentioned in the last column a com plete floating point package in both high level and assembler an H 19 screen editor a Z 8000 FORTH and a programming style article Almost as good as the articles are the numerous ads I suggest ordering a copy before DDJ runs out Correction In the last column there was a typo in Hampton s screen For TERMINAL the 2BCD should have been 2BC3 The FIG National Convention by Philip Plumbo The FORTH Interest Group presented its fourth annual National Convention on Saturday October 9 in San Jose Cal ifornia The turnout was impressive over 500 people as was this year s ex panded schedule of seminars For the first time in FIG s history the number of lectures exceeded the time available and so lectures ran in parallel throughout the day Unfortunately they were all top notch making it difficult to choose which to attend The Stan
7. 97709 r User s Disks 15 00 each 05 20 00 each Other Foreign All The Users Disks Contain Documentation On Disk In DOC Files USER SDISK 1 1 Two fast disk copiers 2 A Z80 assembler 3 Two disk formatters 4 Othello 5 A serial print routine 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 dynamite CCP that s absolutely ad dicting 3 ZCPRBLOC it tells you the base of your CCP Nice Mex Foreign FORTHINROM 65 00 70 00 fast 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 BASICIN ROM 35 00 40 00 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
8. Pascal also offered several logical de vices that BASIC didn t such as WHILE DO and REPEAT UNTIL constructs I al so felt that the structured approach required by Pascal was what I needed to keep discipline in my programs It all sounds good doesn tit Has Pascal been the answer to my needs Well par tially Which Pascal I had been watching Pascal ever since UCSD released a version that was sup posed to run on 8080 micros I tried tin kering with UCSD Pascal and gave up the operating system as a bad job be tween North Star I O routines and my Hazeltine terminal the screen editor just wouldn t work Then UCSD rewrote the licensing agreements and the price went up Time to scout the competition Pascal Z looked good but at a price The code executes quickly but the com piler takes a while to get from source to finished COM program The biggest as set that I discovered as my programming progressed was package s ability to compile modules separately Separate Compilation Separate compilation is a feature of the implementation not the language First a main module must be prepared That module must contain all global variable declarations and the main program block Each procedure and function called by the main program must either be in the main module or must be de clared as an external Externals can then be put into up to 15 CPM files A print routine for instance can be quickly modified and
9. I D A C Systems alem Or 97309 Salem Or 97309 Graphics just what my Big Board has been looking for Assembled and tested including interconnect cable other hardware and 127 1983 total of 11 520 addressable points Similar to TRS 80 commands Letters continued Dear Editor Ihave a model 771 George Risk Indus tries keyboard Not all the keys respond as I would expect some not at all Also I would like to protect my system from voltage surges Any ideas Finally I would like to send you some articles Is WordStar OK Do you send back the disk How do I pack it Keith Von Borstel 4481 Slodusty Rd Garden Valley CA 95633 Editor s note I don t know anything about your keyboard but if you put a 100 ohm resistor and an LED in series then hook the combination be tween each keyboard output pin and ground you will see what the output is for each key for all the keys that are encoded Then you can write a translate routine for the BB to change the output to what you want Get a MOV metal oxide varister from GE for surge protection They look like disk ce ramic capacitors but they knock line spikes down to almost nothing The larger MOVs handle bigger spikes Wordstar is just fine I have a little routine that takes the garbage out of WordStar files TRS 80 is a trademark of Tandy Corporation Characters are blocks 2 wide b
10. This it turns out is the beginning of some of the tightest code ever written by mortals 3 Clear and initialize the CRT 4 Non destructive test of RAM from F000 FFFF NUF Computer Company Inc 99 Pennsylvania Avenue Newton MA 02164 617 964 8041 5 Checksum test on 3 of the 4 ROMs 6 Initialize FF00 FFFF data the old LDIR loop 7 Initialize the I O ports ditto OTIR 8 Initialize CPU Mode 2 FFXX vec tors 9 Move the F000 FEFF image into place 10 Checksum test on fourth ROM Fail says jump to entry in HIMEM 11 Test for 55AA just below checksum in fourth ROM Fail says jump 12 Load HL with Command Address Table 13 Load DE with DSKMAP 14 Load BC with HIMEM entry ad dress 15 Call ROM4 16 Jump to HIMEM entry address FC55 ROM or RAM errors detected move appropriate message to CRTMEM di rectly time out and re jump to 0000 After all this the SIO is initialized Even Parity with DTR and RTS set on both channels Channel A is set for 300 BPS B at 1200 The PIO is initialized fora Centronics interface High Memory HIMEM entry After we finally get here we still have bits 6 and 7 of the Sys tem PIO as outputs and all others are inputs for the moment Bit 0 is held low by the SASII F so we start moving stor age addresses and driver addresses around Bit 4 is held low by 514 drives so we move some DPE s and modify DPH s Finally we display the startup message and
11. 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 Word Processing Worksheets Languages Footnote 110 Supercalc 198 CB 80 419 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE Grammatik 125 Plan 80 415 CBasic 2 98 80 CaloBtar 180 Basic 80 252 TRANSLATOR 29 95 Palantir 430 ADA 195 Proofreader 105 Data Base Managers PL 1 80 420 Why go nuts hand translating 8080 mnemonics into Z80 mnemonics Spellbinder 267 Condor I 213 125 or vice versa Our XLT macro processor does the work for you Bpellcheck 200 DataStar 210 Unica 90 Bpeli uard 212 dBASE II Sspecial Spellstar 160 Milestone 246 Miscellaneous For CP M 2 2 8 single density disk systems 48k RAM or more The Word 60 Selector IV 215 Supervyz 60 USER S MANUALS ONLY 3 00 ea Wordstar 282 Selector V 356 Smartkey 39 CP M Power 78 Accounting Communications NW Stat 356 BUY ALL THREE FOR 49 95 880 450 Crosstalk 110 MatheMagic 72 Palantir 664 Remote dPATCH 155 Send check or money order to Lyno 9 6708 L A Software California 90038 California residents add sales tax CP M is a trademark of Digital Research Copyright 1982 L A Software Your Search is over We have Software
12. LDI JP JR 8000H 5000H 0 000 HIGH SRCMEM ROMSIZ 100H SP STACK HL FCB41 A HL Z BUMFIL no type spec or DE 65H HL COMTBL BC 3 A DE 2 0 1 HL NZ BUMFIL PE COMO OPNFIL 15 FCB BDOS A M 35 DE FCB BDOS HL R2 A HL HL HL NZ TOOBIG e where some of this will run PROM copied here Underneath code to be burned ist check to be sure a name has been entered 1 past drive is there a letter if not go report no file we PII PII we 1st type in FCB get type space OK letter insist on space or correct letter move a letter until COM moved in go open it open file set flags if can t find it compute file size point to high virtual size byte middle byte both high bytes must be O BURNLO EQU BURNIT wo ist we check the PROM for 0 1 LD LD LD LD CKLOOP CKADUP INC we we INC LD JR DE BURNIT HL BURNLO BRNEND BURNIT BURNIT PRAM A 0 SYS1 A HL SRCMEM DE ROMLOC A TRUE BITSOK A A DE HL B A A DE B NC CKADUP A FALSE BITSOK A ROMOUT HL DE A H ENDCK C CKLOOP we move code up and go to it out of bank switched area switch in the PROMS transitions we we source code
13. 07V on my newly calibrated Fluke but when we jumpered the remote 5V sense terminal to the 5V output terminal the output came down solidly to 5 00V and stayed there Period It was very apparent by the time we d finished our digging that when Teletype builds a power supply it really builds a power supply This switcher is super du ty all the way through It even has 3 LEDs one tied to each output voltage If one of the voltages is not present its LED isn t lit I O I O It s Off to Work We Go I have been hearing some really out landish things about what happens to a system when you add a bunch of RAM and tell the system that the new addition is a disk Thus proving you can fool some of the systems all of the time Sud denly I O isn t a dirty word I ve heard of 7 hour compiles finish ing in 20 minutes and short compiles re duced to the time it takes to type the command line and hit the carriage re turn I ve even heard that Mince and Word Star get so fast and so quiet disk accesses are somewhat quieter when it s a RAM disk that users think they are running single user on a DEC 11 70 So what Who s gota RAM disk for the Big Board Well Semidisk says it is working on a Big Board version Semi disk s 512 byte board which lists for 1995 would plug into the Z80 socket Plus Tony Ozrelic is running his own 256K version designed to interface with the BB via the parallel port Check out the arti
14. 22 50 51 4 10 23 95 2BOX amp UP 22 00 BOX 744D 0RH 744D 10RH 740 0 ALL PRICES F O B Beaverton OR CHECK CLEARANCE REQUIRED PRICES SUBJECT TO CHANGE Nov 15 1982 OTHERS AVAILABLE WRAM PARTS Division of WRAM Computer Corp 8243 SW Cirrus Dr Bldg 16 Beaverton OR 97005 503 6413550 Micro Cornucopia Number 9 December 1982 Bringing Up WordStar By Gordon Banks M D Probably the most popular word processing program for CP M is Word Star It is easy to use has extensive help menus and allows the document to be edited and formatted using the same program It is not as powerful as MINCE a CP M version of the powerful editor EMACS which currently only runs on mainframes but it suffices for most needs and is easier to use for docu ments The WordStar installation pro gram contains prompts to allow installa tion with just about any hardware While in a few moments you can bring WordStar up on the Big Board if you have the CP M LST device installed the ideal companion for WordStar is a pro portional spacing printer such as the Diablo Since the standard CP M LST device has output but no input it is bet ter to install the printer using built in port drivers which reside in WordStar and use the ETX ACK communications protocol This allows the most efficient use of the relatively small 256 byte buffer of most daisy wheel printers First run the install program and select
15. Electronics Shop 131 North Decatur Olympia WA 98502 206 357 6304 206 352 7530 CBBS Pascal Z Review by Rex Buddenberg 1910 Ash St North Bend OR 97459 I chose Pascal Z couple years ago to run on my system This article explains some of my reasons for choosing Pascal as a language and Pascal Z as the com piler I was not able to compare different compilers and had essentially only the sales literature and some reviews to work on The things that attracted me to that particular compiler was that it was native code compiler that is finished programs are COM files that run di rectly from CP M By way of reference JRT Pascal requires a run time execu tive Pascal Z was also reputed to be a fast compiler what that means is that finished programs run quickly Compi lation time is fairly slow partly because it accesses the disk a lot Why Pascal Why did I choose a Pascal compiler My original system is a North Star my Big Board has only been up and running a couple months now and it came with a fairly decent BASIC interpreter However programs became very cum bersome once they got a little complex All variables were global and the limita tion on variable names didn t help me keep track of what each variable did Pascal seemed to offer the modularity that I felt I needed in programs build one segment to access the file say then use the same code any number of times in any number of programs
16. Finder Lists Medical over 60 packages listed Sales Tracking and Analysis Real Estate enira 4 440444 4644 o s s n n n9 1 4444 4 4 sss r a i c es sat 9 n THE DUTCH CONNECTION HARD TO GET PARTS WORKED IN PORTLAND The Easy Way IT CAN WORK FOR YOU 5 Megabyte Winchester SASI Adapter for the Big Board For Sale Bare Big Boards parts COM 8116 12 50 disk drives in stock 239 50 CRYSTALS 13 9776 MHz 3 00 SASI host adapter and software ready to run with your XEBEC type controller and 20 MHz 3 00 Seagate 506 type winchester 5 0688 MHz 3 00 Includes utility programs to test your con Integrand 700DV vertical drive cabinet with power supply Room for 2 or 3 drives amp Big Board 8275 troller and winchester and to reconfigure your CP M to make the winchester Drive A POWER CONNECTOR 3 00 Your floppies become B and C Stock horizontal drive cabinet with Borchert Power supply Room for 2 horizontal drives and Big Board 250 RESISTOR PACKS i NORTH AMERICA APPLIED i For the Pair 1 00 200 California Ave Suite 205 Palo Alto CA 94306 POSTAGE 415 325 4800 EUROPE amp FAR EAST TWENTE DIGITAAL Digital Research Computers Deurninger Str 470A PO Box 401565 7522CS ENSCHEDE The Netherlands Garland TX 75040 214 271 3538 Regional Distributorships Available Coming Version for the XEROX 820 Inquire CP M is a trademark of Digital Research Corp The
17. M version is also available Full IEEE compatible single precision floating point software All functions are included such as square roots sines and logarithms Versatile cursor addressed editor Menu driven with tabulation 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 logical function divisions it includes many ex amples and its intended as a complete tutorial Options include fast disk copy formatting variable sector size MetaFORTH cross compiler games Programmer s Manual source code listings disks and much more Prices Version 1 no floating point 50 Version 2 floating point Version 3 multitasking 85 150 Beat the February 1 price increase versions distributed on IBM 3740 standard eight inch single density floppy disk Postage paid within the continental U S foreign orders slightly more Unified Software Systems P O Box 2644 New Carrollton MD 20784 301 552 1295 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 n
