Micro_Cornucopia_#33_Dec87 Micro Cornucopia #33 Dec87
Micro_Cornucopia_#33_Dec87 Micro_Cornucopia_%2333_Dec87
User Manual: Micro_Cornucopia_#33_Dec87
Open the PDF directly: View PDF 
.
Page Count: 100
| Download | |
| Open PDF In Browser | View PDF |
$3.00
December-January 1987
Low Level Projects
From Boots To Device Drivers: Secrets Of MS-DOS . ...... 6
A clean, in-depth look at making MS-DOS work for you.
De bugging A Disk .................................... 12
This companion to "Secrets of MS-DOS" uses DEBUG to poke around in MS-DOS.
Professionalize Your Programs Using
Turbo Pascal's Built-in System Procedures . ............. . 16
Turbo Pascal gives you assembly language style access to MS-DOS interrupts.
Controlling The Real World With Your PC:
Intro To Electronics Step 2 ............................. 22
This is the second part of Bruce's fine series. A great hardware primer.
PD-32: Messages From The Board . ..................... . 28
The Public Domain 32000 system is hot. The latest developments.
Selecting Subsets From Sets:
The Formula For Combinations In Prolog . .............. . 34
N
,.,
00
00
r<"I
0-
.-
0
I'~
~
I'0
Real-life solutions to. real-life problems.
Introduction To Fractals-. .............................. . 36
If you haven't watched a fractal eat its way across
your screen, you've missed something.
- '/r
-. "
"~ ,~
Borland's Turbo Lightning FREE
-:' .,\;;;
'. . . . . ,CiiPSr;N¥~'agd . •.. ~., ~e~~r~te·t'
Extra~wide,easy~to
, '~ ,:
.',
:
....,.
-
---;:::.:;::::' :-, ~ '<.":~.; ;:~. ::: .'....;<; .;... :~: ~:::. ,-, ;~
find Rf!tum key..... ' .. ' ..•
. IBM changed Sizes'
again by shrinking their .....
Return key. --....----..;
/'
. Scroll.Lock
'.
. indicator lights;.
.. IBM has no lights
. orfthelr
,dedicated
NiiineiiCPad
with enlargeq
'. £nre; key,foilr
•Arithmetic
-....;.....;..-.- Function keys.
xr.
. Switchselectable
. compatibility ...
with IBM, PC;
XT, AT,' PCjr,
AT&T and all
.' compatibles.
IBM's new
Enhanced
Keyboard runs
only on their
newXTs,ATs
and ignores
their installed
base which
. probably inc/iJdes you. .......---..:.....
DESK'S
101 ENHANCED KEYBOARD
Switch allows you - - - . to swap position of
Ctrl and Caps lock.
IBM moved Ctrl to
bottom row, you have
nochoicet
for the 10 million PC users IBM just ignored!
IBM just announced their new
redesigned "standard" keyboard for personal computers. There's only one problem:
it won't work on your IBM computer if it
was purchased priortoJune 19860ron any
PC compatible purchased at any time!
Not to worry. Our new Turbo-101 Enhanced
Keyboard gives you the layout and enhancements of the IBM with some logical
improvements (see above photo). And it
works on your existing PC, XT, AT, PCjr,
AT&T, Epson and virtually all compatibles!
I
Get Borland's Turbo Lightning ™
For FREE!
To really turbocharge
/
your productivity, we are·/
including, tree-ot-charge,
ur~o
~
.. ."
B?rlan.d's red-hot
. .. ' .i.;"'. . • .:.H.:
. . .,.•.
Llghtnmg sottware with
.' / ·····r:
each keyboard. Now,
when using SideKick, WordPerfect, Microsoft Word, 1-2-3 or most popular programs,
our Turbo-101 Keyboard will check your
spelling as you type, gives you instant
access to Random House's 80,000-word
Concise Dictionary and 60,000-word
Thesaurus and much, much more!
7i..
SPECIAL OFFER!
ONLY $149.95*
. . .'
~.
The Turbo-101 Is the best data entry tool
since the pencil!
For users of spreadsheets like 1-2-3, the
Turbo-101's separate cursor controls and
numeric keypad makes entering numeric
data into cells and moving from cell to cell
as natural as moving your fingers. And for
word-processing, the 'Selectric' typewriter
layout makes the Turbo-101as easy to
use as a pencil; and with the extra large \
Enter, Shift & Control Keys, you'll make so
few mistakes, you won't even need an
eraser!
"Lightning's good enough to make
programmers and 'users cheer, executives
of other software companies weep," says
Jim Seymour of PC Week. Sold separately,
fThrbo Lightning retails for '99.951
FOR BOTH
KEYBOARD & SOFTWARE
Includes 30-day money back
guarantee and 2 year full warranty.
To prove that we don't ignore you
or your pocketbook, you get our
Turbo-101 Enhanced Keyboard and
Borland's Turbo Lightning for an
astounding $149.95.* No, you didn't
read it wrong. During this amazing
Introductory Offer you get both
keyboard and software for Jess
than most software programs ;
by themselvesl Now, if you're
still feeling ignored, you can
always do what you-know-who
wants you to do, ..and buy
a new computer to get their
keyboard!
credit card orders call
(800) 826-5398
INTERNATIONAL
7650 Haskell Avenue
Van Nuys, California 91406 (818) 780-1673
Turbo-l0l is a trademark of DataDesk International. Turbo Lightning is a
trademark of Borland International. IBM and IBM AT are registered trademarks of International Business Machines, Inc.
in CA ca/l
(800) 592-9602
'Price does not include adaptor
cables required by certain compat·
ibles • A limited offer-price subject
to change without notification.
Up to now, DataDesk International may be one of
the best kept secrets, but here's what's being said
about our first end-user Keyboard/Borland
software bundle:
"Wbo Can Pass up a Deal?
Department. Talk about an
aggressive product!"
Jobn C. Dvorak,
InfoWorld Mar 86
"It's a good keyboard. Good
feel: tbe keys have tactile
feedback. No musb at all.
This is about as good a keyboard deal as you're likely
toflnd
... 1 bave absolutely no
"It solves all oftbe problems
besltatlon In recommendexblblted by tbelr regular
Ing tbe Model PC8700."
PC/XT keyboard ... It's a
Jerry Pournellf:.
great bargain!"
Byte
Magazine Sept. 86
PC Productivity Digest
May 86
"This keyboard Is neat to
"DataDesk Inti. bas designed type on and feels solid. It
a sturdy and bandsome key- bas tactilefeedback keys... 1
can type m~chfaster on It."
board tbat bas tactile reTest Drive Scorecard:
sponse... is tbe bardware
DataDesk-l0 Key Tronlcs-9
bargain oftbe year" says
Cbarles Humble, Oregonian Teleconnect Magazine
May 86
Jan 86
NEW,
improved Turbo
Pascal to ModuIa-2
Translator!
•
•
•
•
Separate Compilation
Native Code Generation
Large Memory Model Support
Multitasking
III Powerful DebuggingTools
• Comprehensive Module
Library
• Available for the PC
and the VAX
Call for information about our VAX/VMS
version, Site License, University Discounts,
Dealer & Distributor pricing.
To place an order call our special
toll free number:
800-231-7717
MODULA-2/86
1.:--------,
Move up to LOGITECH
MODULA-2/86. Whether
you're a single programmer or part of a team,
with LOGITECH MODULA-2/86 you'll
decrease your overall development cycle
and produce more reliable, more maintainable code. Build your program using our
extensive library modules, your own
modules or those from a growing list of
available third-party software vendors. If
you're a Turbo Pascal user you can even
take your existing code along with you with
the help of our new Translator!
NEW & IMPROVED!
Turbo Pascal to
Modula-2 Translator
Now it's even easier for Turbo users to step
up to Modula-2/86. Our improved Translator changes your Turbo source code into
Modula-2/86 source, solving all the incompatibilities, and translating the function
calls of Turbo into Modula-2/86 procedures.
Implements the complete Turbo library!
LOGITECH MODULA-2/86
589
Complete with Editor, Run Time System,
Linker, 8087 Software Emulation, Binary
Coded Decimal (BCD) Module, Logitech's
comprehensive lihrary, Utility to generate
standard .EXE files. AND more!
• LOGITECH MODULA-2/86 .
with 8087 Support
5129
• LOGITECH MODULA 2/86 PLUS 5189
For machines with 512K of RAM. Takes
advantage of larger memory to increase
compilation speed by 50%.
Turbo Pascal is a registered trademark of Borland
International.
In California:
800-552-8885
RUN TIME DEBUGGER
(Source level!)
The ultimate professional's tool! Display
source code, data, procedure call chain and
raw memory. Set break points, assign values
to variables, pinpoint bugs in your source.
549
UTILITIES PACKAGE
Features a post-mortem debugger (PMD).
If your program crashes at run time the
PMD freezes the situation so you can pinpoint, in the source, the cause of the error
and the status of the data. Also includes a
disassembler, cross reference utility and version that allows conditional compilation.
LIBRARY SOURCES
Source code for our major library modules
is now available for customization or exemplification.
WINDOW PACKAGE
Now you can build true windowing into
your Modula-2 code. Powerful, though only
15K in size. Features virtual screens, color
support, overlapping windows and a variety
of borders.
MAKE UTILITY
829
Automatically selects modules affected by
code changes to minimize recompilation
and relinking. Even figures out dependencies for you!
CROSS RUN TIME DEBUGGER
AND ROM PACKAGE
5199
Now available at an introductory price!
YES
I want to move up to
LOG ITECH MODULA-2!86!
Here's the configuration I'd like:
D
S89
S129
S189
S49
S69
S49
S99
S49
S29
S199
Logitech Modula-2!86
D with 8087 support
D Plus Package
D Turbo to Modula Translator
D Run Time Debugger
D Utilities Package
D Library Sources
D Window Package
D Make Utility
D ROM Package
$,_ _ __
Total Enclosed
o Visa 0
Mastercard 0 Check Enclosed
Expiration Date
Card Numher
Signature
Name
Address
City. State
Zip
~
Phone
LOGITECH
Logitech. Inc.
805 Veterans Blvd.
Redwood City. CA 94063
Telephone 415-365-9852
L
For European pricing please colltact:
Logitech SA
Box 32. CH-1l43
Apples. Switzerland
_ _Telephone
_ _41-21-774545
____
---1I
AROUND THE BEND
High Places
Up In The Air
I just got back from a quick trip to Florida, and the part
I liked best was the plane ride.
It wasn't the scenery Sure, all those mountains, rivers, and deserts are
fascinating and I haven't gotten tired of the plains with
its checkerboard of 80-acre fields and 6-acre towns. I
always ask for a window seat so I can make nose
impressions on the plexiglass.
It was dusk as we departed Chicago so I watched as
small towns were swallowed up in the deepening
twilight. Soon, however, they reappeared below us,
twinkling like reflected stars.
The travel was the best part because I had nothing to
do but sit in my seat and nod as stewardesses came
around with beverages, meals, magazines, and pillows.
There were no phone calls, no "Should we stay with
16,000 copies on this run?" or "Have you finished your
talk for this evening?" or "Have you looked over the
press release we just sent you?" (Someone's been hiring
PR people away from the boiler rooms.)
It's nice to have an enforced rest once in a while.
Professional Travelers
If you spend much time in a plane you discover that
professional travelers have an unwritten conduct code.
"Pretend your neighbor isn't there."
All around me, the sports-coat and tie types wore the
. bored expressions of veterans. Great, it would be the
dullest, quietest possible trip. A chance to put some
thoughts together. After nodding for an hour (ginger ale,
peanuts, and a pillow) some ideas started bubbling to the
surface. I dug out my Kaypro 2000.
That was a mistake.
By the time I had extracted the 2000 from its case, a
stewardess had asked me if it was a computer and the
guy in the next seat was insisting that I tell him how a
computer could help his business.
By the time I had the lid open and the system booted, I
had the undivided attention of three attendants and the
entire non-smoking section.
Doggedly I fired up the editor and tried to get my thoughts down before they
were overwhelmed by audience participation.
It was impossible.
The fellow in the next seat was determined to read every word I entered (if
you know anything about the 2000, you know where he had his head), and I'm
sure he would have gladly read it aloud for everyone -in the cabin.
Hey folks, this ain't prose 'til I say it's prose.
(continued on page 91)
2
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
December-January 1987
Issue No. 33
CONTENTS
Features
6
Earl Hinrichs
From Boots To Device Drivers:
Secrets Of MS-DOS
From Earl's standing-room-only talk at SOG V. Poke
around in the engine room with one of the best.
12
64
74
Debugging A Disk
22
28
Bruce Eckel
Columns
If schematics read like Martian poetry, prop up your feet,
grab some chips, and let Bruce shed some light on
hardware.
56
Kaypro
7MHz upgrade for 83 Kaypros.
Larry Fogg
60
86 World
Modula-2 and setting PC step rates.
66
C'ing Clearly
Write your own printfO.
70
Pascal Procedures
John covers queues, stacks, and TSRs. Great stuff.
78
The 5-100 Bus
Controlling solid-state relays.
82
In The Public Domain·
The usual collection of exciting Ilew software.
84
Technical Tips
85
Culture Corner
PD-32: Messages From The Board
Ramachandran Bharath
Selecting Subsets From Sets: The
Formula For Combinations In Prolog
Larry Fogg
Introd uction
To Fractals
Larry Fogg
The Bulletin Board Blues
Micro C's move to a clone-based bulletin board gave
murphy a great chance to dabble. Joill Larry as he arms
himself with Pascal and does battle.
50
A 256K Upgrade For The
Big Board II
On Your Own
Consulting from a consultant's point of view.
What do you get when you
cross graphics with
mathematics? Graphematics?
Nope. Fractals.
48
Andy Bakkers
You can't do just one 256K upgrade.
Here's a look at combinations, recursion, and Prolog.
36
Super Chips & Parallel Architectures:
Designs For The Future
44
Controlling the Real World With
Your PC: Intro To Electronics Step 2
Last issue we published schematics on the world's
cheapest UNIX system. This is some of the reaction.
34
88
Professionalize Your Programs
Using Turbo Pascal's Built-in
System Procedures
Turbo gives you handles into the operating
system that most folks never grab. Great fun.
Gary Entsminger
Afraid your shiny new turbo-clone is already outdated?
Then you really shouldn't read this.
Uncomfortable with DEBUG? Read this
companion article to "Secrets of MS-DOS. "
16
PC Pursuit: Cheap Communications
If those free boards aren't so free when you get your
phone bill, you need the down-load on PC Pursuit.
Earl Hinrichs
Rick Ryall
David Thompson
Gary Entsminger
Future Tense
86
Tidbits
Inside a supercomputer book.
96
The Last Page
Version 1.1 of Turbo Prolog "as mallY Ilew features.
CONVERTing: Pattern Matching
& List Processing For
Turbo Pascal Programmers
CONVERT is an incredible lallguage: incredibly powerful
and incredibly opaque. This is Gary's gentle
in trod uction.
By Gary Entsminger
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
,j.
3
MS-DOS Isn't PC-DOS
Regarding liThe Last Page" in issue
#32: AARRGH!! (with a long, dwindling scream). Interrupt 16 (10H)
DOES NOT EXIST in MS-DOS. The
flavor known as "PC-DOS" for the
IBM line of microcomputers has this
interrupt. Let us remember that MSDOS is not a synonym for the total
IBM environment of microcomputer
operating systems.
By using interrupt 16 you become
hardware dependent on a machine
which emulates PC-DOS and ROM
BIOS (or is IBM).
Michael M. McDaniel
P.O. Box 1010
Beaverton, OR 97075
Program Corrections
I initially subscribed to your fine
magazine on the recommendation of a
friend. His statement was, liThe programs work." I wish he had qualified
that a little.
I direct your attention to Micro C,
issue #32, page 66, "Recover A Directory By Reading & Writing Disk Sectors." The following bugs keep the
program from working:
1. ERRMSG delimited with apostrophe and has apostrophe within the
message. Neat trick. Bet it won't assemble correctly.
2. Probably typo ... WRITSEC routine has 2 consecutive JNC's ... second
one probably should be JC rather than
JNC.
And if I could be picky, I would like
to quibble with these:
3. ASSUME directive for Code, Extra, and Data. Why Extra? Why NOT
Stack?
4. MOV DH, MOV DL, MOV CH,
MOV CL ... gads, doesn't he know
how to MOV DX .:. CX?
5. DISPLAY PROC ... ye gads. Has
the man never heard of INT 21H,
function 09?
To end this letter on a positive note,
after correcting the apostrophe and
JNC instruction, the program does
what Gary says it will do. It copies a
directory.
David E. Michener
Custom Computer Service
7466 S.E. 112th Ave.
Portland, OR 97266
4
New Hard Drive Products
Here is another hard drive manufacturer deserving of mention. And, a
surprising new product you'll find
closely related to that topic.
I've been using a Tulin TL-340 for
several months now. I'm not exactly
certain where this company came
from. I was told Qume had something
to do with it. It is on Qume Drive
(cute, huh?) in San Jose. Somebody
out there can check it out.
Anyway, Tulin has two note-worthy
hard drives. The TL-326 (at 26.7 Meg
unformatted) and the TL-340· (at 40
Meg unformatted). They both use a
plated disk. RLL controllers generally
require plated media.
Both drives utilize 640 cylinders,
with 10 spare (640-649). Both recommend parking on cylinder 656. The
TL-326 has 2 platters (4 heads), the TL340 has three platters (6 heads).
Maximum access times are quoted at
95ms, about the same as the predecessor TL-226/TL-240. These drives are
faster. The earlier ones would not
work reliably on the AT. These do.
Also, as before, average access times
are quoted as 40ms. This time it may
be true.
I've been using the Tulin in an
8MHz XT clone (rice rocket), running
1:1 interleave on an Omti 5510 controller. No trouble yet. Seems quick.
Tulin sells almost exclusively to the
O.E.M. market. They seem reluctant
to. deal with little guys. My feelings on
this score would make for 2 or 3
articles. Anyway, if you want to try
one of their drives, ~nd run into
trouble, contact me and maybe we can
work out something.
The TL-340 costs $425 at lea. The
TL-326 is around $300.
Hard Disk Controller
There is a company in Tempe, AZ,
you will be hearing more about. It is
called the Konan Corporation. They
seem like nice people. They have come
up with a hard disk controller that is a
little unusual. You may find several
interesting features. Patent pending.
* Compression algorithm - transparent within the controller, to
squeeze data by as much as EIGHT
TIMES! Typical is 1.5 to 2x.
* Significantly greater error correc-
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
tion ability - 64K. Yes!
* Disk caching - storing data that's
accessed repeatedly in RAM.
* Fragmentation control - storing as
much data contiguously as possible.
* Works with system clock speeds
up to 16MHz. Yet fails at 1:1. Why???
When you get down to the specifics,
things get fuzzy. You mayor· may not
hit some bug. They are doing so much
with the program in the EPROM. But
maybe all the little details haven't
been worked out yet.
But if you ever did a low level
format (as in g ... c800:5 or 6') this
controller has more surprises for you.
Menu driven, FDISK is built in, you
only need to add FORMAT, from your
DOS. Such Menus! You can configure
everything.