18. a file control block in high memory Runpac uses signed integer binary arithmetic with provisions for deci mal This gives maximum numeric range for 4 byte varia bles This package should handle any 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 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 BASIC 35 00 40 00 infast ROM 45 00 50 00 This two ROM set takes control of the system justlike 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 VISA amp MASTERCARD ACCEPTED Version 2 3 Char ROM
19. air so rosin contami nation can result in anything from occa sional glitches to complete failure I use alcohol like you do but I use a cheap paint brush along with plastic foam containers from supermarkets to catch the drippings Be careful about breathing alcohol fumes Though they are not as toxic as some solvents they are both dangerous to health and a fire hazard Good venti lation is a must I have Shugart 901 drives all over the place I got them all as is and have re paired them as I ve needed them I run them at the 6ms step rate with no prob lems They are very reliable and the only errors l ve experienced are the CP M comments when I forget to reboot Just received JRT Pascal isn t it beau tiful Also have C80 Now if I can just become ever so slightly adept what fun Jim Buckler 325 Rita Boulevard Melbourne Beach FL 32951 Dear Editor You made some goofs editing my arti cle on the MFE drives See the MFE In terface article in issue 8 In the third paragraph location 215 should be lo cation 215 and the 15V should read 12V The fourth paragraph should indicate that the drives with only a single LED will read only double sided disks you edited itto indicate they would read only single sided This means that the user has to punch the standard double sided index holes on all his disk envelopes See below Also I forgot to include the double sided option
20. 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 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 VISA amp MASTERCARD ACCEPTED 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 24 00 29 00 This is a simple extended version
21. board soft ware parts sockets cables and docu mentation everything you need to putit together Be sure to write or call to verify availability before ordering the bare board or complete kit Editor s note I m sure you all know the prices of the commercial RAM disks so my main worry is that Tony will be overwhelmed by orders Such a prob lem BIG BOARDS DYNADISK J5 256K x 8 DYNAMIC RAM Peg SECTOR LOAD B A ADDRESS MULTIPLEXER TRACK LOAD Ag AT TIMING RAS D YTE COUNT PB3 R w REFRESH SECTOR ADDRESS 5 LOAD REGISTER PB2 ARDY WRITE REQUEST 5 8 WRiTE ACKNOWLEDGE BRDY READ ACKNOWLEDGE INPUTS R w BSTB READ REQUEST ADOR DATA REFRESH ENABLE PBI REFRESH ENABLE 82 86 BT REGISTER OUTPUTS RAS CAS REFRESH TIMING REGISTER LOADING DYNADISK BLOCK DIAGRAM 10 26 82 OZRELIC 24 Micro Cornucopia Number 9 December 1982 TECHNICAL TIPS Character ROM To quickly display the graphic charac ters in the character ROM all but one use PFM to change memory location F348 hex from 20 to 00 Then type _ control underline followed by A thru Z This will display 26 of the 32 funny characters available Five of the remain ing six are availble by typing _ followed by L and w respectively The funny character corresponding to cntl is not display
22. done first but here are some de tails 1 Change the high 16K of RAM to 5V only parts 2 Use the WR NOT signal path through the 74157 as the mux for the two bank select bits 3 Replace the lower 48K of RAM with 64K chips 4 Use the bell and the spare PIO bits to handle selection of the proper 48K bank 5 Add an additional SIO DART chip and baud rate generator 6 Add a DMA chip for the floppy in _terface so that a 2 5 MHz system can run double density and so that interrupts don t have to be turned off during disk reads 7 Bring up a 4 user MP M bios for the whole mess I m also working on the first segment of Karl s Korner on how to stuff a BB along with a schematic for a Z80 stunt box that will single step the BB display registers RAM and trap on or mem ory address match Karl Wilhelm Wacker 100 Rockaway Street Islip Terrace NY 11752 516 581 2932 Editor s note It s going to be Christmas for a lot of folks when Karl finds the time to get these projects out Sounds like each of us should write a Karl Wilhelm Wacker appreciation letter and send it to him How could money pos sibly compete with a mailbox full of letters like that Dear Editor The KayPro II portable microcomputer manufactured by Non Linear Systems is based on the Big Board They madea few changes to the board They used 4164 RAMs the keyboard outputs serial data to port B of the SIO and they changed the 1
23. enough info to make a memory map so I can program a memo ry mapping ROM Victor Editor s note Victor is still trying to get Sculltek s atten tion so he can complete his system and he did not ask that I publicize his plight But I felt that this information was important enough to other computer builders that I have taken the liberty of running this letter without his full name and address The Sculltek manual is hardly worth the paper it was xeroxed on If it were the scribbled notes from the designer s notebook then they had a very amateur de signer Tektronix expects its engineers to maintain substantially better documentation on the first pass at a new design The best of luck Victor Dear Editor I built the EPROM programmer in is sue 6 for 2716s and 2732s I found that some 2716s need to have pin 21 tied to 5V to work reliably during read and verify To do this I changed SW2 to a double pole double throw switch One side is used just as it was in the original schematic to switch programming volt age for the 2732 The other side is wired to switch pin 21 of the 2716 between the programming voltage and 5V Dennis Juve 2935 6th St Marion Iowa 53202 Dear Editor Your recommendation for removing rosin from printed circuit boards is greatly appreciated I have recently come upon several probl ms in boards built by novices and the problems were caused by rosin residues We have high humidity and salty
24. everything up through BFFFH The second edge connector memory ex pansion has MEM4 and signals which are decodes of the second and third 16K segments when the second memory bank is selected CP M 3 0 anyone Additionally the expansion slot has RFSH and all the other normal bus signals almost like STD BUS A pity they didn t use the STD BUS pinout There are the usual 4 2716 sockets but the upper two have jumpers to feed the WR write signal to pin 21 for 6116 type RAM Currently 3 sockets are occupied by ROMs 4 sockets run with wait states CRT RAM is a 2016 2Kx8 chip running with a wait state The ROMWAT ROM wait can also be accessed from both the Disk Controller slot and the Expansion slot as needed Lots of new I O ports defined SYNC ASYNC select SGL DBL density CHARGEN1 CHARGEN2 set DIMVI DEO and at last SET RESET ALARM Yes Virginia there really is a beeper Slight changes to the System PIO bit definitions Bit 5 not needed for the bell now senses double sided floppies Monitor Here there is a real difference On re set the following happens 1 SP HL and last word of stack are stored beginning at FFEO 2 The Copyright disclaimer is execu ted You heard me they actually execute the copyright characters And since they have eliminated the spaces in the text you know those troublesome JR NZ s the result is a bunch of harmless LD s Saves 2 bytes not to JR around it
25. of Small C For more infor mation see issue 7 page 6 The documentation is on the disk Screen Editor in Small 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 C compiler and source for all for under 40 l USER S DISK 4 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 also supports a parallel printer and looks like it was written for the Crowe Assembler 2 ZCPR This replacement for the CCP really makes CP Ma 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 my system drive is effectively on every other disk in the system Think about that Plus the TYPE LIST ERA and SAVE comm
26. of you who have an older version of Q C can upgrade for a paltry 20 The Code Works Box 550 Goleta CA 93116 805 683 1585 256K STD bus RAM The Little Big Board Pulsar Electronics sent me a blurb on their new memory board designed to plug into the STD bus It contains 256 by 9 dynamic RAM with 175 ns access time and 300 ns cycle time It was designed specifically as a memory extension for their Little Big Board Board size is 4 5 by 6 5 inches The Little Big Board is a 4MHz Z80 sys tem with 64K of RAM 2 RS 232 serial ports double density floppy controller battery backed up real time clock and 2K of PROM all stuffed together on a 4 5 by 8 inch STD bus card CP M 2 2 is avail able along with MP M if you have their RAM memory board The price of the memory board is 750 assembled and tested They didn t send a price for the little BB Pulsar Electronics 323 Bell Street Pascoe Vale South 3044 Victoria Australia Note I usually don t run information about a product just because I get a news release The primary reason is that I ve never seen a piece of promotional mate rial list any of the cons they are all pro and I have yet to find a product that didn t have some weaknesses and strengths that were completely missed by the promoters However I occasion ally get something that looks interesting enough to pass along Micro Cornucopia Number 9 December 1982 25 We noticed that the 5V output was 5
27. ororo mom ooreo smeo oseas pero paco eum aune sonos coto oopen onem soose sapon 29200 pere 45 46 come acros sette HOU conte 60940 GED 8 92 embat Gant comt eaim corme SAGE somad ounte casto soote s nm coon XEROX 820 EMARDS TESTED AND GUARANTEED 75 00 CONNETTORI CABLE SETS GVAILABLE LITTLEBROARD SINGLE BOARD COMPUTER 2 9 4 0 6 0 MHZ OPERATION QUAL SERIAL I 0 W IZURRENT OPTION PROGRAMMABLE BALIN RATES BOTH CHANNELS ac BITS BUFFERED PARALLEL 4 CHANNELS COUNTER y MER ACCOMMODATES 14k RAM ROM IN 2714 OR 2014 ee X 10 PROTOTYPING AREA BARE BOARD amp 73 00 DEVELOPED FOR 280 CONTROLLER AFPLICATIONS zac MHZ EIT 250 00 J B FERGUSON INC INDIANA ARLINGTON TEXAS 76011 217 469 2020 The Disk is Media By David Thompson Researching this article was a real learning experience for me It was partic ularly enjoyable both because I m inter ested in the subject and because I got a chance to chat with some very interest ing people I found that the magnetic media market has its own language its own pecking order its own hype its own secrets and its own technical gurus My technical sources include Tektronix Colin Thompson of BASF Marilyn Gilman of Memorex and Dale Isaacs of Dysan Background There are
28. relinked without recompiling the whole program Problems The compiler assembler and linker generate numerous files among them gobbling up disk space in a hurry very much unlike the old BASIC interpreter and makes compilations slow You can alter a few lines of code in a BASIC program and check the result im BUYING A BIG BOARD Let me put it together for you mediately not so with Pascal It is a compiler rather than an inter preter That means that translating the code to machine language so you can try it will take longer even though the re sulting code will run faster Second you must be prepared for a bit more tinkering before you get something to run a cou ple of long nights are usually on order As a result there is less impulsive changing and more planning to Pascal programming than BASIC Most Pascals designed for 8 bit ma chines limit the maximum integer to 32 767 which is sometimes a problem for accounting software Another pitfall is input and output processing Pascal was defined when magnetic tape was the basic means of mass storage so only sequential file ac cess is defined in the standard Howev er everyone writing software wants ran dom access and all Pascal compilers support it All differently This greatly limits program portability Pascal Z doesn t recognize the CP M end of file character so you have to make sure you write a dummy EOF into you program continued on next page
29. seeing are a result of drive prob lems He noted that the drive manufac turers are not taking the time to align the drives as precisely as they used to be cause of the volume of drive orders and that OEMs and dealers are not set up to do it Similarities All manufacturers start out with es sentially the same raw materials They all use the same type of mylar base and use neatly identical materials to formu late the coating First the manufacturers mix the raw materials into a slurry the recipe is pre cisely dictated by an ANSI standard and then they coat the mylar base with the slurry They wind up with large rolls of coated material from which they cut the disks The disks are polished and then tested It is only during the testing proc ess that disks are separated into single or double sided and single or double den sity Differences The differences between brands ap pear primarily to be differences in the lu bricant the polishing the testing and in the envelopes All of the manufacturers have full time labs to keep on top of changes in the quality of the product The manufactur ers are Athana BASF CDC Dysan IBM Maxell Memorex Nashua Scotch Verbatim and Wabash other brands use material made by one or more of these folks And even the above folks fill out their own product lines by purchas ing finished and unfinished product from other manufacturers Dysan for instance buys coated ro
30. smaller pro grams since the linker can select only those routines needed from the runtime library See the New Products section for more information For those of you looking for reading material on C I recommend of course The C Programming Language by Kernighan amp Ritchie and The C Puzzle Book by Feuer The first book is the de finitive reference for the language the latter explores different ways to write C programs We ll have a review of it shortly Both of these can be ordered from Opamp Books here in L A Their number is 213 464 4322 They ship quickly and take Visa and MC Filters A filter in the programming sense does pretty much the same thing it does in hardware it accepts or rejects certain things in this case certain information Suppose for instance that you want to display all the control characters in a text file on your printer To do this you would want to convert all the characters whose ASCII values are less than a space or greater than a tilde to some visible combination of characters that the printer could print That program might look like main char while c getchar EOF if c lt putchar putchar c 64 else if c gt putchar putchar putchar c 64 else putchar c 22 5 You will need to define EOF and this depends on the character your compiler generates when it detects end of file It also needs a name
31. solet s call it CONV C and after compilation we can run it like gt lt text dat gt lst Text dat gets searched character by character for characters outside the nor mal printing range If it finds a line feed for instance it would be converted to the printable characters J A character with the value 129 would be converted to a By simply changing the tests in the WHILE loop we can filter out and con vert stuff till we run out of ideas For in stance you could convert WordStar files to straight text uppercase to lowercase WRAM Computers OEM KAYPRO II 10 only 91695996 KAYPRO a trademark of NON LINEAR SYSTEMS CONNECTORS formfeeds to linefeeds tabs to spaces assembly listings to assembler source 8080 opcodes to Z80 opcodes and so on Of course the conversion of 8080 to Z80 would be a little more involved but the overall structure would be the same char line 80 while gets line EOF if is8080 line convz80 line puts line else puts line FACTORY PRIME PARTS 64K DYNAMIC RAM 4164 1 7 5 50ea etc 8 24 5 28 ea TYPES 25 99 5 00ea OEM PRICES AVAILABLE 100 to 10 000 pcs FACTORY PRIME PARTS FACTORY PRIME PARTS RS 232 GOLD MALE 1 24 1 75 ea 25 99 1 52 ea RS 232 GOLD FEMALE 1 24 2 47 ea 25 99 2 16 ea RS 232 GRAY HOODS 1 24 1 15 ea 25 99 98 ea OEM PRICES AVAILABLE Scotch DISKETTES BUY NOW 8 BOXOF10 2495 2BOX amp UP
32. third ROM This little Basic is great for controller or utility applications USER S DISK 5 1 CAT disk cataloging routines 2 MODEM7A MODEMT 7B Modem 7 for ports A and B 3 PACMAN play the most popular arcade game 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 to do 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 USERS DISK 8 1 BDSCIO custom BB I O for BDS C both h and 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 Pr
33. wait for keystrokes Oops new message H Host Ter minal Yes we can look like an ADM3A Better yet from the KBD we can do local copy for those pesky IBM systems or still better yet remote echo to look like a CPU to some remote dumb terminal In novation As each line scrolls off the top of the screen it is written to RAM in 80 byte chunks starting at 0100H just like in CRTMEM No CR s no LF s just an image of CRTMEM Holds about 700 lines Do one of those then boot CP M and SAVE 220 FILENAME EXT and you got it continued on page 12 10 Micro Cornucopia Number 9 December 1982 NEED A HOME FOR YOUR BIG BOARD 1 OR II ALL ALUMINUM DISK COMPUTER ENCLOSURE QUALITY CONSTRUCTED OF 1 8 INCH MATERIAL COMES WITH 150 WATT SWITCHING P 3 8 8 AMPS 4 AMPS 15 SEC m m AMPS 12U 300 Qo AMPS IF D C DRIVES ARE USED ENTIRE SYSTEM GN SINGLE 36V BATTERY NOW YOU GENERATE SOFTWARE OF THE POWER mo tt ENCLOSURE WITH POWER SUPPLY BES CARLES AND CONNECTORS AVAILABLE INGUTRE PRESSURIZES INTERIOR OF BOX WITH FILTERED AIR 35 00 TANDAN DISKE DRIVES AVAILABLE HARD SOFT TNGu TRE MANY FRONT PANEL CONFIGURATIONS AVATLABLE FOR FLOPPYZ AND OR HARD DISES 652 erm seem aom vorte erom poron ameoa sonat oet siose occas
34. your BIOS so CP M remembers not to try to read for a few milliseconds after selecting a drive The effect on the drive market should be most interesting Already I ve seen brand new Shugart compatible Sie mens drives for about 250 each First as competition increases the prices of the half wides should be com ing down After all they are smaller and simpler to manufacture Second as more and more people se lect the half wides prices of the stand ards should drop even more substantial ly This price drop should be especially noticeable in the used and surplus mar kets I expect the prices for used and sur plus 800s 801s and compatible drives to hit 100 in the next year In some cases you can now find them for 150 to 175 However these are usu ally special one or two unit deals If you know of a really good deal in 8 drives under 200 new or in new condi tion where they have enough units to make it worthwhile to announce it to the group and you can vouch for their in tegrity please let me know There are still a lot of Micro C readers who are un driven or under driven because they can t afford 400 per drive And Finally Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year May all your bugs be small ones and may all your employers and cli ents be generous Ho Ho Ho 24 David Thompson Editor amp Publisher 26 Micro Cornucopia Number 9 December 1982 On Your Own By David Thomp
35. 771 toa 1791 for double density 5 The board has space for the CTC timer and for all four EPROMs but there is a socket for monitor ROM only The KayPro documentation shows that the memory map is identical to the BB Very interesting The SCBIOS on User s Disk 2 brought life to my parallel printer I use the Daisy Wheel II made by Ricoh and sold by Radio Shack However for this printer the jumper instructions from Micro C 7 page 2 aren t quite right For the Ricoh don t jumper pins 1 2 on Jack Phillips Suite 222 Park Cherry Bldg 114 East Park Olathe Kansas 66061 Dear Editor I gota call this weekend about my Tan don CBIOS on user disk 4 It looks like I forgot to mention that the CTC must be jumpered for the disk drive auto time out This is described in the Big Board addenda but repeat it here Jumper pin 3 to pin 4 and pin 7 to pin 8 on JB2 Bob Edison Kronos Inc 355 Western Ave Boston MA 02135 continued on page 14 2 Micro Cornucopia Number 9 December 1982 895 ASSEMBLED 8 TESTED d 780 E TRIMBLE BIG BOARD II 4 MHz 280 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 4 MHz Z80 A CPU and Peripheral Chips The new Fe
36. AMPROG COM now the actual read 2 Turn on your programming power supply L P LD DE SRCMEM 128 Insert the PROM to be programmed in U 80 RDLP M Boot up to access PROGRAM COM and EXAMPROG COM LD HL 128 the usual drive access rules apply l ADD HL DE update DMA ADDR 3 x PROGRAM lt y gt EXAMPROG COM lt CR gt the is optional EX DE HL PUSH DE save DMA ADDR The rest is automates LD gt 26 set DMA ADDR CALL BDOS FALSE EQU 0 mE TRUE EQU OFFH LD C 20 read sequential BOOT 0 LD DE FCB FCB EQU SCH CALL BDOS read a record BDOS EQU 5 POP DE recover DMA ADDR CR EQU ODH OR successful LF EQU OAH JR Z RDLP if not past end of file R2 EQU FH PROG EQU OCOH JP NZ BUMRD anything else is an error CTCB3 EQU 08BH SRCMEM EQU 9000H park source here now we move the next section to 8000 and jump to it STACK EQU SRCMEM we are going to bank switch in the PROMS and can t operate ROMSIZ EQU 4096 size of 2732 from CP M MAXREC EQU ROMSIZ 128 90 6 V2 oV 0181090 99 2861 1equi22eq 6 Jaquiny etdosnui0D PRAM ROMLOC ROMCPY ENDCK PROGRM we we we now we we we COMO COM1 COMTBL OPNFIL we we EQU EQU EQU EQU 280 ASEG ORG LD check for LD LD LD LD CP JR CP JP
37. ANDLER 1 VARIABLE SFTMF NEXT LINE 4 CONSTANT RETF 5 FOF REG registers 4 ASSEMBLER HL FOF DE FOF FORTH 5 6 FOF REG registers ASSEMBLER SPTMF SF LD 7 HL FOF HL RETF LD FOF FOF FDF REG 8 AF FOP REG FORTH 9 i8 CODE RTI registers FOF REG RETI END CODE 11 2 3 INTERRUFT NOOF RTI 15 14 SAVE REG 7 registers 15 ASSEMBLER FUSH FUSH DE PUSH HL FUSH FORTH SCR 255 FORTH DIMENSIONS INTERRUFT HANDLER COMMENTS 1 2 SPTMF holds the stack pointer RETF is the address of the 5 during interrupt service return stack pointer 4 5 is a macro which generates code to restore reg set amp 7 FOF REG is a macro which generates code to restore the machine 8 9 RTI is the return from interrupt word it restores the machine 10 enables interrupts and returns 11 12 INTERRUFT is the high level interrupt word is a place 15 holder for the high level service routine 14 15 SAVE REG is a macro which generates code to save a reg set SCR 257 CF ORTH DIMENSIONS INTERRUFT HANDLER g 1 z SAVE REG registers ASSEMBLER SAVE REG 5 EXX SAVE REG FUSH FUSH HL DE 4 RETF HL LD HL FUSH HL DE SF SFTMF LD 5 S80 128 SF LD FORTH 3 7 CODE INTERRUFT SERVICE 8 SAVE REG INTERRUFT HL LD NEXT LIN
38. FEATURES SMALL SIZE 1 75 X 1 40 X 0 35 FAST INSTALLATION DIAGRAM INCLUDED ZERO CROSSING ELIMINATES ALL SWITCHING NOISE TRIAC OUTPUT NO MECHANICAL PARTS DVDT FILTER INCLUDED LOW COST ONLY 8 80 EACH l YEAR WARRANTY 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE COMPANY OF CALIFORNIA 1619 SOUTH MINNIE STREET SANTA ANA CALIFORNIA 92707 714 547 4316 CALIF RES ADD 6 SALES TAX ADD 1 00 POSTAGE amp HANDLING GEFA NOW Get the BIG BOARD in GERMANY Documentation OMicro Software OProm Programmer etc GEFAS Gesellschaftf r angewandte Systemtechnik Pariser Str 44 D 1000 Berlin 15 030 883 24 74 Xerox 820 Notes Column by John P Marlin Jr As promised I m back again and the Xerox 820 II R board has been dis sected also as promised What a differ ence I scarcely know where to begin refer to the old board as an 820 and the new as 820 It looks like Xerox has gotten serious about the microcomputer market They have done a lot of the Personal Com puter stuff but this one is definitely a Business Machine Appearances The 820 II has the same old 4 connec tors and reset button across the back edge and same good RFI EMI attention but now all of a sudden there are a cou ple of edge connectors on the mother board and one of them has a PCB in it Also fewer ICs and more space be tween them Removing the disk control ler mad
39. HE PRINT ROUTINE INTO HIGH MEMORY MOVE 25H BYTES we we we NOW WE RE ALL DONE INITIALIZING AT CONOUT LSTOUT AND PUNOUT 6 BYTE PATCH RETURNS CHAR IN A 3 SERIAL OUTPUT ROUTINE LST 3 SERIAL OUTPUT ROUTINE PUN THIS IS THE 6 BYTE PATCH WHICH MAKES SURE ANY CHARACTER SENT 9 JMPA JP WORKPLA JP WORK PLA 06H JP WORK PLA 06H TO THE CONSOLE IS RETURNED IN JMPB LD A C CALL OFOOCH LD A C RET UTCHAR LD A RDY OUT STATUS A IN A STATUS AND 20H JR Z OUTCHAR SIOX IN A STATUS AND O4H JR Z SIOX LD A C OUT DATA A RET EXE NITBYT DEFB 18H TABLE TO INITIALIZE THE SIO THE A REGISTER 3 SEND THE CHARACTER TO 3 UNMESS THE A REGISTER GO SCREAMING BACK Xxxx THIS IS THE ROUTINE IN HIGH MEMORY WHICH CHECKS THE STATUS OF xx THE SIO AND SENDS IT CHARACTERS WHEN IT IS READY RESET THE SIO SO WE CAN SEE IF IT IS READY we 3 BIT 5 IS NOT SET THEN LOOP IF BIT 2 IS NOT SET THEN LOOP PII BITS ARE SET SO OUTPUT CHAR TO SIO RETURN TO CP M PII XKERKXXXKXEKERXENKYXXK RESET SIO SELECT REGISTER 1 3 NO INTERRUPTS SELECT REGISTER 4 6X CLOCK 1 STOP ODD PARITY 6X CLOCK 1 STOP NO PARITY 6X CLOCK 1 STOP EVEN PARITY gt 2 d 3 SELECT REGISTER 3 RECEIVE DATA 8 BITS CHAR AUTO ENABLE RECEIVE 7 BITS CHAR AUTO ENABLE DEFB 01H DEFB 00H DEFB oH select one for register 4 DEFB N
40. HIMEM to make CONFIGUR work including ad dresses of AND A 7F reset keyboard bit 7 instructions and such By the way we don t call F000 jumps for SETDMA SETSEC SETTRK SELDSK READ and WRITE from BIOS Now we request Execute Physi cal Device Driver specifying a 9 byte table in HL That s all The table has logi cal drive sector track DMA and com mand HIMEM code equates logical drive to physical drive finds the appro priate driver and does it Almost magic CONST CONIN CONOUT are re placed with logical CONST etc which in turn is steered with the contents of I OBYTE Same for LIST In addition to all these magical en trances all the old ones are still where we expect them so 820 BIOS runs on 820 II hardware Single density only of course Code s all there to fake them Back to the 820 Seems as though the surplus 820 boards became available after I wrote the last column but before it got printed so you have the word on the Rondure Dal las offerings at 435 00 Even at 399 00 for the BB kit if you add the SIO and CTC options as well as the pre soldered socket option the 820 board is cheaper and has been tested as a running sys tem Hard to beat It should fit into nearly any old CRT case in place of the old logic especially the single board designs and use the old keyboard and CRT monitor assem bly as well as the power supply Also as mentioned last month the 820 board support
41. K 1 JF END CODE 9 128 SINTERRUFT LCOMFILEJ CFA INTERRUFT 11 2 VECTOR INTERRUFT addr INTERRUFT SERVICE SWAF 22 27 22 27127 22 2122222 55 S I UU UOCE MN NNI MS M CNN CI CO V C KNIT CI CKR UC VOCE WIR IN TN an MENU OM 2 22 2 Micro Cornucopia Number 9 December 1982 14 with your micro you know how im pressive that is Creative Solutions Inc showed a FORTH for the Hewlett Packard 68000 based computers Their demonstration included various animations high reso lution graphics routines music synthe sis and a FORTH interpreter all running simultaneously You could shift from one task to another with a few simple commands C H Ting displayed a Chinese char acter generator symbol processor capa ble of creating and manipulating any ideogram interactively The friendly people of Mountain View Press were there with a long table SCR 258 CONS OAH Q INTERRUPT e g 198 level service routine stacked high with the latest FORTH pub lications The 1982 Proceedings of the Rochester FORTH conference on data base and process control applications Haydon s All About FORTH The FORTH Encyclopedia by Derick and Baker and Huang s And So FORTH attracted lots of stand up readers to the MVP booth Mr Kogge a senior engineer in ad vanced system architecture for IBM and adjunct professor at SUNY Bingham ton gave the keynote address titled On Removing
42. PROM address initialize assuming OK get a PROM byte save with possibly extra bits get PROM again if no bits went up flag for message at end go back to CP M 1 past end for 4k bytes at this point we kncw that the PROM is at least theoretically programmable LD LD LD LDIR HL ROMLOC DE ROMCPY BC ROMSIZ here is the actual burn B 3 C PROG HL BRNTBL HL SRCMEM DE ROMLOC BC ROMCPY BURNLP we we Copy it into ROMCPY reference PROM copy destination byte count move it table of output words get set source code PROM address address and do it continued on next page Z861 Jaquiacag 6 Jequiny 1 2 BB EPROM PROGRAM LISTING continued BRNTBL DEFB DEFB DEFB BURNLP ee e CNTMS MSCHG RI DJNZ POP we LD OUT BURNO9 INC INC INC LD CP JR 74 we LD LD LD OTIR JR NRMTBL DEFB DEFB DEFB PROM is now burned 8 9 OCH A HL Z BURN9 HL DE A 1 PROG A BC B 50 A A CTCB3 C Z MSCHG CNTMS BC A 9 PROG A HL DE BC A H ENDCK BURNLP B 3 C PROG HL NRMTBL VERIF 1 y we RII we to disable PROM outs enable U 57 outs to disable PROM CS lines to turn on program voltage PROM