There's more. When you first install
this board, IT WILL BOOT! Not the
hard drive. I mean the BOARD! It
comes in as your B: drive, and has
programs on it to initialize and set up
the hard drive. You will then set a
DOS partition to boot from. You will
also set up one or more non-DOS
partitions as 'E-Disks'. Useful in
breaking up a large drive into subDOS-limited sizes. The 'E' disk (yes,
can be 'd:', etc.) is the partition where
compressed files get stored.
This controller is NOT an RLL. It
works at the standard 5-Megabit rate,
and does not require you to replace
your present drive. Now, you can get
30 Meg out of a 10 to 20, and by the
time you read this, probably exceed
the DOS 32 Meg limit without having
to install a driver. You need DOS 3.0
or later. Something coming out of that
EPROM, no doubt.
You probably think this has got to
be expensive'. Nope. The cost to dealers is currently $125, one off. They
think 10,000 controllers a month
would be nice. I think they could sell
ten times as many.
So who is Konan? Where'd they
come from? What else do they make?
Konan was started in 1978 by Dave
Baughman and Dave Evoy as a disk
controller company. Initially, they
made controllers for the S-100 bus.
Among them, they built for ST-506
interface, SMD interface, and floppy
controllers (5-1/4 & 8). A couple years
ago, they designed a controller for the
I
I
~
••
......................................................
~
A TTENTION MODEM OWNERS:
:
:
•••
:•
:
•
-·
··-·
E
•
··-•••
••
:
:
:
:
:
•
:
:
:
:
•
:
:
••
•
••
:
•
Easiest MODEM PROGRAM
in the world to use I
• Menu and F-key driven
• Cursor/first-letter
selected
.Completely "help" lined
.STATUS graphic at all
times
only
$49.95
+ $2 SH
Cal SOFT
3609 Thous. Oaks Blvd-Ste 121
:
Westlake Village, CA 91362
:
TIME-SAVING
:
FEATURES:
:
."Batch" file transfer
:
.Most powerful Auto•
Entry Strings (script
:
macros) anywhere I
:
.Standard XMODEM and
:
XMODEM(crc)-:
.Unattended file transfer •
.1200/300 baud
:
.IBM/Hayes compatibles
:
Order Direct (805)497-8054
:
:••
POWERFUL
See your software dealer or
•••
••
•
••
••
:
•
••
.
.
m™ .·..•
..••
••
Introducing:
•
••
B8
The SLR SuperLinker Plus is 3 - 10 times
faster than any other linker, and look at
these features:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•••
••
:
•••
:
:
••
•
:••
link a full 64K output (COM, HEX, SPR or PRL)
works with Microsoft, Fortran, Basic, Cobol
supports 32 character externals (SLR format)
full drive/user support with alternate DU search
supports 8 address spaces
fill uninitialized spaces with 0 or FF
global cross reference
DSD80/SID compatible .SYM file
manual overlays
load map
$195
requires Z80 CP/M 2.2 or greater 32K TPA
_ _ _--'SLRSystems
1622 N. Main St., Butler, PA 16001
(800) 833-3061
(412) 282-0864
~ ••••••• I.I.I.I.III.I.I.I ••• IIIIII.III.I.I •••• I ••••• 11 II
PC bus. That was the KDC-230.
With what appear to be mostly minor outward changes to that board,
they now also have the KXP-230. The
boards are only 6 inches long, due to
the extensive use of VLSI and surface
mount technology. There is an 84 pin
device, 256K and 64K EPROMs, an
Omti 24 pin device, and a Z-80 processor - plus about 22 other TTL (mostly
LS) chips. The board can handle two
hard drives. Worth noting, there are
no jumpers soldered on to correct
'mistakes'.
Removal of a jumper between pins
on the board switches the base address from C800 to D800, in case you
have more than one controller.
The older KDC-230 controller sells
for $70. With some minor foil cuts to
correct the interrupt address and a
Version 1.11 EPROM, that controller
will work in the Tandy 1000.
Konan has done something else I
can appreciate. They do not assemble
their own boards. That means we are
not paying for the equipment needed
in that process. They send them out
for stuffing and soldering.
If you install one of these boards,
you have a piece built by DEC in your
machine. It is engineered by Konan,
yes. Run off during otherwise idle
time for the equipment. If it keeps my
cost down, I like it.
For more information:
Tulin Corporation
2393 Qume Drive
San Jose, California 95131
(408)942-9025
Konan Corporation
Mike Lehrer, VP-Sales
4720 South Ash Avenue
Tempe, Arizona 85282
(602)345-1300
If you have questions for me, I can be
reached, days, at:
Tucson Computer Products
Bill Hemmings, hacker interface
2465 North Alvernon
Tucson, AZ 85712
(602)881-8138
More About Newport Components
In issue #31 you commented adversely on the 1.2 meg drive from
Newport Components. I purchased
one from Weltech about a month ago
and, though I have not exercised it
heavily, it seems to work OK.
I use it to interchange data between
an IBM AT at the office and my XT
clone at home. On several occasions I
have used the full capacity of the
disks. Upon reading your article, I
rechecked some of those disks and
found them to be readable.
Perhaps they have improved the
drive since your review.
Charles F. Campen, Jr.
234 San Antonio Road
Arcadia, CA 91006
Editor's note:
It would be great if they have. But in
the meantime, I think I'll try one of those
little 720K 3 112 " drives supported vy
MS-DOS 3.2. That is if Microsoft can get
the bugs out of 3.2.
I just bought a copy of 3.2 and now I'm
afraid to use it. DISKCOPY doesn't seem
to want to work between two 360K drives
when the target disk is unformatted. I like
to copy disks.
(continued on page 80)
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
5
From Boots To Device Drivers
By Earl Hinrichs
PC Tech
P.O. Box 128
904 North 6th St
Lake City, MN 55041
Secrets Of MS-DOS
The X16's BIOS has a reputation
for being one of the fastest, cleanest
BIOS's around, so we were pleased as
punch to have Earl, the X16's BIOS
'.., writer, take us into the heart of MSDOS at SOG V.
If you missed his talk (or the
discussion of operating systems in the
software forum), didn't make it to
Bend, couldn't find the room, or
didn't take notes, here's his written
version - a blow by blow account of
what's happening as MS-DOS gets
ready to run your programs and
peripherals. There's a lot here for
beginners and professionals alike.
L
et's take a close look at MSDOS. Let's look at what Microsoft has implemented and, in
the process, see if there isn't a hint of
what it plans to do. For convenience,
we'll divide the MS-DOS operating
system into four parts:
Boot
BIOS
DOS
Command processor
On a bootable floppy, the boot code
is stored in the first sector (track 0,
head 0). But on a hard disk, the first
sector is the partition sector (which
has the info to establish the DOS
partition location); the boot code resides on the first sector of the DOS
partition.
The BIOS and DOS reside in the
hidden files, IBMIO.COM (or IO.SYS)
and IBMDOS.COM (or MSDOS.SYS).
The command processor is in COMMAND.COM, which isn't hidden and
will appear in directories.
BIOS
The BIOS is the link between the
central processing part of the comput-
6
er and its peripherals. It can be subdivided into-
DOS shell command, but it's almost
universally called COMMAND.COM.
BIOS (resident)
BIOS (initialization)
system initialization
DOS Initialization
On most PCs, on power up or after
system reset, the program in the system ROM(s) is executed. This program
will initialize and checkout the system
and try to boot a disk.
On the IBM PC, it tries to read the
first sector of the floppy in drive A. If
it can't, and there's a readable hard
disk, it reads the first sector of the
hard disk. Either way, it loads a boot
sector into memory at 0000:7COO.
The boot sector will know how to
read the rest of the system files to
continue the boot. This is .true for all
operating systems (for example,
UNIX), not just MS-DOS. Some program disks (copy-protected games, for
example) have their own loader, or
miniature operating system, on the
first sector.
The boot sector .loads the first directory sector of the boot disk into memory between 0050:0000 and 0050:01FF. It
checks the directory to ensure that the
first two directory entries are IBMIO.COM and IBMDOS.COM. It determines the length of IBMIO.COM
. (the BIOS) and then loads it. (PC-DOS
(the IBM version) loads the BIOS at
0070:0000; other implementations may
put it elsewhere.)
The BIOS must occupy contiguous
sectors starting at the first data sector
(the first sector after the directory).
Presumably this makes writing the
boot sector easier, but it has some
drawbacks. For example, the DOS
"SYS" command, which puts the system files on a disk, may give a no
room" error when a disk has lots of
free space, but has it in the wrong
places.
The BIOS initializes itself, sets up a
pointer to the end of its resident part,
and then jumps to .SYSINIT. (The
BIOS can adjust the end of BIOS
Microsoft (the maker of MS-DOS)
supplies the system initialization in the
file, SYSINIT. The resident and initialization BIOS's are usually written by
the computer manufacturer.
SYSINIT is attached to the BIOS
written by the manufacturer to make
the BIOS file, IBMIO.COM. Shortly
after boot, the initialization part evaporates leaving only the resident part of
the BIOS.
The resident part (of the BIOS) is a
collection of device drivers, used when
DOS needs to talk to some piece of
hardware. I'll talk more about device
drivers later.
IBMDOS.COM & COMMAND. COM
IBMDOS.COM (or liDOS," for
short) is the heart and soul of MSDOS and is identical throughout all
implementations of the same versions
(Compaq's=IBM's ... PCTech's =Zenith's). It's a buffer between the program and the hardware.
Your programs can run on different
systems (maintaining portability) if
you let DOS handle the basic operating details. Since the part of DOS the
program sees doesn't change between
installations, software gains machine
independence, at least in theory.