43. 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 ASK ABOUT PRICES FOR COMPLETE SYSTEMS Micro Cornucopia Number 9 December 1982 19 Dear Editor Enclosed is all the complete docu mentation on the ROMAC Sculltek sin gle board computer They have a full page ad in each Computer Shopper It is a straightforward Z80 64K system and in January 1982 it seemed to me like a better deal than the Big Board RO MAC sells a terminal board supposedly emulates the Z19 PROM programmer speech board and controller board I bought both the computer and terminal boards However I am now disappointed by the lack of documentation the refusal of the manufactu
44. RRUPT TEST installs TEST as the high level service routine 13 in INTERRUFT the high level interrupt word 15 tify what we have He urged the audi ence to spread the FORTH word widely especially in recognized literature re minding us that FORTH is virtually un known in industry and academia Those few people that have heard of FORTH often know it only as a write only lan guage or variant of assembler A High Level Interrupt Handler by Ward Harold The March April FORTH Dimensions vol 4 no 2 published an interrupt handler designed to allow the use of high level FORTH words When the in terrupt occurs the machine state is saved the high level word s code field address is loaded into the interpreter pointer the word is executed and the machine state is restored Ward Harold of E R Squibb amp Sons Inc has modified the Fig version to work with UNIFORTH Ward s version is pre sented here as an excellent example of well documented FORTH He has used 0 and 1 as a one second interrupt counter for an example of the handler Several Macros POP REG SAVE REG and their parent versions are used to clean up the source code If you still have any questions then read the original FORTH Dimension article or check with one of us A high level interrupt handler buys you transportability and ease of coding You lose speed because all registers have to be saved and restored and a high lev el word exe
45. SH DEFB HYH DEFB 47H uo a ue ae we nm o gt e 03H select one for receive register 3 DEFB OE1H DEFB 61H DEFB 05H SELECT REGISTER 5 TRANSMIT DATA select one for transmit register 5 DTR 8 BITS CHAR ENABLE XMIT RTS DTR 7 BITS CHAR ENABLE XMIT RTS DEFB OEAH DEFB OAAH er we eae END END Micro Cornucopia Number 9 December 1982 Talking Serially By David Thompson It you need to make two computers communicate with each other via RS 232 then chances are the following tac tics should make them talk You need two male RS 232 connectors and some cable with 7 or more conduc tors pin pin 1 ground 1 ground 2 Xmit data 3 Receive data Receive data 2 Xmit data 4 Request to send 5 Clear to send 5 Clear to send 4 Request to send 7 Signal ground 7 Signal ground 8 Data Carrier 8 Data Carrier Detect Detect You will need to pull pin 8 high so both ends know that the interface is active The easy way to do this is to jumper pin 6 data set ready DSR to pin 8 on the Big Board end You ll notice on both the BBI and II that DSR is tied high through a resistor Both systems must think they are ter minals DTE Each is expecting to see mode
46. U OCH ADDRESS OF PORT BAUD RATE GEN EDIT THE FOLLOWING TWO EQUATES FOR YOUR OWN SYSTEM 3 also edit the SIO INITIALIZATION TABLE to E select the proper bits char and parity BAUD EQU OSH 300 BAUD 06H 600 BAUD 1200 BAUD 5 OAH 2400 BAUD OCH 4800 BAUD OEH 9600 BAUD OFH 19200 BAUD JMPTABL EQU USE E80C WITH DRC CONFIGURED CP M WORKPLA EQU OEF20H we we BOOT RDY INITCNT EQU 09H 3 I NIT INITB USE EAOC IF YOU USED DRC BIOS WITH YOUR OWN COPY OF CP M THIS IS WHERE THE PRINT ROUTINE AND THE A REGISTER PATCH WILL RESIDE ABOVE PFM EQU 0 EQU 10H RETURN TO CP M IS THE SIO READY FOR ANOTHER CHAR LENGTH OF INITIALIZATION TABLE oo INITIALIZE THE PORT LD A BAUD SET BAUD RATE GENERATOR OUT BAUDGN A LD HL INITBYT POINT TO FIRST CONFIG BYTE LD C INITCNT MOVE RIGHT NUMBER OF BYTES LD A HL OUT STATUS A INITIALIZE SIO FROM INITBYT TABLE INC HL DEC JR NZ INITB NC AS E S I A TE ET S S I STM cS Ure cc E STEELE TE IO V SE EE 16 Micro Cornucopia Number 9 December 1982 12 HL LD DE JMPTABL LD BC 0009H LDIR MOVB LD HL JMPB LD DE WORKPLA LD BC 25H LDIR JP BOOT THIS OVERLAYS THE BIOS JUMPTABLE 9 we we MODIFY THE CBIOS JUMPTABLE we MOVE 9H BYTES we MOVE T
47. VE 42 MOVCPMX COM I should note that I have only tested this for converting the BB MOVCPM to standard Also your MOVCPM may not be the same length as mine I put the patch at 2A00 because DDT reported that as NEXT when I loaded MOVCPM After this you can follow the CP M documentation for Second Level Sys tem Generation See page 6 of the CP M Alteration Guide Note that when using the BB MOVCPM you must add 200 to the read offset for the BIOS This makes the offset 3780 Editor s note This is one of those really significant pieces of information which gives us all a chance to org at EA00 You can reassemble your present BIOS use the SD Systems assembler on the original source or go ahead and install an updated BIOS such as the one from user disk 2 or 9 Also the author asked not to be identified so I gave him the best pseudonym I could think of Sorry if I was too obvious MN CATCH US AT THE FAIRE We are planning to have a Big Board Users Group Booth and meeting at THE WEST COAST COMPUTER FAIRE March 18th to 20th in San Francisco Micro Cornucopia Number 9 December 1982 LOW COST DISK CONTROLLER LESS THAN 10 COMPLETE SAVE WEAR AND TEAR ON YOUR DISK DRIVES AND FLOPPIES WITH THE MODEL 3801 ALL SOLID STATE RELAY SMALL ENOUGH TO FIT EASILY INSIDE YOUR DISK DRIVE THE 3801 CAN BE INSTALLED IN MINUTES YOUR BIG BOARD WILL THEN TURN YOUR DRIVES ON AND OFF AUTOMATICALLY AS THEY ARE NEEDED
48. able using this shortcut A way to see all the funny characters is to change CSRCHR location FF76 to 00 01 025 18 This way you can change cursor from to the corresponding funny character By the way I assume by now that this is common knowledge but if you prefer a blinking cursor simply put DF in location FF76 Note that in order to find where an ASCII character is formed in the ROM just take its hex value multiply by 80h then add 400h The next 8 addresses will contain the dot matrix of the character Only bits 0 4 are significant and the 8th address corresponds to descenders on lowercase letters For example the letter corresponds to ASCII 41H so its dot matrix is located in the ROM at ad dresses 0608 060 Don Brittain 4200 Spruce Street Apt 208 Philadelphia PA 19104 215 386 2684 The Z80 Can t Wait The BB I Z80 has its wait pin 24 and bus request pin 25 tied directly to 5V This is all right until you add something that needs to use either of these pins like some hard disk controllers So if you need them simply separate them by cut ting the board run between them and then tie each to 5V through a 1K resis tor Now they work just like they did but you can also connect an open collector TTL device and use them as Zilog in tended Hampton Miller PO Box 816 Carpinteria CA 93013 Another Bell This bell mod requires only a resistor and capacitor along with some spa
49. al for Small C 3 A Z80 assembler 4 Two disk formatters 5 Othello 6 A serial print routine 7 Modem software USER S DISK 5 This disk is a potpourri of significant software collected from the far reaches of the globe by world 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 over 3 or you ll have to stand in line to use you BB 4 FAST This little screamer from Gordon doubles 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 from 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 i
50. ands 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 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 modem 7 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 formatter plus Sample formatted text 4 SIGNS Prints large block letters on screen or printer Wo USER S DISK 49 This should be another very popular disk One thing notable is that it includes the first software donated for the BB II Including 1 CBIOS This is an update of Mark Stieglitz s super CBIOS on user disk 2 Gary Kaufman added a serial print driver so you can assemble it for either serial or parallel and choose your baud rate besides 2 KEYBOARD TRANSLATOR This
51. ary to run a separate program to do this prior to running WordStar At the loca tion INISUB 2A4 in version 3 patch a jump to the large blank area MORPAT at 2E0 code C3 E0 02 Then at MORPAT patch in the initialization routine actual ly it may be easier to do this using DDT after you have finished installing Word Star 2 0 MVI 07 1200 baud character 2E2 OUT OC send to baud rate generator 2 4 MVI 04 select sio register 4 2E6 OUT 07 sio chan B control port 2 8 MVI 44 16xclock 1 stop bit no parity 2EA OUT 07 MVI 03 select register 3 2EE OUT 07 2F0 MVI 1 8 bits transmit character 2F4 MVI 05 select register 5 2F8 MVI A EA 8 bits receive character 2FA OUT 07 2FC RET If you want another baud rate don t forget to change the 07h in location 2E1 to the appropriate character see the BB documentation The Big Board has one feature that the does not that will speed up WordStar clear to end of line Patch this character X 18H into location 26E after putting a 1 into 26D to indicate only one character is necessary for this function WordStar has several built in delays following cursor postioning and other functions This allows slow terminals to keep up without losing characters I found them to be unecessary with my Big Board set them to zero They are located at DELCUS 2AE and DELMIS 2AF There are other delays at DELI to DELS which contr
52. at a future date Tiny Connections The smallest connections can actually be the most worthwhile and depend able These are the one to one connec tions between you and the end user For instance the end user might need a way to handle his mailing list and keep his books Even large software houses are now specializing in custom systems for small businesses These outfits will combine a Z80 or 8086 based hard disk system with a custom data base handler and rake in 50 000 to 500 000 for the package Then they put the user on a contract for hardware and software maintenance The contract usually covers service on the hardware and guarantees that the user will pay 50 per hour for any soft ware modifications It turns out that software maintenance usually winds up costing the user several times as much as the initial package price over the life of the system Even if the software is abso lutely perfect when delivered changing user needs usually dictate continuing updates so this is usually a long term re lationship and income The Big Boards both I and II now have the hard disk interfaces that are Micro Cornucopia Number 9 December 1982 necessary for handling large data bases or large compiles or large anything elses that used to mean large expensive com puters So you now have inside access to one of the best bargains in computing power in the industry If you use a Big Board you can build a spare system c
53. cle describing it this issue New Phone number Despite strong suggestions to the con trary e g do you get any time to yourself or Have you considered psychiatric help for your compulsion to answer the we will continue to list our phone number in the maga zine The only people who threaten that policy are those East Coasters who forget that 7 30 am their time is 4 30 am here Since it s not unusual for me to work un til 1 or 2 in the morning I m not in much of a mood to help someone interface a new hi rez dahoozit to a drive latch when I ve had only a couple hours sleep In fact at that time in the morning I m usually lucky to find the phone at all much less find it before it wakes up the whole family So here it is 503 382 8048 And try to call between 1pm and 6 pm Pacific time that way I have evenings to get something done Software Wanted Jennifer our 8 year old would very much like to learn to touch type so she can help Sandy and I with Micro C and also so she can use the text editor on her school work I remember what I went through in typing class so I m looking for something better such as a well thought out typing training program preferably public domain In fact I would guess that many of you have little people who would love to learn typing and programming and so forth on your BB So keep your eyes peeled for anything appropriate to short sorts Maybe we ll p
54. common WYLBUR commands with complete features for collecting inserting deleting replacing and modifying text Moving or copying text within a document Copying text from external files Global search and change operations Listing controls If you feel that you must have proportional spacing justification etc there are good word processors in the 75 500 range But for most users Micro WYL represents an incredible bargain It is easy to use and powerful CP M is registered trademark of Digital Research Inc WYLBUR is registered trademark of The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University Make your check out to Realworld Software Inc 913 S Fourth St Suite 103 DeKalb IL 60115 Name Address City CRT type 8 SSSD 29 95 DISK INSPECTOR a program that runs under 280 CP M for disk inspection and modification Now you can inspect and modify the contents of any sector of a disk storage device The disk drives may be single or double density single or double sided The comprehensive manual will show you how to Recover an erased file Modify a directory entry Clean up a directory Utilize the CP M Auto Load feature Create multiple directory entries Read and modify non CP M diskettes The Disk Inspector is a full screen editor for disk Our competitors offer products in the 100 200 range We certainly invite compari son of this product with any comparable system in te
55. copy same source skip burn if so save time get source latch it to PROM for burn DECODE low thus CS low save copy address millisecond count get current count it becomes reference change until a change do 50x 1 millisec retrieve copy address DECODE high thus CS high can get here if PROM source we see BURNLP 2 1 past end for 4k bytes Time to verify it table to go back to normal go back and verify to turn off program voltage to enable chip set decoder to turn off out buff and enable PROM Report receives DE pointing to the bad PROM byte and HL pointing 3 to the source byte REPORT PUSH PUSH CALL 4298 PUSH LD LD RES CALL LD CALL POP RET 15299 94 we OVE2 PUSH RRA RRA RRA RRA CALL POP MOVNIB AND ADD DAA ADC DAA LD INC RET DE HL A DE DE ERRMS4 MOVE2 A HL DE ERRMS6 MOVE2 DE ERRMS1 PMSG HL DE A FALSE ROMOK MOVE4 converts the address to DE DE ERRMS2 7 MOVE2 A L MOVE2 DE AF MOVNIB AF OFH A 90H A 4OH DE A DE we wo wo we HL is a relative address move address into message get bad PROM byte move bad PROM byte to message get source byte move to message print the error message if we get here at all we have a problem ASCII and moves it to the message area we we e we
56. cuted For slow interrupts spaced more than 0 01 second apart the high level handler will work fine Next Month The FORTH 83 preliminary standard is just about ready to be released and the next column will include a summary of the changes Plus we ll cover new com mercial versions of FORTH and exam ples of FORTH in OEM instrumentation Future subjects include a label maker Epswriter using your MX 80 as a type writer and hard disk interface Best holiday wishes to all Micro Cornucopia Number 9 December 1982 15 Serial Print Driver By David Thompson The following is the much requested general purpose serial printer driver for the BB I It was written for the Crowe Assembler Use your text editor to move the semi colons around and change the baud rate and BIOS bytes to set it up for your system Then assemble it and you are on your way Those of you writing software for others might look at the heading This is the kind of information that I like to get with a new piece of source Letters continued Dear Editor Oh Where Oh Where has my Micro C gone Oh Where Oh Where can it be If it s ready dear Dave will you send it along Or has Oregon dropped into the Sea Phil Plumbo 1128 Dayton St Paul MN 55104 Editor s note OK Phil we were late with issue 8 and we ll be late again with this issue But since so well versed I feel I have to reply Though there
57. dards Committee gave an up date on its work of the past year report ing that task of defining FORTH 83 was proceeding smoothly and without the squabbling that marred past efforts Other seminar topics included energy control applications a multi tasking FORTH system debugging and devel opment tools and the latest video games from Atari of course Charles Moore and Elizabeth Rather chaired a seminar on the use of FORTH in digital image processing Other panels discussed the use of FORTH in industrial and process con trol business applications computa tion video mixers and television com mercial production university engineer ing courses and data transmission via amateur radio packet switching net works SCR 255 7415 Leahy Road New Carrollton MD 20784 The commercial display area was a busy spot and the vendors were out in force with their latest FORTH language systems and various development tools FORTH Inc demonstrated its poly FORTH II for the IBM PC a multi task ing FORTH that includes hardware floating point support for the 8087 nu meric processor and on line system documentation Their floating point implementation uses a separate floating point stack and their floating point words operate only on that stack Their demonstration in cluded a set of matrix multiplications which appeared to run almost instantly If you ve ever done any matrix algebra FORTH DIMENSIONS INTERRUTZ7T H
58. e your first customer This would become the graphics standard so that us users could swap graphics programs The only problem I see is switching back and forth between alpha and graphics John Appleton 702 101 14th Avenue SE Calgary Alberta Canada T2G 1C6 Editor s note The problem you face when trying to gen erate graphics on the BB I is that the charac ters do not connect unless you do a fairly sub _ stantial modification to the video generation circuit The disconnection means that you can t paste simple characters together to make graphic displays A number of readers are working on solu tions to the graphics problem Some are building daughter boards others are trying to find ways to modify the original circuit with a minimum of effort and destruction The classier the display the more trouble it is to do More information about that is coming up Dot graphics are obviously the most de manding Simple connected block graphics similar to the TRS 80 are much easier In fact some folks are working on adding a 6845 8002 block graphics to the Big Board I so that both it and the BB II would run the same graphics software Dear Editor I bought an Apple II enclosure and lid from the Computer Center which is next door It cost only 60 and I thought it would give my a professional appear ance The enclosure holds the board the power supply and most keyboards You may have to adjust the cabine
59. e a lot of space on the mother board There are two different boards avail able for the controller slot a floppy con troller and a hard disk controller The other slot is an expansion connec tor nearly one for one with the control ler slot but obviously intended for mem ory or like that The hard disk board is only a SASI in terface since Xerox now has a box the 007 which contains a Shugart SA1403 E Intelligent Controller an SA1004 8 inch 8 meg formatted Winchester an 5 801 SSDD floppy drive and an extra connector for another 2 drive cabinet Thus you can connect three floppies and a Winchester The Controller The controller is a 1797 which allows double sided double density floppies with side checking on address headers However the chip is limited to 256 byte sectors John MacFarland of Software Pub lishers tells me he has one running 1K sectors with a 1793 He is using essential ly the same double density software he supplies with the double density kit for the Big Board The rest of the floppy con troller is pretty much the same as the old 820 with the addition of a write precom pensation circuit a double density ne cessity The Kernel CPU 4 0 MHz Z80 A with 8 0 and 16 0 MHz clocks available on the board As with the old version nothing significant here CTC SIO and PIOs are the same as on the 820 MEMORY Now we see some differ ences For instance Bank Select bit 7 turns off
60. ent if we d stayed with the CP M stand ard MOVCPM contains a relocatable copy of CP M a BOOT and a BIOS When ever yourun MOVCPM it modifies all of these If your MOVCPM includes a BOOT and BIOS suitable for you hard ware fine Otherwise you have to over lay the relocated system with suitable programs However MOVCPM only al lows relocation in steps of 1k bytes so you set up the BIOS at 00 E400 DAOO etc The version of MOVCPM distributed with the Big Board has been modified to deposit the code 512 bytes lower than the standard version Thus MOVCPM 60 gives you a 59 5K system You can dupli cate this feat or defeat it by adding a patch to your MOVCPM program This patch modifies MOVCPM s size calculation When execution reaches lo cation 016FH the HL registers contain the specified system size e g FOOOH for a 60K system If you add anything to or subtract anything from HL at this point the resulting system will be larger or smaller Voila To make the BB MOVCPM work like the standard version all we have to do is add 200H to HL here This is how I patched MOVCPM DDT MOVCPM COM L16F check that 16F is JP 1A5 16 JMP 2A00 jump to patch don t forget this period A2A00 assemble code at 2A00H PUSH save BC LXI B 200 to convert E800 to EA00 or LXI B FEO0 to subtract 200H DADH B addBCtoHL POPB restore BC JMP 1A5 where it was heading end of assembly GO zero SA
61. eview 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 rights reserved MICRO CORNUCOPIA December 1982 The Single Board Systems Journal No 9 We re In All In 55 Moving is no trivial matter unless of course you live out of a burlap sack a bum wrap But we moved over 10 tons of necessities and now have shifted from dump mode toss it sell it or at last resort keep it to search mode if we kept it which box did we put it in I ve seen those glowing reports about the computer cottage industry You know those articles and TV features produced by the NY City jet set describ ing some mystical group of freaks who don t commute to work every morn ing they just live where they want be it a beach town a rural farm community or like us in a skiing community nestled against the Cascade Range We ll see what it is really like and in the meantime we ll see if we can t en courage others to join us You maybe There s no work here to speak of the guy who cuts delivers and stacks fire wood for 45 per cord is a TV technician when there are TVs to repair but if you can bring your business with you as we did then a small community like Bend appears ideal The local community college offers
62. ew 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 Statistic 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 we re 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 COMPLETE CP M PASCAL FOR ONLY 29 95 GUARANTEED OR YOUR MONEY BACK In addition if you want to copy the diskette or manual so long as its not for resale it s 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 NS e 1891 23rd Avenue San Francisco CA 94122 You ve sold me 1 can t resist y
63. ges can use DIRECT I O with the 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 PLUS 128 more composed of 64 graphic 13 border or axis 19 Greek 11 math 8 foreign language 9 pronunciation and 4 special characters PLUS an entire set that is switch selectable in place of the character set just described create your own unique character set Price drop from 169 95 to 127 50 good through January 31 CHRISTMAS SPECIAL 25 OFF GRAPHICS DEMO DISK Sample Programs Demonstrate DESIGNS 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 source and object programs for the graphic commands written in Z 80 mnemonics PLUS full firmware documentation and instructions for burn ing 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
64. h to meet Z80 specs It must be a 2N2907 Alternating Character Display If the processor is running you will find that the on board video is a very powerful debugging tool A repeating pattern of boxes and colons is called a stack crash It usually means that the processor is running but it is not able to execute PFM Usually this is caused by a bent pin on a RAM chip this is hard to find so look carefully or it happens when someone substitutes 74LS157s for the 74157s in U58 and U59 The LS parts won t work here Other common mistakes include un soldered or badly soldered pins switched parts or defective RAM espe cially the top 16K You only need RAM chips U1 through U8 installed in order for PFM to sign on Also the Z80 is the only 40 pin chip that has to be installed in order to get the magic prompt Other Visible Problems If you are getting more than one prompt or the screen hasn t been com pletely cleared at sign on then the trou ble most likely is in the 7415157 area Again look for bent pins or switched parts If you move parts and the trouble changes that should give you a clue If the characters on the screen slowly swim back and forth check the video crystal The documentation calls for 14 31818 MHz but the proper crystal is 13 9776 MHz This provides a true 60 Hz vertical sync rate If the new crystal causes the characters to tear then re place C24 with a 10 pf capacitor or reduce R2 to 470 ohms If t
65. have up to 185k bytes per disk g gt Dual Density software includes DDINIT a double density 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 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 cm Software Publishers Dual Density comes with a thorough instruction manual 199 95 SUBSCRIPTION FORM It s OK to brag 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 O no
66. he dots on your screen jitter then you probably have some noise leaking into the video Add some bypass capaci tors to the 5 V line near the video sec tion Editor s note try some 50 mfd 10V tantalums between the 5 V line and ground Also swapping or changing U38 and U51 will sometimes clean up the problem If the first half of each video character is missing then you may have mis in stalled the 1 5K resistor at R21 It is easy to mistake a feedthru for the component pad on this part Digital Research Computers PO Box 401565 Garland TX 75040 Keyboard If your keyboard is not hooked up properly bit 7 is not grounded or driven low the BB will answer all or some of the commands with what Also a defec tive 74LS14 U112 or U114 can lead to a bad case of what Disk Drives If you have two drives jumpered as drive 0 LEDs turn on together then you may destroy the system tracks 0 and 1 on your disk SIO A lot of people don t realize that there is a difference between an SIO 0 and an SIO 1 or 2 By the way a DART will work just as well as an SIO as long as you do not plan any synchronous communica tions And who wants to do synchro nous work anyway Other Thoughts If your 12 V supply fails while a disk is loaded the 1771 will write garbage on the track where the head is destroying both the data and the formatting If your 5 V supply goes positive your 4116 RAMs may be damaged So you sho
67. iagram Dynadisk s main section is 256K bytes of memory The next section contains the address regis ters which appear to CP M as track and sector registers For the sake of efficien cy I set it up as 8 tracks with 256 sectors per track Each sector contains 128 bytes This means that the Dynadisk contains 8 256 128 or 262 144 bytes two to the 18th power I use software mapping to make my RAM disk look like the real thing i Transfers are initiated by selecting a track 0 7 and sending that byte to the track register then selecting a sector 0 255 and sending that byte to the sector register the status of PBO indicates which register is being primed LA Software 6708 Melrose Los Angeles CA 90038 213 932 0817 Then you drive PB1 low to turn off re fresh and initiate the 128 byte transfer Each time a byte is transferred the byte count refresh register is incremented Immediately after the 128 bytes have been transferred PB1 is brought high to turn on refresh again and Dyna waits for the next data transfer I have a detailed theory of operation along with complete schematics parts list and software listings but the whole package would more than fill a whole is sue of Micro C So I will provide all the above plus a disk of software for 25 By January I hope to have a PC board avail able for an additional 40 At that time I plan to have a complete kit available for 375 The complete package will include the