But you can bypass the operating
system (for speed or more direct control) and program the hardware. Many
programmers do it, losing that independence.
The part of DOS a user sees is the
command processor, which generates
the DOS prompt, reads and executes
commands from the keyboard, and
executes batch files. The command
processor can be changed with the
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
II
pointer to reserve space for tables or
buffers.)
SYSINIT then moves itself to the
physical top of memory and loads
IBMDOS.COM at the end of the BIOS.
The remaining initialization is done
with calls to DOS from SYSINIT.
The order in which items are initIalized is a delicate matter. For example,
the DOS function call "interrupt",
interrupt 21, and the disk device driver must be initialized before CONFIG.SYS can be read. But installable
device drivers, disk buffers, etc. can't
be initialized until after CONFIG.SYS
is read. So how did Microsoft get
around this dilemma?
SYSINIT does the following - lnItializes DOS interrupt vectors (interrupts 20H - 3FH) and BIOS device
drivers, reads CONFIG.SYS, loads
and initializes installable device drivers, and creates internal buffers &
tables. The exact order (the tricky part)
isn't clear, but it works. Finally, SYSINIT loads and executes COMMAND.COM.
COMMAND.COM
COMMAND.COM also has three
divisions: resident, initialization, and
transient.
The resident part (or code) sits in
low memory, just above DOS. The
initialization part is loaded immediately above the resident. And the transient part resides in the highest free
memory.
SYSINIT transfers control to the initialization code, which loads and executes AUTOEXEC.BAT if it's present.
Otherwise it asks for time and date,
ending the initialization (and the need
for the initialization code). So COMMAND.COM can and will load programs immediately' after its resident
part, overwriting the initialization
code.
Programs are given control of all
high memory, including the memory
which contains the transient portion of
COMMAND.COM. Most won't need
so much and will return to the resident part of COMMAND.COM with
the transient code still intact. When
the resident part of COMMAND.COM
regains control (from a program), it
checks to see if the transient code is
still intact. If it's not, the transient
code is reloaded.
Device Drivers
The BIOS is a collection of resident
device drivers. You can extend it by
adding installable device drivers
through the file CONFIG.SYS.
The BIOS must contain the CON,
PRN, AUX, & CLOCK device drivers
and at least one disk device driver.
PC-DOS comes with the installable
device drivers ANSI. SYS (ANSI terminal emulation), VDISK.SYS (memory or RAM disk), and DRIVERSYS
(special disk formats). A~ PC Tech we
provide the installable device drivers
EMB.DEV (for extended memory),
MEMDISK.DEV (memory disk which
uses extended memory), COMX.DEV
(for extra serial ports), and HARDDISK.DEV (for more than two hard
drives). Other manufacturers provide
other drivers. Slicer has a driver which
lets you generate IBM key codes on a
serial terminal. Most specialized hardware add-ons for the PC come with
installable device drivers.
All device drivers contain a short
table called the' device header (See
Figure 1). The device header consists
of link, attribute, strategy, interrupt,
and name fields. The link field of each
device driver points to the next driver.
The last driver has -1 in its link field.
Figure 1 - Device Header Table
Device Header (18 bytes)
LINK
4 bytes
ATTRIBUTE
2 bytes
STRATEGY
2 bytes
INTERRUPT
2 bytes
NAME
8 bytes
The device header must be the first
item in an installable device driver.
You can have more than one device
driver per file, and multiple device
drivers will be linked via the link field.
But generally, installable device drivers
come one to a file. This allows you to
more easily pick and choose devices to
install in CONFIG. SYS.
During initialization, DOS fills in the
segment values in the link fields and
links drivers from different disk files.
Attributes And Bits
Each attribute field defines specific
characteristics of the device. (See Figure 2.)
Device drivers are either character or
block. Character drivers drive things
which handle 110 a byte or two at a
time - the keyboard, video display,
modem, printer. Block drivers drive
things which process 110 in large
blocks or sectors - floppy, hard, and
RAM disks, for examples. Attribute bit
15 is set (to 1) to indicate a character
driver; it's 0 to indicate a block.
A character device must have a
name placed in the device header's
name field. Names for block devices
are assigned by DOS when they're
installed. DOS assigns A: to the first
block device, B: to the second, and so
on. Disk names can be changed with
the ASSIGN and SUBST commands.
Often one block device driver may
drive several devices. For example, the
same driver can be used for all floppies. In block devices the first byte of
the name field holds the number of
logical units controlled by the driver.
(In PC-DOS 3.xx all floppy and hard
disks are controlled by the same device driver.)
The strategy and interrupt fields in
the device header point to two entry
points in the device driver. DOS will
call the strategy routine with a pointer,
ES:BX, to a command description in a
(continued next page)
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
7
FROM BOOTS TO DEVICE DRIVERS
(continued from page 7)
block of data called the request packet.
The strategy entry point simply stores
a pointer to the request packet. DOS
will .then call the interrupt entry point,
which fetches the request packet and
performs the indicated function.
Sometimes you need to do more
than simply read or write data to a
device driver. For example, you might
want to set the baud rate on a serial
port or ask about the physical characteristics of a disk.
Device drivers which handle control
information like this have attribute bit
14 set. The meaning of the control
strings is up to the device driver.
Programs can pass control information
to or from a device driver, by using
the DOS IOCTL function call (44H).
One character device is designated
the clock device and always handles II
o six bytes at a time. The bytes are, in
order - days since Jan 1, 1980 (word),
minutes, hours, 1/100 seconds, seconds. The clock device is identified by
attribute bit 3.
Some character devices are designated as standard input (attribute. bit 0),
standard output (bit 1) and NUL device (bit 2). Normally these devices are
built into the BIOS, but an installable
device driver with one of these bits set
overrides the setting in the BIOS. If
you install ANSI.SYS, for example, it
replaces CON as the standard output
device.
You can designate one character device for special output (attribute bit 4).
Three new block device driver commands were introduced in DOS 3.00.
Attribute bit 11 - called the removable media bit" - is set in block
devices that support the new com·mands.
.
Device drivers offer flexibility, but
/I
create overhead. So sometimes we can
improve performance by bypassing a
device driver. We can generate fast
one-character output, for example, by
loading the character in AL and calling
interrupt 29H. On the IBM PC, and
most other MS-DOS implementations,
the CON device is capable of this
special output.
Media Descriptor & BPB Table
Some block' devices, in particular
floppy disks, will have to support
several formats. DOS has two ways to
switch formats.
The first, a carry over from DOS 1.0,
predefines several formats. The first
byte of the second sector, called the
FAT~D, or media descriptor byte,
selects one of the predefined formats.
Support is limited to the predefined
formats.
In the second, the boot sector contains a table, called the BPB (BIOS
parameter block), which holds all the
necessary format information. Any
number of new formats can be read off
the disk.
The first method is used by IBM, the
second by most other MS-DOS implementors.
Attribute bit 13 is set if the driver is
capable of supporting non-IBM formats; In the PC-DOS disk driver, this
attribute bit is off, which means disk
formats are determined. by the media
descriptor byte. However, if the driver
doesn't recognize the media descriptor
byte, it will try to read the BPB from
the boot sector.
One more item, just to confuse
things: Microsoft carefully distinguishes between media descriptor
byte, and FAT~D byte. The media
descriptor byte is in the BPB table, and
the FAT--.JD byte is in the file allocation table. These two bytes don't have
Figure 2 - A ttribute Fields
ATTRIBUTE
bit 15
bit 14
bit 13
bit 11
bits 5-10,12
bit 4
bit 3
bit 2
bit 1
bit 0
8
= character
device, 0
= block
device {disk}
not support IOCTL
{block devices} 1 = non-IBM format, 0 = IBM format
1 = supports removable media
not used, or secret meanings.
(character device) 1 -special output {int 29}
(character device) 1 = current clock device
{character device} 1 = current NUL device
(character device) 1 = current standard output
(character device) 1 = current standard input
1
= supports IOCTL, 0 = does
MICRO CORNUCOPIA; #33, Dec-Jan 1987
to be the same, but in all IBM formats
they are.
Request Packets
The first thirteen bytes of the request
packet have the same meaning for all
device driver commands, Only the
definition and the number of remaining bytes vary from command to command.
The fixed fields are length, unit
number, command, and status.
The length field is the length of the
request packet in bytes. For block
devices, where one driver may drive
several devices, the unit field selects
one of the devices.
Command Codes
The command code identifies the
nature of the device driver request.
Some commands apply to all devices;
some only to character devices or only
to block devices. Some other commands are only applicable if certain
attribute bits are set. The status field is
filled in by the device driver and
returned to DOS, reporting the command's success or failure.
The done bit (#8) is used when the
operation is complete. The busy bit
(#9) is used by the non-destructive
input command and the two status
commands. All other commands clear
the busy bit before returning.
The error bit (#15) is set when an
error occurs, indicating an error in the
lower 8 bits.
The BPB
The init command is DOS's first call
to the device driver. It's called once.
The variable portion of the init command has fields for number of units,
ending address, BPB array pointer,
and drive number.
For block devices, the drive number
field has the name DOS will assign to
the first unit in the device (0 = A, 1 = B,
etc.). For an installable device driver
the BPB array pointer points to the
string following the
=
in CONFIG.SYS. This pointer can be used to
pass parameters to the device driver.
The driver must handle any required
initialization, then return a pointer to
the end of the device driver in the
ending address field. Typically the
initialization code is put at the end of
the device driver; then a pointer. to the
/I
II
start of the initialization code is returned. This way the memory occupied by the initialization code can be
freed after it's executed.
A block device driver must generate
a BPB table for each device it controls.
A BPB describes to DOS the format of
the device, and includes, among other
things, the sector size, device size in
sectors, and directory size. The device
driver also builds up a table of pointers to the BPB tables, one for each
unit.