68. ices include media package amp 1st class postage air mail for Other Foreign NAME ADDRESS CITY Visa MasterCard US Can Other 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 4 MHz 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 Programmer Two Great Spells Customize Your Chars Two Text Editors Double Density update Scribble a Formatter Terminal in FORTH ISSUE 7 8 82 ISSUE 8 10 82 6 Reviews of C Drive Maintenance Adding 6 K of RAM Flippy Floppies Viewing 50 Hz Interfacing Drives Technical Tips Installing a New BIOS USERS DISK 9 1 CBIOS serial and parallel printer interface 2 KEYBOARD TRANSLATOR translate char 3 ADVENTURE 4 EPROM PROGRAMMER 2732s on the BB II US Can Other Mex Foreign Screen Editor in Small C 39 00 44 00 A full function
69. 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 Shipping weight 8 Modular power supply missing regulator card fits inside above monitor enclosure Includes large transformer that outputs 8 5 volts 017 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 25 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 a gt 5 79 2 O 2 39 1504 5 m i 3 2 x co
70. ins abort routines and messages BITNG BITMSG BUMFIL FILMSG E TOOBIG BIGMSG BUMRD ERRMSA ERRMS2 ERRMS3 ERRMS4 ERRMS5 ERRMS6 CRLF VERMSG E FINIS LD CALL JP DEFM LD CALL JP DEFM LD CALL RET DEFM DEFS DEFM DEFS DEFM DEFS DEFM DEFM END DE BITMSG PMSG FINIS CR LF Bits not all blank Aborting CR LF Not programmable DE FILMSG PMSG FINIS CR LF Improper file specification CR LF DE BIGMSG PMSG FINIS CR LF Too big for PROM CR LF DE RDMSG PMSG FINIS CR LF Bad read aborting CR LF 9 8005 Relative 4 will hold address 2 will hold bad PROM byte should 2 will hold source byte CR LF PROM verifies OK CR LF BOOT END Big Board Fixes By Ewing Waymire Not all Big Boards work when first powered up so the purpose of this arti cle is to help those who don t get that sometimes elusive system monitor 3 3 Background First a little information about the PFM monitor At power up the proc essor starts executing code from location 0000H in the ROM bank The first 16 in structions in the ROM move the rest of the monitor to high memory starting at F000H Following the move control is transferred to F000H If PFM is copied correctly if the RAM at is good and if there are no oth er basic proble
71. int where the media would last practically forever if users would handle the disks properly Bend ing dust and fingerprints are now the primary determinants of disk life You should see how folks ship disks to me Shame Shame You must keep them in their envelopes and mail them in real boxes Occasionally a manufacturer will go off on a tangent An example of this is Verbatim s attempt to use aluminum ox ide doesn t sound very magnetic does it in place of iron oxide Those disks haunted Verbatim for a long time In fact I had some and they were so bad that I still don t trust Verbatim though from what I ve found out I really shouldn t distrust them now During the time when Verbatim was having its problems I bought a number of BASFs I had absolutely no problems with them However this spring I had 820 Notes continued However we type LAret gt and more happens in HIMEM Overlays The first letter brings in an overlay from ROM into the aforementioned HIMEM EMTRY address and is executed there Sooner or later we get a very sheepish one line greeting from CP M We re up DIR brings back strange files CONFIGUR COM WHATSA COM BACKUP COM A bunch of funny oth ers What are they CONFIGUR allows a disk image or a memory image to be patched in many wonderful ways I OBYTE 7 8 bit KBD floppy step rate auto restart filenames video attributes hard disk partitions Several tables are stored in
72. is no rhyme nor reason for it There once was a journal so witty that it didn t belong in the city so it packed up its kit moved even the wit but it s still late which is surely a pity Letters continued on page 20 we we wo we 790 we c9 9 we we we 9 9 we 9 we we we 9 we 199 9 we we we we 99 wo 799 wo we PRINTER DRIVER WRITTEN BY DAVID THOMPSON 11 12 82 WRITTEN FOR THE 280 ASSEMBLER COMMAND LINES TO ASSEMBLE CROWE PRINT 2Z80 LOAD PRINT JUMPER JBN CHANNEL JB5 CHANNEL AS FOLLOWS 7 8 11 12 15 16 19 20 23 24 27 28 Suggested wiring for the printer cable Big Board printer usually 1 1 ground 2 3 transmit data from Big Board 4 6 request to send RTS from Big Board 5 20 clear to send CTS from printer 6 7 data set ready DSR tied high on the CTS can be whatever line the printer raises when it is ready to receive characters You only have to use the RTS or DSR lines if your printer requires a high level input from the computer before it will acknowledge by raising CTS ORG 100H UNCOMMENT THE PORT YOU WANT AND COMMENT OUT THE OTHER WITH PORT A ADDRESSES DATA EQU O4H PORT DATA ADDRESS STATUS EQU 06H PORT A STATUS ADDRESS BAUDGN EQU 00H ADDRESS OF PORT A BAUD RATE GEN PORT B ADDRESSES DATA EQU 05 PORT DATA ADDRESS 3STATUS EQU 07H PORT B STATUS ADDRESS BAUDGN EQ
73. jumpering for the drives These alterations are not well described in the MFE manuals To set up drive 0 as sides A and C cut HS1 Jumper HS2 and 051 and solder a wire from AS2 to DS3 the pins next to the numbers To set up drive 1 as sides B and D jumper 52 DS2 and AS4 DS stands for disk select AS stands for alternate select Rick Gerson Ontario Cancer Institute 500 Sherbourne St Toronto Ontario Canada M4X 1K9 double sided flippy normal single sided flippy normal single amp double sided flippy EXTRA HOLES PUNCHED FOR MFE DRIVES continued on next page Micro Cornucopia Number 9 December 1982 For Business School Engineering and Fun BLOCK GRAPHICS Based TRS 80 graphic characters TRUE 8x10 dot matrix characters This is the real thing Machine language routines include POINT Graphics such SET RESET TEST CHARACTER Graphics with direct video access such as PEEK POKE PRINT COMPLIMENT rectangular areas of the screen from a single block to the entire screen for SPECIAL EFFECTS 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 langua
74. lls called tape of raw 8 material from Scotch because they haven t perfected the coating process for this size How ever they have perfected the burnishing and it s only been recently that other manufacturers have figured out how to match Dysan s high quality finish Meanwhile Dysan is trying to increase its production substantially It ll be inter esting to see whether they can maintain their high quality during the expansion Vague Conclusion So the question still comes down to whose disks are best and whose are the best deal for the money Dysans are pre mium disks but you definitely pay for that quality Maxell is trying to compete with Dysan in the quality market but they are going to have to get their finish ing worked out and they aren t cheap Maxells probably will never be cheap be cause their marketing agents cut off sup plies to anyone caught discounting too much Beyond that it s up for grabs and various brands of disks have done well or poorly depending more on the phase of the moon or so it appears than on brand name Slight changes in one of the raw materials or in one of the manufac turing processes can have a significant effect on the quality of the product Most manufacturers strive to keep the number of defective disks down to one percent This is the percentage of disks that customers return which is not nec essarily good indication of the actual percentage which are bad Between two and f
75. m DCE on the other end This is why lines 2 3 and 4 5 are swapped be tween the two connectors On the BB I jumper pins 7 8 11 12 15 16 19 20 23 24 27 28 on either JB4 for channel A or JB5 for channel B On the new BB II jumper pins 3 4 7 8 11 12 15 16 19 20 23 24 on 1 for channel A or JB3 for channel B Now Modem7 YAM or even PIP can transfer data either way e dUTIL e e 23022 Yeary Lane N E P O Box 226 Aurora OR 97002 CI 125 00 CASH REBATE on your purchase of dBASE II N price before rebate Less rebate YOU PAY Other Specials for dBASE II users dBASE User s Guide Quickscreen Quickcode 590 00 125 00 465 00 27 60 125 00 225 00 65 00 NEW LOW PRICES x Word Processing Programs 24 95 A unique modular set 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 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
76. ms in this part of the sys tem then PFM will start its tasks PFM does a number of things before it can accept an input and sign on It dese lects the ROM bank clears the video RAM initializes the system PIO SIO CTC and 1771 Next it checks to see if you have an SIO and if so it starts poll ing both the SIO and the PIO to see which receives a carriage return charac ter first You can watch this polling process by checking the chip enables of the PIO and SIO to see if the processor is alternating selecting one and then the other If the monitor finds that an SIO is not in stalled then it goes ahead and signs on and waits for characters from the PIO Let s go down the list of the most com mon problems and see what usually works Is It a Dead Processor The first thing you need to check on a bad board is whether the processor is running Check the M1 line is pin 27 wiggling up and down to see if the processor is fetching opcodes If it is not running then either it is not receiving a good clock signal pin 6 or it is being held in a constant reset pin 26 stays low If you find either of these problems recheck all the related components to make sure they are in their proper places and not interchanged with others or in stalled in a feed through hole R43 is the most often misplaced component in this part of the board and people often inter change Q1 and Q2 Q2 helps make the rise time of the clock short enoug
77. of money to misplace On May 15 I received my keyboard and video modulator from Jade but still no drives and I was planning to use the power supply from the drives to power the BB On June 1 I called Jade and they told me that the drives had been shipped 2 weeks before by first class mail That meant that they should have already ar rived On June 15 I called Jade again The customer rep was very courteous after putting me on hold for 20 and told me I didn t exist He told me he would look into my problem and drop me a letter if he found out something Finally a note to frighten the stout hearted souls who are still following along If Jade ships my drives in one box rather than in two as I asked the weight will be 8 lbs over the air mail max imum Does the phrase slow boat to China mean anything to you Anyway if I ever get my BB up and running I promise to write and tell ev eryone how my system turned out Micro Cornucopia Number 9 December 1982 SRA David B Burgess Box 5921 APO NY 09012 21 C ing Clearly Column by Tony Ozrelic L A Software 6708 Melrose Los Angeles Ca 90038 Just a few beginning notes It appears that the Code Works is shipping version 2 0 of their Q C C compiler It comes with an all new 138 page manual which is even better than the original and the compiler has been improved too For in stance in conjunction with Microsoft s M80 assembler it generates
78. ol the waiting for vari ous menus that you may wish to alter to suit your own taste Zee Micro Cornucopia Number 9 December 1982 3 00 each US Can Mex BACK ISSUES ISSUE NO 1 8 81 Power Supply RAM Protection Video Wiggle Y PFM PRN 16 pages ISSUE NO 2 10 81 Parallel Print Driver Drive Motor Control Shugart Jumpers Program Storage Above PFM Y PFM PRN 16 pages ISSUE NO 3 12 81 4 MHz Mods Configuring Modem 7 Safer Formatter Reverse Video Cursor FORTHwords begins 16 pages ISSUE NO 4 2 82 Keyboard Translation More 4 MHz Mods Modems Lync and SIOs Undoing CP M ERASE Keyboard Encoder 20 pages ISSUE NO 5 4 82 Word Processing Two Great Spells Two Text Editors Double Density Review Scribble a Formatter 20 pages ISSUE NO 6 6 82 BB EPROM Programmer Customize Your Chars Double Density Update Self Loading ROM Terminal in FORTH 24 pages ISSUE NO 7 8 82 6 Reviews of C Adding 6K of RAM Viewing 50 Hz On Your Own begins 24 pages ISSUE NO 8 10 82 Drive Maintainance Interfacing Drives Installing a New BIOS Flippy Floppies C ing Clearly begins Xerox 820 begins 28 pages ISSUE NO 9 12 82 BB EPROM Program Relocating Your CP M Serial Print Driver Big Board Fixes Bringing Up Wordstar Cheap RAM Disk 32 pages 5 00 each MICRO CORNUCOPIA Other Foreign A Cheap RAM Disk For I By Tony Ozrelic Faced with ever lengthening com
79. omplete with drives for what you would charge for a 6 month service contract If your client s system goes down just swap Then you can re pair the defective system at your leisure or have someone else work on it Meanwhile as business grows and you get busy writing data base handlers or whatever you are going to need other folks who will put together anything from assembled and tested boards to complete hard disk systems Do you hardware types smell a market Finally if you keep ownership of the software then it s very possible you will find a larger market medium size con nection among people in the same busi ness So you advertise in Micro C or wherever to sell your software to other computer folks interested in selling com plete packages with your software in their area And of course it doesn t take very many 20 000 systems 500 a month service contracts to keep bacon on table and eggs and frozen waffles ks 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 BIG BOARD 1 Used 6 months Assem bled by Bill Siegmund Includes Software Publishers dual density 500 with documentation Harry Siegmund 808 536 4624 27 Especially For The Big Board USER S DISK 1 Over 200K of software especially for the Big Board Including 1 Two fast disk copiers 2 The manu
80. ort for easy system expansion w The new Ferguson computer has a 280 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 processor overhead When a hard disk subsystem is added the DMA chip makes impressive disk performance possible CAL TEX COMPUTERS INC flv Iw AD 504 SAN JOSE 95131 408 942 1424 695 FULL KIT 245 PC BOARD WITH EPROM amp PALS SIZE 8 75 x 15 5 POWER 5V 12V SASI Interface for Winchester Disks Our Big Board 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 B Two Synchronous Asynchronous Serial Ports With a Z80 A SIO O and 280 as a baud rate generator the new Ferguson computer has two full RS232 C ports It autobauds on both B A Parallel Keyboard Po
81. our percent of my Scotch disks are bad Colin has said that he hasn t seen any returns of the 1982 BASF disks the last digit of the number on the back is a 2 They had lots of returns of their ear lier product It sounds to me as if most of the disk manufacturers have gotten their trips to gether If so there are some real bargains available in the disk market I ve started testing a batch of the new BASFs and haven t had any problems so far If you want to try some of their latest disks look for the boxes with qualimetric stickers on them Qualimetric must be another word for 1982 l Micro Cornucopia Number 9 December 1982 XEROX 820 CABLES XEROX 820 cable harness assemblies for J5 J6 J7 Power Monitor Power Monitor Signal Ground Connector All cables have Xerox speci fied AmP connectors on one end The other end is open Schematics of cables included 20 00 per set ppd U S FULL SET XEROX 820 SCHEMATICS 5 00 NUF Computer Co Inc 99 Pennsylvania Ave Nexton MA 02164 617 964 8041 VISA amp MASTERCARD ACCEPTED FORTHwords Column by Arne A Henden A lot has happened in the FORTH world over the last couple of months and we may have passed a new milestone This month s column includes informa tion from two new contributors Philip Plumbo and Ward Harold We welcome user contributions especially when they are of this quality
82. our unbelievable offer Send me JRT Pascal by return mail understand that if I m not completely satisfied can return it within 30 days with the sealed diskette unopened for a full refund Payment is enclosed by C Check Mastercharge D VISA Amount Shipping outside North America 6 CA residents add sales tax Card t COE Signature Name Address Zip CP M is a Digital Research trademark A 52K CP M system is required MICRO CORNUCOPIA P O Box 223 Bend Oregon 97709 503 382 8048 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 nucopia of Oregon P O Box 223 Bend Oregon 97709 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 CHANGE OF ADDRESS Please send old label and new address SOFTWARE HARDWARE AND BOOK VENDORS We would very much like to r
83. pile time and an insatiable need for speed my BB already runs at 5MHZ I ve de signed a 256K RAM board plus the soft ware to make it appear to bea single den sity drive seen assembly time for 11K of source reduced from 30 seconds to 7 sec onds and compilation time for a 18K C source has been reduced from 5 minutes 20 seconds to 3 minutes 26 seconds Generally I ve noticed that programs that access the disk a lot show the most improvement which would include edi tors like Mince and Wordstar How It Works The RAM disk which I call Dynadisk is connected to the BB via the user PIO at J5 After booting up CP M you execute DYNA COM which patches the disk I O calls in the monitor initializes the PIO and relocates itself to F800 just above the PFM monitor The program all 200 bytes of it moni tors the disk I O calls looking for refer ences to drive D Accesses to drive D are translated into accesses to the RAM board Additional Software SWAP COM swaps drive A and drive D so Dynadisk becomes drive A and the real disk drive becomes drive D DCOPY COM will copy all of real drive A to drive D Dynadisk It takes about 45 seconds to copy 241K And of course you can reverse the process and copy the Dynadisk onto a real disk in 45 seconds Editor s note are you single drive folks listening DFORMAT COM formats the Dyna disk to look like the disk format Theory of Operation In the block d
84. r 10 megabytes The second delightful surprise has been the power supply sold by BG Micro of Dallas I did some snooping around on the circuit board after it arrived and I must say the quality is first class Every thing their ad says is true Billy Gage owner didn t mention who manufactured the supply but I noticed a small metal tag which read mfg by Teletype Corp Two of us got these supplies along with the 24V mod kits We are changing the 12 to 24 and then using the 12V mod from issue 1 page 4 to reduce a little of the 24 to 12 You can use a 7812 3 terminal regulator in place of the LM317 We had only two problems with the supplies First Billy threw in a couple of special 110V connectors for the supplies a nice surprise but he sent male pins for the connectors rather than the female pins that we needed so we just soldered in the AC cord Second the heat sensor on the master oscillator had opened dur ing shipping and we spent several hours with volt meters locating the problem When we found the cause all we had to do is push the little reset button on the sensor and everything worked fine continued on page 26 Dear Editor I am interested in adding graphics to my system Thomas Hameenaho issue 7 page 2 said that only half the charac ter generator chip is being used Could the other half be used for simple graphic characters If you were to offer this in an EPROM with instructions I would b
85. re gates already on the BB It produces a pleasing tone for about one third sec ond Video signal LCO is the audio source All you have to add is an amplifier and speaker My video monitor has an audio section I added two resistors as a volt age divider to handle the coupling be tween the BB and the monitor s audio in put Gary Hvizdak 1107 Country Club Ct 19 Bellevue NE 68005 5v 4 BEL Vill pn9 U9 ping T6 pin AUDIO New Products Q C Version 2 0 Just after the reviews of C hit the street Jim Colvin finished a substantial revision of his Q C compiler He has added unsigned integers in itialize ifdef ifndef and if else endif If you want to keep your Glance table issue 7 page 7 up to date check off the above Also Q C only supports single dimension arrays so you might want to correct the table while you are at it More improvements Constant expressions are evaluated at compile time Optional verbose mode prints name of function as it is compiled Improved error handling better type checking and recovery Peephole code optimization Larger fancier manual 145 pages Undeclared arguments default to in teger Static externals when used with M80 Expanded library including sprintf fprintf ungetc getkey redirection is now optional Printf is now standard Binary I O The price of version 2 0 is 95 but those
86. re writing the code or the life of your product could be very short Change can be a great advantage if you predict the market correctly and have the right product ready at the right time Then your only financial problems will be with the IRS For instance if you guessed correctly that the 68000 processor was going to be the next big winner IBM is reportedly working on another system that may completely replace their PC and you guessed correctly which operating sys tem they would use you d be someone we d all admit knowing However IBM insiders already have this information and already preparing to take advan tage of it IBM is selling 10 000 PC s a month so it doesn t take advanced math to figure out what some folks are making off IBM compatible software and hardware Medium Size Connections There are smaller connections that in clude selling hardware or software by mail order Billy Gage BG Micro is probably not lying awake nights won dering where the next dollar is coming from He knows because he is offering a lot of products good service and some very good prices ICI is doing quite well selling soft ware Their overhead is low enough that they can make good money on margins that would strangle larger outfits This area has its own special set of problems like waiting weeks or months for the software packages to ship to anx ious purchasers We ll discuss some of the problems of mail order
87. rer to answer my letters and misleading advertising The manu facturer did not mention that the firmware code in ROM was only avail able on disk that part that was available Pascal Z continued A final hassle for me is related to my needs Database systems presented the most practical uses for computers to me in close competition with word process ing Pascal can be used to build pretty powerful database systems The prob lem is when you need to add a field to each record you must redefine so much of the program that it is not a mod ification it is major surgery and one has designed a database program generator to create Pascal code Conclusion Lest things sound dismal I found Pas cal much more to my liking than BASIC I have joined the Pascal Z User Group primarily because I learn most of my pro gramming by seeing how somebody else solved a problem then adapting his pro gram Like the Micro Cornucopia bunch that I met at Portland in June this is a personable group Pascal programs are much easier to read than their BASIC counterparts It is far easier to remember what you pro grammed 6 months ago or read and un derstand what someone else pro grammed For me this is well worth the price of the compiler 20 at all Also the buyer has to have anoth er CP M machine to bring up the system or has to shell out another 99 for a starter kit I plan to dig through the code and find
88. rguson computer runs at 4 MHz Its Monitor code is lean uses Mode 2 interrupts and makes good use of the 280 chip B 64K Dynamic RAM 4K Static CRT RAM 24K E E PROM or Static RAM Big Board II has three memory banks The first memory bank has eight 4164 DRAMSs 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 Multiple Density Controller for SSIDS Floppy Disks The new single board computer has 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 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 p
89. rms of features or user friendli ness In terms of price there is no comparison Note Disk Inspector requires an 80 x 24 screen on your CRT and is currently available only in 8 SSSD Kaypro Apple Softcard NEC and Altos Series 5 formats Apple Softcard KAYPRO II 5 NEC 5 O NorthStar 5 DD O ALTOS Series 5 Televideo TS 802 Osborne O Superbrain Amount 25 for Micro WYL 29 95 for Disk Inspector 2 for postage and handling Total LEAP INTO A NEW DIMENSION t i WITH AZTEC 60226 NOD3HO GN38 XOS O d jeusnor swayshs peog 2 UL 120900040 09010 Full implementation of with standard floating point library and I O subroutines UNIX VER 7 compatible Produces relocatable 8080 optional 0780 assembler code Relocating assembler and linker supplied with package or use Microsoft M80 and L80 SID ZSID debugger interface FAST COMPILATION AND EXECUTION AZTEC FOR CP M 199 Special price for Micro C subscribers 149 MANX software systems uno Box 55 Shrewsbury N J 07701 901 780 4004 Also available for Apple DOS HDOS CP M 86 PC DOS UNIVERS AL 12 Green Ball Brothers monitor with enclosure measuring 19 x ENCLOSURE 16 5 x 14 Room inside to mount a Ferguson single board computer small 55 50 5 100 system Power supply available see be low Requires 15 volts DC 1 5 amps noncomposite separate sync
90. rt 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 O Two 280 CTCs Eight Programmable Counters Timers The new Ferguson computer has two Z80 A CTCs One is used to clock data into and out of the 280 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 5 or pin compatible EEPROMs B CP M with Russell Smith s CBIOS for the new 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 MAS Sine SES Z861 raquiazeq 6 Jaquiny etdosnus0D ODI BB II EPROM PROGRAM LISTING gt 2 78 5 zz m SIS RASA RERO wh TEE a OF TITLE PROGRAMMER 2732 5 o T 5 B lt a 3 8 8 FO 9 This routine reads a CP M COM file of maximum size 4k bytes So Sea ee and burns it in a 2732 installed in U80 of BIGBOARD II The B Be See sys 2732 is 1st checked against te code to be burned in to be
91. s 514 floppies Rondure has schematics for the 820 at 5 00 apiece al though I don t know if the prints are available separately If not I have prints for the same price Coming Up Next issue I will talk about the slick non destructive RAM test used in the 820 as well as theimproved CRT han dler and the new monitor entry points See you then About the last column I made an error on last issue s info It s the RIGHT ARROW not the DOWN ARROW which sends C Sorry Editor s note John caught an error I added while editing his last column He pointed out that 5 drives do not do their own data separation as there is no line on the interface for FDCLK The 8 separator is used just as on the BB and the internal separator of the 1771 is used for 5 just like Radio Shack did to their eternal em barrassment 12 Micro Cornucopia Number 9 December 1982 problems with two batches in a row I had a marginal drive but the BASFs were the only disks that it threw up on According to Colin Thompson the BASF technical rep the disks produced in 1981 the last character of the ID on the back is a 1 had problems I checked and all my flakey disks ended in 1 He says they have done a major re engi neering for 1982 the number ends in 2 and they have not had any of the new ones returned Drive problems Colin also mentioned that many of the complaints that disk manufacturers are now
92. s better than the 100 commercial rou tines 7 SQ USQ squeeze and unsqueeze files Users Disks 15 00 each US Can Mex USER S DISK 2 Especially for folks with single drive systems and those who 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 USER S 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