A pointer to this table of pointers is
returned to DOS in the BPB array
field. (Remembering that the BPB array pointer is a pointer to a table of
pointers can save days of debugging;
this is experience talking.) Block devices must also fill in the number of
units field.
The BPB may change later, through
the BUILD BPB command.
Details
DOS searches the initial tables to
find the largest sector size. This becomes the size of the DOS sector
buffers. A bug in DOS 2.x would only
check the block devices in the BIOS
for sector size; the installable devices
were not checked. Thus, an installable
device may not have a sector size
larger than the largest built-in block
device. (I don't know whether this has
been fixed in 3.1.)
In PC-DOS the largest sector is 512
bytes. 16 bits are used to pass sector
numbers to a device driver. So block
devices are limited to 64K sectors, or
to 1/2 K * 64 K -= 32 Megabytes
overall.
Media Check
DOS uses the media check command to determine whether a disk has
been changed. The variable portion of
the request packet has fields for media
descriptor byte, change code, and volume ID. The current media descriptor
byte is passed to the driver (which
may help determine whether the disk
has been changed).
The driver returns disk change information in the change code field. -1
indicates the media has been changed;
+ 1 indicates that it hasn't; 0 is returned when the driver isn't sure.
A driver for a hard disk (not the
removable kind) or memory disk will
always return + 1, no change. A driver
for a typical floppy will usually return
0, riot sure. Some floppy disk drives
can detect an open door, and so
would return -1 if the door has been
opened, and + 1 otherwise.
There are some tricks the device
driver can use in the absence of a door
switch. It may keep track of the media
descriptor byte, volume ID, directory
checksum, or other things to help
detect disk changes. Often the floppy
driver will keep track of the time since
the last disk access. If it's been a short
time, say less than two seconds, it
returns + I, no change. If the driver
detects that the media has been
changed, and the removable media
attribute bit is set, then the driver also
returns a pointer to the previous volume name.
Media Check To BUILD BPB
If ,the media check command indicates media change, or if the media
check command returns not sure and
it's ok to change disks, then DOS will
call the BUILD BPB function. (It's ok
to change disks when there are no
dirty buffers - altered buffers which
have not yet been written.)
The BUILD BPB function must somehow determine the format of the disk,
create a BPB table, and return a pointer to the table. The variable portion of
the request packet consists of fields for
media descriptor, transfer address,
'and BPB table pointer. If the device
driver has the non-IBM format bit
clear, then the transfer address will
point to a buffer which, holds the
second disk sector.
Recall that the first byte of this
sector is used to determine the disk
format. If the non-IBM format bit is set
then the transfer address pointer
points to a one sector size scratch area.
Generally this area is used to read in
the boot sector of the disk, and extract
the BPB table from the boot sector.
The distinction between IBM formats
and non-IBM formats is no longer very
important. Disks formatted with PCDOS 3.xx have a copy of their BPB
table in the boot sector. Thus disks
formatted on an IBM can be used on
non-IBM machines.
If PC-DOS 3.xx does not recognize
the media descriptor byte on a disk, it
will look in the boot sector for the BPB
table. Hence PC-DOS 3.xx can read
disk formats from non-IBM machines.
The variable part of the request packet
for input commands consists of fields
for media descriptor, transfer address,
transfer count, sector number, and
volume ID.
The media descriptor, sector number, and volume ID fields are not used
for character devices. A character device will read the number of bytes set
by the transfer count field into a buffer
pointed to by the transfer address
field.
Block devices also transfer data to
the buffer pointed to by the transfer
address field, but now the transfer
count is a number of sectors, not
bytes. The sector number field gives
the starting sector.
A block device with its removable
media attribute bit (11). set will know
how many files are currently opened
on the disk. If it detects a disk change
while there are open files, it will abort
the read and return an invalid disk
change error. It will then set the
volume ID field to point to the volume
name of the disk that should be in the
drive. DOS can then ask the user to
put the right disk in the drive.
The IOCTL call is for reading control
information.
Output Commands
The output commands are similar to
the input command. For character devices, the transfer address points to a
buffer of transfer count characters
which are sent to the device. For a
block device, the transfer count sectors, from the buffer at transfer address, are written starting at the sector
number.
Block devices with attribute bit 11
set, the removable media bit, will
check for illegal disk changes, and
return the volume name of the removed disk. For block drivers, the
output with verify command usually
reads the data back to check for a
successful write. For most character
devices, the output with verify function is the same as the normal output
function. The IOCTL call is for sending control information to the device.
(continued next page)
.MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
9
FROM BOOTS TO DEVICE DRIVERS
(continued from page 9)
Non-destructive Input
The non-destructive input function
has one field in the variable portion of
the request header - the character
field. The non-destructive input function is used to peek at the input
buffer. The next character in the input
buffer. is returned in the character
field.
The character isn't removed from the
input buffer. A call to the input function must be made to remove the
character from the buffer. If the input
buffer is empty, then the busy bit in
the status word is set. The nondestructive input function does not
wait for a character, but the busy bit
indicates whether a call to the input
function would wait.
DOS uses this function to check for
"C from the keyboard. There is no
waiting if the keyboard buffer is empty, and as long as "C is not the first
character, the type ahead buffer is not
disturbed. This function is also used to
stop console output when "5 is typed.
Because this function does not remove characters from the input buffer,
"5 will work only when the type
ahead buffer is empty. If some other
character is at the head of the buffer,
DOS never sees the "5.
The variable portion of the status
calls request packet is empty. The
status calls set the busy bit in the
status word if a call to the input or
output functions would wait.
The flush calls tell the device driver
to clear the: buffers. Some things are
too important (Do you want to format
your hard disk (YIN)?), or too unexpected ( Abort, Retry, Ignore) to trust
to the type ahead buffer. In these and
similar situations, DOS will call the
input flush function before looking for
a response.
Block devices which have the removable media attribute bit set must know
how many files are open on the disk
for the input and output commands:
DOS will call device open or device
close whenever a file is opened or
closed. This way the driver can keep a
running count of the number of open
. files. Character devices can use, the
device open and device close calls to
perform special functions. For instance, form feeds may be sent to a
10
printer.
The driver sets the busy bit in the
status word if the device has removable media. DOS uses this call to decide
how strongly to word the warning
message before formatting the disk.
Speculative Wrap Up
The double entry points, strategy
and interrupt, in device drivers seem
strange. Wouldn't just one call be
more efficient? The recommended
strategy routine is simply MOV
REQUEST_PACKET, BX
MOY
REQUEST_PACKET[2], ES
RET
The interrupt routine usually contains MOY
MOY
•••
BX, REQUEST_PACKET
ES, REQUEST_PACKET[2]
So, the double calls seem a waste.
DOS guarantees that no other device
driver calls will be made between the
call to the strategy routine and the call
to the interrupt routine. Therefore the
reason for having two calls is not to
get something done in between the
calls.
What about the 'done' bit in the
status word? This bit must be set
whenever the interrupt routine returns. Doesn't a return from the interrupt routine imply that. the command
is completed? Also, what are those
eight undocumented bytes doing in
the request packet?
Let's speculate. Suppose that strategy and interrupt calls aren't tied together one for one. This would be
reasonable in an operating system
which wasn't so concerned about
doing things sequentially.
But the strategy routine had better
be re-entrant. Storing a pointer in a
fixed memory location won't do.
Four of the eight unused bytes in
the request packet cotild be used to
make a nice linked chain of requests.
Suppose the interrupt routine is called
with several requests queued. The
interrupt routine could look over the
requests, and select one or several to
start doing. Now we have a reason to
use the done bit. Only the completed
requests will have the done bit set on
return.
Frequently the interrupt routine will
have to wait for some 110 event. A
good interrupt routine wouldn't wait.
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
It would start the task, then return
with the busy bit set and the done bit
clear.
Perhaps our speculative operating
system could accomplish something
useful while waiting for a disk drive to
seek, modem to receive a character, or
a human to type a key. Would it be
too poetic, or too coincidental, for an
interrupt to signal to the operating
system when to return to the interrupt
routine?
Is Microsoft preparing a multi-tasking version of MS-DOS, or am I
dreaming?
TURBO
COMMUNICATION
WITH MULTI-TASKING
• Communicate with mainframe or
micros
• Mult-tasking (run up to 32 programs,
all at the same time.) Compatible with
most DOS software, including LOTUS,
dBASE, WORDSTAR, etc.
• INTERRUPT - DRIVEN buffered
communication capabilities.
• X-MODEM file transfer
• ASCII file transfer
• Auto answer/Auto dial (Hayes
compatible)
• Menu driven
• Communicate at speed up to 9600 bps.
• Written in TURBO PASCAL.
• Documented source code included for
communication program.
• Manual (which teaches the
fundamentals of telecommunications.)
• Manual (with source code documented
and xreferenced.)
• For IBM-PC/XT and most compatibles.