93. screen editor plus formatter written in Small C and setup for the BB Over 400K on disk including source documenta tion and the Small C compiler Small 924 00 29 00 This is simple extension of Small C see pg 6 of issue 7 The source and documentation are on the disk Your Fortune in the Microcomputer Business M 26 45 36 45 This two volume set contains the most useful and complete working for yourself infor mation that I ve seen ENCLOSED U S funds only please payable on a U S bank Make checks payable to MICRO CORNUCOPIA 280 CP M sortware HIGH QUALITY LOW COST Realworld Software Inc is committed to providing quality software at extremely low prices We achieve this by reducing overhead to essentially marketing and reproduction costs We rely on responses from ads rather than a distribution network We invite you to consider the following two products Micro Wyl 2 a powerful 280 CP M text editor Micro WYL is undoubtedly the hottest software bargain on the market thank you thank you thank you Micro WYL is truly terrific Looks like the 25 invested in this program was money well spent Those are quotes from unsolicited letters from our customers We do offer a great editor at an unbelievably low price WYLBUR has been popular on IBM mainframes for over a decade Micro WYL implements all of the
94. son In the first two installments of this column we discussed some of the busi ness of working for others However many consultants are simply high paid short term employees I started out working for others in this mode but with Micro CI m definitely do ing my own business I like this much better You ve no doubt been wondering what kind of business you could start that would generate some very real in come and get you totally away from em ployeehood Of course your mother can tell you that the possibilities in this field are endless and she probably has The problem is that you haven t connected with the endless possibility that will work for you So let s see if we can t connect you with something workable Great Big Connections There are BIG connections that you can make by writing a new compiler in terpreter screen editor data base lan guage spread sheet handler etc How ever this is such a visible and competitive field that you need some thing special to crack it now That doesn t mean you can t do it but it helps a lot to have a combination of right place right time and a little ge nius This also requires a tie in with a good marketing outfit or a lot of time moxy and money to get it off the ground by yourself The marketplace is changing very rap idly which is both a disadvantage and an advantage Change can be a disad vantage because the market could well disappear while you a
95. sure A S E 8226 Qe 9 no 70 levels are to be programmed to 717 Note that the 2732 Q 5 o gi 9 so 9 need not be blank To achieve maximum speed only those loca a a 9 i ER 2 e685 98 amp tions needing to be programmed actually receive the 50 ms prog E 8 a 9 E M lt PN me ramming pulse Following programming the 2732 is verified 5 z H 0 NE and any errors reported The program can possibly be modified S LAR is gt 5 a 19 a to burn other PROMS but the reader should proceed with caution lt 8 Programming requirements vary considerably gt mm 0 k S a 5 99 i eS Fz lt jumpering for U 80 is follows 92 75 TM e IZ pin 18 REC5 NONU ELE 20 to OE VPP5 pin 21 RA11 i HL D DURLAND A MAXREC 663 Georgia Ave HL least significant byte Palo Alto CA 94306 C TOOBIG MAXREC records maximum 415 493 4984 3 fill with FF 1st edit 11 1 82 t remove reference to 2716 8 l edit 10 21 82 to nelude jumper information l 7 LD HL SRCMEM LD DE SRCMEM 1 the program is intended to be assembled using 80 LD HL OFFH LD BC ROMSIZ byte count Instructins for use LDIR do 1t Your code should be stored in a CP M file Js To program for example EX
96. t to your keyboard with a saw and file but it is easy to do I also have a Shugart 801R R stands for rackmount it is the standard model and is slightly shorter than the 801 in a drive cabinet The second 801 I pur chased was the non R version When I discovered that it was too large to fit into _the cabinet I cut some aluminum off the top ofthe drive chassis and off both sides of the front panel The new drive fit the enclosure but I could not get it to work Obviously the metal work was too much of a shock to the mechanism Ijust got it back from the disk drive service and hopefully it s OK now If your BB controls the AC to the drive motors here s a hint Break the board run to pin 2 on BB J1 floppy interface and then connect pin 2 to pin 7 on the power connector Now you can pick up the power control signal at the disk drive rather than having to run an extra wire to the drive cabinet Question Has anyone connected an electronic Olivetti or IBM typewriter to the BB I would like to hear from that person Perhaps someone in Ger many S Seiffert Uhlgasse 43 5309 Meckenheim Merl West Germany Dear Editor Thanks for sending Tiny Basic so quickly I ended up not using it in the prototype of the gizmo was working on but intend to use it on the next version if they order any more Now about adding additional memo ry to the BB I have only done a paper design so far I have to get the paying projects
97. the Magic from FORTH Mr Kogge cautioned the FORTH communi ty that If we wish to avoid being con fined to the dustbins of technology we must make a conscious effort to de mys FORTH DIMENSIONS INTERRUPT HANDLER COMMENTS SAVE REG is a macro which generates code to save the machine INTERRUFT SERVICE is the code word which the interrupt is vectored to it saves the machine loads the IP with the FFA of INTERRUPT and jumps to the inner interpreter gt INTERRUPT installs word as the high level service routine in INTERRUFT TEST where TEST is the high 12 VECTOR INTERRUFT sets INTERRUFT SERVICE up as the service 14 15 SCR 259 VARIABLE CNTR CNTR 1 2 HEX 3 4 FF12 VECTOR INTERRUPT 5 6 INITCTC 027 18 18 7 8 KILLCTC 05 18 PC 9 10 DECIMAL 11 12 TEST CNTR 13 IF 1 CNTR 7 EMIT ELSE 14 15 SINTERRUPT TEST SCR 258 amp it and emits a beep 0 A ihe VARIABLE INTERVAL 13 routine for the vector address on the stack INTERVAL 70807 19 PC 50 19 FC gas 19 PC INTERVAL 1 CNTR THEN FORTH DIMENSIONS INTERRUPT HANDLER EXAMPLE COMMENTS FF12 VECTOR INTERRUPT sets INTERRUPT SERVICE up as the service routine for vector address MFF12 INITCTC sets CTC channels and up to do 1 sec interrupts KILLCTC stops the generation of CTC interrupts TEST increments CNTR until it equals INTERVAL and then resets 12 SINTE
98. two ways of putting record ing material on a disk The oldest and most common way is called knife coating and everyone but Maxell appears to be using this method The method Maxell now uses is called roto gravure and is a very similar to the precision printing technique of the same name The roto gravure technique is new to disk manufacturing and though it pro vides the best control over emulsion thickness Maxell hasn t figured out how to produce a smooth non abrasive sur face They are working on it night and day It turns out that the thinner the coating the higher the data density be cause the magnetic information written onto the disk surface cannot fan out as far when the coating is very thin And this new coating method makes it possi ble for Maxell to make their coatings thinner because they are so consistent Meanwhile they are having a problem with abrasion The tiny particles of iron oxide that store the information are quite abrasive so it s important to make the disk surface as smooth as possible and impregnated with lubricant It s also im portant that any particles kicked loose by the head be picked up immediately by the fabric envelope liner because these particles can damage the head and dam age the disks that follow Media life I asked Colin Thompson the BASF technical rep about differences between brands in terms of media life He said that all the manufacturers have ad vanced to the po
99. uld double check your power supplies if problems occur Although our customers are some of the best computer whizzes around 9 out of 10 boards we get back for repair have at least one IC pin bent under or out or have bad solder joints The memory test is not infallible We have seen cases where bad memory chips have passed the test If your pro grams act weird and your power sup plies and software are OK then suspect the RAM Swap rows of memory around to see if the problem changes Finally About 19 out of 20 BBs work on the first try I hope the above hints will help with the other 1 out of 20 SSS a I ISCU CRUCE DR 32 0 ADT CIA 2 22415 NUNG UAM CM UU NUMEN LIN UK UP KD NK PI NT UM KIM A I OTT ET 8 Micro Cornucopia Number 9 December 1982 Relocating Your CP M By Pseud O Nym In Micro C 2 Dave notes that in the CP M distributed with the Big Board the BIOS starts at E800 while most 60K ver sions start at 00 You can modify the BIAS definition and reassemble the CBIOS but it is still necessary to relocate CP M to accommodate this CBIOS Many of you with the BB version may like myself want to return to the stand ard CP M 00 BIOS to recover wasted space and be compatible with the majority of 60K CP M systems I had to laugh at the note about maintaining con sistency we would have been consis t
100. ut together user disk 71 2 Disks This issue contains the disk article that I didn t have room to run in issue 8 Sandy read through the article and de cided she didn t like it because it didn t come to very many good solid conclu sions about which brands of disks you should buy and which you should avoid Outside of the obvious winner Dy san and the obvious losers Maxell Wabash and possibly 3M what you purchase is pretty much up to you Vari ations from one batch to the next appear to make it nearly impossible to rank the rest of the brands how s that for a con clusion Overall it appears that disks are get ting better especially in terms of media life After all Elephant is guaranteeing that its disks will never forget and they are simply rebranding Wabash product the shortest lived brand on the market I m trying to find a good source of disks other than the 3Ms I m now using too many errors Hopefully I can tie down some BASFs A Narrow View of Drives Shugart has just announced half wide drives the single sided 810 and the double sided 860 They feature fast start beltless DC drive motors and no head load solenoids It sounds very much like Shugart has just announced the latest Tandon drive They are supposed to be absolutely com patible with the 801 and 851 right down to the mounting holes However be cause the drives shut themselves down you are probably doing to have to change
101. very good two year computer hardware and software programs That means that there is a pool of technically trained peo ple both instructors and students Plus thereisan unusually large community of artists musicians and other creative sorts wholive here because of the quality of life keep you all posted on how this grand experiment is working but I may be a little biased by all the friendliness and trust the local people have shown us Thisis the first post office I ve visited that accepts out of town checks from strangers without asking for any ID Prices of New Products After you re involved in computers for a while you get pretty good at predicting what things are going to sell for and I pride myself with being as astute as the next guy However I ve been delightful ly surprised lately First the hard disk interface that Andy Bakkers put together for the Big Board I is definitely one of those surprises It connects up and works with so little muss and fuss that itis easy to forget you are adding an incredible amount of memory to your system With five mega bytes on drive A the big board is ready to take its place with heavyweight busi ness systems When you look at 240 for the interface with software and 995 for both the drive and the controller how can you go wrong See the Your Own column this issue for some thoughts about doing your own trip based on the Big Board I or II and 5 o
102. will translate key board characters one to one or one to many In fact a single keystroke can start execution of a user written function Two functions are already installed both display the contents of the processor registers immediately before the key was struck the first then returns to the program the second does a warm boot Ken Stephenson uses this for his debugging 3 ADVENTURE This is the latest greatest most cussed adventure ever devised by mortals This is the 550 point ver sion donated by Lynn Cochran from SIG M volume 11 And I ll tell you the cave is GREATLY EXPANDED and the crea tures are much smarter At least smarter than I am so far 4 EPROM PROGRAMMER This is 2732 programmer soft ware for the BB II It checks the ROM to verify that it can be programmed And it only programs the bytes that are to be changed MICRO CORNUCOPIA Box 223 Bend Oregon 97709 g gt A daughter board that plugs into the 1771 socket With this board the system employs automatic density select g gt Software Publishers Dual Density gives you several choices You 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
103. y high in an 10 dot matrix fora Switch not included Address City from user disk 3 I send the disk back if you ask for it and I put your choice of user disk on it besides Most folks send an extra disk upon which I put the free user disk so that I can keep the original submission in my files muchly appreciated But either way is fine Put the disk in a small box thick enough that it won t fold Then write on it MAG NETIC DISK DO NOT FOLD Even then the post office manages to fold about 10 per cent of them However the small thin card board disk mailers get folded over half the time Anyone who says postpersons are lazy has never seen what they can do to a package Dear Editor Iam in the U S Air Force and am sta tioned in Germany On February 12 I or dered a Big Board from DRC some hard ware from Jade and a subscription to Micro C from you by the way Micro C is probably the best users group newsletter I ve ever had the pleasure to subscribe to By March 15 I had received my Micro C and a letter from Jade saying that the 1200 I had sent was insufficient On May 1 I called Jade cost 5 cents per second only to have them tell me Shipping included in price Will be available soon outside i l i Payment i Check Money order Amt i USA Shipped via UPS 6 to 10 weeks after your order received State Zip that I didn t exist 1200 is a lot

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