Complete Package: $29.95
CALL LARRY AT
(312) 778-3146
LARRY CHRYSIKOS
6500 S. WASHTENAW
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 60629
Figure 3 - Device Driver Details
MEDIA DESCRIPTOR BYTE
byte
FFH
FEH
FDH
FCH
F9H
FaH
sides sectors
2
8
1
8
2
9
1
9
2
15
Fixed disk
REQUEST HEADER FORHAT
tracks
40
40
40
40
80
Length
Unit number
Command
Status
Reserved
Command specific data
byte
byte
byte
2 bytes
8 bytes
variable length
REQUEST HEADER DETAILS
Device Driver Command Codes
Build BPB (command 2, block devices only)
o
HEADER
13 bytes
HEDIA.J)ESCRIPTOR 1 byte
TRANSFE~ADDRESS
4 bytes
BPB_TABLE
4 bytes
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
Init (all devices)
Media Check (block devices)
Build BPB (block devices)
IOCTL Input (if attribute bit 14 set)
Input (all devices)
Non-Destructive Input (character devices)
Input Status (character devices)
Input Flush (character devices)
Output (all devices)
Output with Verity
Output Status (character devices)
Output Flush (character devices)
IOCTL Output (if attribute bit 14 set)
Device Open (if attribute bit 11 set)
Device Close (if attribute bit 11 set)
Removable Media (if attribute bit 11 set)
Statws word
bit 15
bit 9
bit 8
bits 7-0
set if error occurred
set if device is busy
set if operation is complete
error code
Error codes
o
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
A
B
C
F
Write protected
Unknown unit
Not ready
Bad command
CRC error
Bad drive request structure length
Seek error
Unknown media
Sector not found
Out of paper
Write fault
Read fault
General Failure
Invalid disk change
Init (command 10, all devices)
RUDER
NIDLUNITS
EHDINGjDDRESS
BPB_ARRAY
DRIVUUHBER
13
1
4
4
1
bytes
byte
bytes
bytes
byte
IOCTL Input (coaaand 3, only if attribute bit 14, IOCTL, set)
Input (command 4, all devices)
HEADER
HEDIUESCRIPTOR
TRANSFE~ADDRESS
TRAliSFE~COUNT
SECTOJLNUMBER
VOLUHEJD
HEADER
HEDIJ,:J>ESCRIPTOR
TRANSFEILADDRESS
TRAHSFEILCOUHT
SECTOJLNUMBER
VOLUHEJD
CHANG~CODE
VOLUHEJD
bytes
byte
byte
bytes
13
1
4
2
2
4
bytes
byte
bytes
bytes
bytes
bytes
Non-Destructive Input (command 5, character devices only)
HEADER
CHARACTER
13 bytes
1 byte
Input Status (command 6, character devices only)
Output Status (co.mand 10, character devices only)
13 bytes
HEADER
Input Flwsh (command 7, character devices only)
Output Flush (command 11, characte~ devices only)
HEADER
13 bytes
Device Open (co.mand 13. devices with attribute bit11 set only)
Device Close (command 14, devices with attribute bit11 set only)
HEADER
13
1
1
4
bytes
byte
bytes
bytes
bytes
bytes
Output (command 8, all devices)
Output with Verity (command 9, all devices)
IOCTL Output (command 12, only if attribute bit 14, IOCTL, set)
Media Check (command 11, block devices only)
HEADER
HEDIUESCRIPTOR
13
1
4
2
2
4
13 bytes
Reaovable Media (command 15, block devices with bit 11 set only).
HEADER
13 bytes
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec,.Jan 1987
11
Debugging A Disk
By Earl Hinrichs·
PC Tech
P.O. Box 128
904 North 6th St
Lake City, MN 55041
This began as a sidebar (a short
aside) for Earl's article on MS-DOS
in this issue. However, it was too
long to be a sidebar and too important
to leave out.
It is .important for two reasons.
First, it seemed like everyone knew
how to poke around on CP/M disks to
find' out what was' going on 'inside'
the disk. Not so many are comfortable
with MS-DOS disks.
Second, Microsoft included DEBUG
with MS-DOS, but you won't find it
documented in the standard manual. I
guess they figured most people
wouldn't use it.
Y
don't have to believe everything you read about MS-DOS
disks, and formats, and data,
and allocations, and system· tracks,
and directories, because you can fire
up your computer and find out for
yourself.
Start off by formatting a floppy disk
with the system option. I used drive
OU
B.
COMMAND. COM accounts for' 23791
of the 69632 bytes used by the system.
Where are the rest? DIR won't help us
find the lost bytes. We need something stronger, so dig out DEBUG.
C>DEBUG
Use the DEBUG load command to
read the directory. The syntax for the
load command is 'L m d s n' where m
... memory location, d ... disk number, s - start sector, n - ' sector
count. The directory starts on sector 5
on 360K disks.
-L 0151
Use the dump command 'D' to see
the directory in Figure 1.
The number at the left, 12SE, will be
different when you try this. liSE is
the· first free 'segment on my system
after I've loaded DOS, with a few
installable device drivers and my favorite memory resident programs.
Two Hidden Files
Here we find two files not reported
by DIR
IBMBIO. COM &
C)FORMAT B: IS
Figure 1 • Directory Dump
Insert new diskette for drive B:
and' strike ENTER when ready
-D 0
Format oomplete
System transferred
362496 bytes total disk space
69632 bytes used by system
292864 bytes available on disk
IBMDOS.COM. At offset OB in each
directory entry is the file attribute
byte. 27 means read only, hidden,
system file, archive. 20 means archive.
The archive bit is always set, unless
some special backup program clears it.
This disk was just created, so all files
have the archive bit set.
Read only, hidden, and system bits
set ~eans hands off to DIR, ERASE,
COPY, and most other commands. If
you're curious about the rest of the
directory, the 00 60 9E OB is the time
and date stamp. At offset lA is the
starting cluster, IBMBIO.COM starts at
cluster 0002, IBMDOS at cluster 0012,
and COMMAND.COM at 002E. For
360K disks a cluster is two sectors. The
last four bytes are the file size. 18MIO.COM is 00003FFI bytes long,
IBMDOS. COM is 00006F3D bytes
long, and COMMAND.COM is
00005CEF bytes long.
If you add these sizes you'll come
up with a number slightly smaller than
the 69632 = 11000H reported by format. It takes 44H clusters to hold the
three files. 44H clusters of lK bytes
each make 11000 bytes total.
126E:0000
128E:0010
128E:0020
128E:0030
128E:0040
126E:0050
128E:0060
128E:0070
49
00
49
00
43
00
00
00
42
00
42
00
4F
00
00
00
4D
00
4D
00
4D
00
00
00
42
00
44
00
4D
00
00
00
49
00
4F
00
41
00
00
00
4F
00
53
00
4E
00
00
00
20 20-43
00 60-9E
20 20-43
00 60-9E
44 20-43
00 60-9E
00 00-00
0000-00
4F
OB
4F
OB
4F
OB
00
00
4D
02
4D
12
4D
2E
00
00
27
00
27
00
20
00
00
00
00
F1
00
3D
00
00
3F
00
6F
00
EF 5C
00 00
00 00
00
00
00
00
00
00
00
00
00
00
00
00
00
00
00
00
IBMBIO COM' ••••
••••••• ' ••••• ?.
IBHDOS , COM' ••••
••••••••••• =0 ••
COHMAND COM ••••
'
\
....... ..... ..
Format another (Y/N)?n
Figure 2 . File Allocation Table
Notice 69632 bytes used by system.
Got a direotory.
-D 0
C)DIR B:
Volume in drive B has no label
Direotory ot B:\
COMMAND
COM
23791
1 File(8)
12
-L 0 1 1 1
12-30-85 12:00p
292864 bytes free
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #~3, Dec-Jan 1987
128E:0000
128E:0010
126E:0020
128E:0030
126E:0040
128E:0050
128E:0060
126E:0070
FD
CO
01
21
CO
03
41
00
FF FF 03 40 00 05 60-00 07 80 00 09 AD 00 DB
•••• @•• ' ••••••••
00
17
20
02
37
20
00
•••••••••••• @•• '
OD EO 00 OF
60 01 19 AD
02 23 40 02
2D FO FF 2F
80 03 39 AO
04 43 40 04
00 0000 00
00 01-11
01 ,1B-CO
25 60-02
00 03-31
03 3B-CO
45 FO-FF
00 00-00
FO FF 13
01 lD EO
27 80 02
20 03 33
03 3D EO.
00 00 00
00 00 00
40
01
29
40
03
00
00
01
IF
AO
03
3F
00
00
15
00
02
35
00
00
00
60
02
2B
60
04
00
00
I
.I@.".' •• )•• +
•• - • • 1 •• 1 .3@.S'
.7 •• 9 •• ; •• =•• ?.
A
.C@.E •••••••••
Looking At Memory
Now let's leave the disk, and look at
memory. The PC-DOS BIOS, IBMIO.COM, is always at segment 0070.
DOS proper is loaded at the end of
the BIOS.
The size of the BIOS varies not only
with DOS versions, but also on machine configuration. For instance, the
BIOS throws out the drivers for the
hard disk on machines which do not
have hard disks. On an AT the BIOS
includes some patches for bugs in the
AT ROM BIOS.
One way to find the start of DOS is
to look at the interrupt vectors in
Figure 4.
These are the interrupt vectors for
interrupts 20H - 3FH, which are reserved by DOS. Each interrupt vector
consists of 4 bytes - a segment:offset
pointer. Remember that the lower significant byte is at the lower address.
The first few vectors are 0291:136C,
0291:138D, OE3S:02FS, OE3S:032E. Most
interrupts will point to DOS. Look
over the segment values in these interrupts, and notice that most segment
values are 0291. This is the DOS
Going Further
Let's explore further. Read sector
number 1. (The L command starts
numbering sectors with 0, s6 sector
number 1 is actually the second sector
on the disk.) See Figure 2.
This is the file allocation· table, the
FAT. The first byte is the fat~d byte,
OFDH for 360K floppies. The rest of
the table tells DOS which clusters hold
which files. Now read the first sector,
the boot sector, and dump the first
few bytes. See Figure 3.
EB 34 90 at offset 0000 is a jump
command. Bytes 0003 - OOOB are used
for OEM identification. They show
that I used PC-DOS 3.2 to format the
disk. The next 19 bytes are an extended BPB table. They show this disk
having 0200
02
0001
02
0070
02DO
FD
0002
0009
0002
0000
bytes per sector
sectors/alloc unit (cluster)
reserved sector (boot sector)
FATs
directory entries in root
total sectors on the disk
media descriptor byte
sectors for each FAT
sectors per track
heads
hidden sectors
Figure 3 - Start of Boot Sector
-L 0 1 0
-D 0 2F
128E:0000 EB 34 90 49 42 4D 20 20-33 2E 32 00 02 02 01 00
128E:0010 02 70 00 DO 02 PD 02 00-09 00 02 00 00 00 00 00
128E:0020 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00-00 00 00 00 00 00 00 OF
• 4.IBM 3.2 •••••
.p ••••••••••••••
Figure 4 - Interrupt Vectors 20H - 3FH
-d 0:80
0000:0080
0000:0090
OOOO:OOAO
0000:0050
OOOO:OOCO
OOOO:OODO
OOOO:OOEO
OOOO:OOFO
~c 13 91 02 8D 13 91 02-F5 02 35 OE 2E 03 35 OE
1 ••••••••• 5 ••• 5.
BD
72
72
EA
72
72
72
•• 5••••• L•••• ] ••
r ••• z.p.r ••• r •••
r ••• r ••• W.& ••• p.
.s •••••• r ••• r •••
r ••• r ••• r ••• r •••
r ••• r ••• r ••• r •••
r ••• r ••• r ••• r •••
02
13
13
73
13
13
13
35
91
91
13
91
91
91
OE
02
02
91
02
02
02
09
7A
72
02
72
72
72
15
01
13
13
13
13
13
91
70
91
91
91
91
91
02-4C
00-72
02-57
02-72
02-72
02-72
02-72
15
13
02
13
13
13
13
91
91
26
91
91
91
91
02
02
OD
02
02
02
02
FE
72
BD
72
72
72
72
5D
13
1E
13
13
13
13
91
91
70
91
91
91
91
02
02
00
02
02
02
02
Figure 5 - NUL Device Header
-d
291:48 59
0291:0040
0291:0050
00 00 C8 09 04 80 C6 14
CC 14 4E 55 4C20 20 20-20 20
segment.
(What are the others? BIOS is at
0070, DEBUG has been loaded at OE3S.
Investigating OD26, int 2E, and 9113,
int 30 is left as an exercise, because I
don't know.)
Finding NUL
The NUL device is in DOS. Now
that we know where DOS is, we can
use the debug search command to find
it.
-s 291:0 fffO -NUL
-
0291:0052
0291:01B7
0291 :9466
0291:9711
0291:EB5A
0291 :EF68
0291 :EF76
The first address is the one we want.
The others are from various buffers in
DOS and DEBUG which process the
search command and so contain the
string 'NUL'. The name of the device
driver is at offset OA in the header, so
the NUL device header starts at 48 and
is 11 bytes long. See Figure S.
The first four bytes are the link to
the next device driver. Remember that
the lower part of the address is in the
lower bytes. So the next device is at
09C8:0000. NUL's attribute bits are
8004, character device, NUL device .
Strategy and interrupt entry points are
at 14C6 and 14CC (see Figure 6). What
does the NUL device do?
Not much, NUL merely sets the
done bit in the status word and returns. Let's see what the next device
is. Device headers are 11 bytes long,
so the next device header is at 9C8:0
to 11. See Figure 7.
Lost?
Don't be alarmed if you find yourself at a different device driver. I
installed this device with CONFIG.SYS. You should see whatever
(continued next page)
•• NUL
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
13
DEBUGGING A DISK
Figure 6 - Strategy And Interrupt Entry Points
(continued from page 13)
devices you have installed through
CONFIG.SYS. This one is a block
device with non-mM formats (attribute
= 2000); it has only one unit. It's a
memory disk, my drive D:. See Figure
8.
This is my installable device for
expanded memory management. Notice the next device has segment 0070,
and so is in the BIOS. See Figure 9.
Here we are at the BIOS CON
driver. If you got lost along the way,
do a quick search. S 70:0 FFFO "CON"
will find occurrences of the string
'CON' in the BIOS. Remember, this
string will be OA bytes past the start of
the device driver. Attribute 8013 says
this character device is standard input,
standard output and can do output
through int 29H.
Since we are now in the BIOS, your
results should be similar to mine. See
Figure 10 for the next few drivers.
This device driver is a block device
which supports removable media calls,
and can process control strings (Attribute - 0840). This device driver has
three units, for the two floppies, and
one hard disk on my system.
•••
-u 291:1406 1400
0291: 1J1C6 26
0291:1!1C7 814F030001
0291:1!1CC CB
ES:
OR
RETF
Figure 7 - RAM Disk Device Header
-d 908:0 11
09C8:oooo
09C8:0010
00 00 75 09 00 20 35 01-D4 02 01 00 00 00 00 00
00 00
•• u •• 5 •••••••••
Figure 8 - Expanded Memory Management Device Header
,-<1 975:0 11
0975:0000 B3 OB 70 00 00 80 4C 00-21 01 45 4D 4D 58 58 58
0975:0010 58 30
•• p••• L.I.EMMXXX
XO
Figure 9 - BIOS CON Driver
-d 70:bb3 b04
0070:0B8O
0070:0BCO
68 OC 70 00 13-80 C6 00 D1 00 43 4F 4E
20 20 20 20 20
h.p ••••••• CON
Figure 10 - More BIOS Drivers
-d·70:068 079
0070: OC60
0070:0C70
17 OD 70 00 00 80 C6 00
D7 00 41 55 58 20 20 20-20 20
•• p•••••
•• AUX
-d 70:d17 d28
0070:0D10
0070:0D20
15-0E 70 00 40 AO C6 00 E6
00 50 52 !IE 20 20 20 20-20
•• p.@ ••••
.PRN
-<1 70:e15 e26
0070:0£10
0070:0£20
£5 OE 70.00 08 80 C6 00 OC 01 43
4C 4F 43 4B 2!1 20 20
•• p••••••• C
LOCK$
-<1 70:ee5 et6
0070:0EEO
7A OC 70.00 40 08 C6 00 12 01 03
0070:0EFO 6A 13 70 00 80 00 00
-d 70:c7a 08b
0070:0C70
0070:0C80
29 OD 70 00 00 80
C6 00 D7 00 43 4F 4D 31-20 20 20 20
z.p.@ ••••••
j.p ••••
•••• COM1
).p •••
-d 70:d29 d3a
0070:0D20
0070:0D30
71 20 70 00 40 AO C6
00 BC 00 !lC 50 54 31 20-20 20 20
q p.@ ••
••• LPT1
-d 70:2071 2082
0070:2070
0070:2080
83 20 70 00 40 AO C6-00 F4 00 4C 50 54 32 20
20 20 20
• p.@ ••••• LPT2
-d 70:2095 20a6
0070:2090
0070:2010
FF FF 70-00 00 80 C6 00 DD 00 43
4F 4D 32 20 20 20 20
•• p••••••• C
0M2
Note: the FFFF in the link field indicates that this is the last devioe driver.
14
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
BUILD YOUR OWN
PC XT/XT TURBO
RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY
640K RAM on board. Utilizes 41256-150 N.S. RAM
chips. 250% higher reliability factor based on 2 5ths
amount of memory chips required with IBM PC/XT for
640K RAM using 64K RAM chips. Memory versatility.
single 256K or 640K RAM on board selectable jumper.
OPTIONAL PROCESSOR
INTEL 8087 Math CPU socket for volume numerical
calculations.
ENCLOSURE
Convenient flip-top style or slide-in style metal case.
Scratch resistant enamel surface ..
POWER SUPPLY
EXPANDABILITY
8 IBM Compatible I/O Slot bus. Works with all Hardware
for IBM PC/XT
150 Watt output. 110 or 220 volt operation. Quiet
cooling fan. Ample current for highwattage consumption
accessories.
FLOPPY DRIVES
Monochrome graphic card or ·color graphic card
Model Teac-55BV 51h" V2 Height. Double Sided. Double
Density. 48 TPI, 360K Storage, Direct Drive. Quiet
mechanism. low power consumption.
CUSTOM LANGUAGES
HARD DRIVE UPGRADES
EPROM & ROM sockets. accepts 2764-27128 chips
for custom BIOS applications.
Room for two optional half height accessories. Auxiliary
cooling fan mounting capability.
VIDEO CARD
IPC/XT/AT COMPATIBLE ADD ON & ACCESSORIES I
MONITORS
RGB Color/amber/green (TVM)
TTL Monochrome amber/soft white (Mctek)
HARDWARE FOR IBM AT
$359.00
109.00
SYSTEM COMPONENTS
XT Motherboard 0-640K (2 layers) 4.77/8MHZ
XT Motherboard 0-640K (4 layers) 4.77 MHZ
XT Turbo-motherboard (4 layers) 8 MHZ
XT Case (flip-top)
XT Case (slide-in)
XT 150W power supply
XT 5160 keyboard (AT style) FCC approved
Floppy controller w/cable
Multi I/O card
384K Multifunction card (OK)
I/O Plus II
Color graphic card
Monochrome graphic w/printer port I
Teac 55BV Floppy drive
Assembly & Test
149.00
149.00
179.00
45.00
49.00
85.00
79.00
39.00
89.00
85.00
65.00
65.00
85.00
109.00
25.00
HARD DISK SYSTEMS:
Internal SEAGATE ST-215 10MB hard disk drive
with controller
360.00
Internal SEAGATE ST-225 20 MB hard disk drive
with controller
399.00
Internal 30MB hard disk drive with controller
655.00
V20-825.00
EasyData 1200H (half size internal modem)
139.00
half size internal modem card for IBM Portable and
PC/XT/AT and compatibles. same features as 1200L
but without the additional serial port.
XT Assembly Manual
9.00
a. AT compatibie motherboard
$650.00
8 slots 1 MB memory on board. expandable to 1 M
b. Combined floppy/hard disk controller
239.00
c. Printer port/serial port card
99.00
d. 200 watt power supply
139.00
e. 1.2MB floppy disk drive
155.00
f. 2MB multifunction
199.00
OK expandable to 2M, parallel port, 2 serial ports,
game port
g. 3MB multifunction
.
229.00
OK expandable to 3M, parallel port, 2 serial ports,
game port
h. AT type case
89.00
i. AT compatible keyboard
89.00
j. 20MB hard disk, SEAGATE 4026
595.00
739.00
k. 30MB hard disk, SEAGATE 4038
I. 40MB hard disk, SEAGATE 4051
899.00
ACCESSORIES
Surge Suppressed outlet strip
Surge .Suppressed outlet strip (UL approved)
Parallel printer cable/serial cable
Disk storage w/lock (holds 100 pcs)
Disk storage w/lock (holds 50 pcs)
Roll Top Disk Storage (holds 100 pcs)
9.50
12.95
9.99
14.50
10.95
29.50
McTEK SYSTEMS, INC.
2316 FOURTH STREET
BERKELEY, CA 94710
(415) 549-3472
. DEALERS: Identify yourself as a dealer and we'll send you dealer
information. We're reliable, efficient, and price competitive.
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
15
Professionalize Your Programs
By Rick Ryall
2323 McBride Ln #42
Santa Rosa, CA 95401
707-523-4144
Using Turbo Pascal's
Built-in System Procedures
Turbo Pascal is a powerful development system that you can use to write
professional programs. .System hooks
like the built-in procedures MsDos
and INTR let you speed up your
creations. If you already program in
Pascal (or just want to know what the
jabbering's about), then come along
on Rick's guided tour into the depths
of Turbo.
S
ystem level procedures like MsDos and INTR are operating
system-specific to MS and PCDOS, and like the BIOS andBDOS
procedures built-into the CP/M version
of Turbo Pascal, they let you access
the operating system.
Reading a disk sector, checking video type, determining disk density, and
checking the printer (is it ready or
disconnected?) before sending it a
character are problems you can solve
easily and efficiently using the MsDos
or INTR procedures.
which one is in force (to discriminate
between them). See Figure 2.
In Figure 2, the tag field is "sport."
After that, the record is completely different,depending on whether the sport is
baseball or football.
Since a free union has no tag field, there
is no way to discriminate between its
variants. They are simply two (or more)
different ways of looking at the same data
(in this case, the first four registers).
"RegisterRecord" allows us to directly reference any of the first 4
registers as 16 bit registers (AX, BX,
CX, DX) or as 8 bit registers (AL, AH,
BL, BH, etc.), where H refers to the
high byte of the register and L refers
to the low byte. This breakdown into
8-bit registers makes some functions
easier to write and easier to understand later.
Editor's note: If you create a non-variant
record to hold register values, it's a little
more work to set the high order bytes you have to multiply the original value by
256 in order to shift the bits into the high
byte.
Defining A Free Union Variant
Record
In order to use either MsDos or
INTR, we must first define a variable
type and variable. I'll call these
"RegisterRecord" and "Registers."
The variable called "Registers" wil1
represent the CPU's registers so we'll
have an easy way to preset them
before calling DOS.
For the variable type, we'll use a
free· union variant record (a record
defined without a tag field, but with a
tag field type). See Figure 1.
You can think of a free union as two
or more definitions of the same space.
We could do the same with absolute
variables.
Editor's note: The more common kind of
variant record is called a discriminated
union." In a discriminated union, the
variants are actually different from each
other, and a tag field" is used, to teU
II
II
16
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
System Level Routines
I like to break system level routines
down into three groups:
Function calls
Interrupts
Direct memory and port manipulations
There are some unwritten rules
about when and where to use each
group, but you should use function
calls if you can. Interrupts are second
best, with direct memory and port
manipulations last. Microsoft promises
to support function calls for all future
versions of DOS. Which means: programs that run on current versions of
DOS should run on future versions.
Approximately 80 function calls can
be accessed through the procedure
MsDos. For their names and other
useful information, you'll probably
need more than the DOS reference
manual (the enigmatic doc supplied
with every legal purchase of PC or
MS-DOS).
If your manual doesn't discuss function calls (the later DOS references
Figure 1 - Register Record
type
RegisterRecord =
record case integer of
1:(AI,
BI,
CX,
DX, BP,SI,DI,DS,ES,Flags: integer);
2:(AL,AH,BL,BH, CL,CH,DL,DH: byte);
end;
Figure 2 - A Discriminated Union
type
game
= record
TeamName: atr1ng[30];
case sport: (baseball, football) of
baseball: (inning: integer;
runs, hits, errors: integer;
BaseballTactics: (bunt, slide, steal,
badger, eject, homerun»;
football: (quarter: integer;
points: integer;
penalties: integer;
FootballTactics: (kill, maim, sack, charge,
trap" bomb, tackle, block»;
end; { game l'
don't), borrow a Technical Reference
for your specific computer and version
of DOS. Although not complete, Peter
Norton's Programmer's Guide To The
IBM PC talks about most of them.
GetFreeSpace
Let's use the record declared earlier
and the procedure MsDos to determine the space left on a disk.
After fumbling through the DOS
manual for a while (am I the only one
who thinks this manual is hard to
read?) I found that function 36h (54
decimal), GetFreeSpace, does what I
need.
Load the function number (36h) into
register AH, and the drive number to
test into DL (0 - logged drive, 1 drive A, 2 - drive B, and so on).
Nothing else needs to be set.
After making the proper' assignments to AH and DL in the Registers
record variable, we call MsDos:
MsDos( Registers );
On exit, the registers will contain the
following information AX - Sectors per allocation unit, or
FFFFh if and only if the drive indicated does not exist. (Obviously this can
be used to test for the existence of disk
drives.)
BX - number of free allocation units
(clusters)
CX - bytes per sector
Whoa, there. I don't know about
you, but I don't see any mention of
free disk space. Assuming the manual
hasn't lied (guaranteed, right?), there
must be a way to find disk space from
this information.
And there is - bytes per sector
times sectors per allocation unit times
the number of free allocation units.
Or, in registers:
AX * BX * CX
to get the number of bytes remaining.
See Figure 3, a complete Turbo
Pascal function to check disk space. It
returns the number FFFFh if the drive
was invalid and the number of kbytes
remaining on the selected drive (which
. was passed as a value parameter)
otherwise.
Interrupts
Interrupts are very similar to function calls. (Since functions are called
through interrupt 21h, they are really
just a special type of interrupt.)
Interrupts are more closely tied to a
computer's hardware than function
calls, and so may vary in their calling
sequences and effects from make to
Figure 3 - Disk Space Function
FUNCTION DiskSpaceFree: integer;
var
Registers : RegisterRecord;
Tracks, Sectors, BytesPerSector integer;
begin
with Registers do
begin
fillchar{ Registers, sizeor( Registers ), 0 );
{ function number
AU:= $36;
{ choose LPTl }
DL:= 0;
~DOS( Registers );
{ make service call
Tracks:= BX;
Sectors:= AX;
BytesPerSector:= ex;
if AX = $FFFF then DiskSpaceFree:= AX
else DiskSpaceFree:= round( Sectors - BytesPerSector/l024.0- Tracks )i
e~;'
end;
{DiskSpaceFree}
.
.
make or model to model. Therefore
it's not as safe to use them. (The BIOS
hides these differences when you
make function calls.)
To try out an interrupt, let's check
the printer port to see whether it's
ready to receive a character. It's always good to do this before printing a
file since it keeps the system from
hanging if there's a printer problem.
Interrupt 17h is devoted specifically
to the printer and will tell you, among
other things, the current printer status.
According to the DOS manual, we
need to put 2 in the AH register (for
"get printer status"), and 0 (for LPT1)
or 1 (for LPT2) in the DX register to
select the printer port. Then use the
built-in procedure, INTR, to call the
interrupt:
intr( $17, Registers );
After the call, the status is returned
in register AH in the form of an error
code.
Test Run
"Great," I thought. "Now I can
write a little function to get the printer
port status. I'll test it by running my
program with the printer cable
plugged in and with it unplugged."
It didn't work. The error code returned was independent of the state of
the printer. Not very useful.
After a lengthy trial and error
process (sparing you the details), I
discovered that we have to RESET the
printer port before the status is correct. (Couldn't we all write books on
what the manuals don't tell us!)
To reset the printer port, we just put
1 in the AH register (for "reset the
printer"), and select the printer port in
the DX register. Then we call interrupt
17h, and the port is reset.
For the complete PrinterReady function, see Figure 4. This works with my
(continued next page)
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
17
USING TURBO PASCAL
(continued from page 17)
Figure 4 - Printer Ready Function
computer (Tandy 1000) and printer
(HP ThinkJet); it may not work with
yours. Editor's note: It doesn't work with
FUNCTION Printer Ready: boolean;
var
Status : byte;
Registers : RegisterRecord;
begin
fillchar( Registers, sizeof( Registers ), 0 );
with Registers do
begin
AH:= $01;
{ code to reset the printer }
DL:= $00;
{ printer number, 0 = LPT1 }
Intr($17,Registers );
{ call. printer interrupt }
{ code for get the printer status
AH:= $02;
{ printer number, 0 = LPT1 }
DL:= $00;
{ call printer interrupt }
intr( $17,Registers );
Status:,;: AH;
end:
PrinterReady:= not Odd( Status shr 4 ); { test bit 4 }
end; {PrinterReady}
mine.
I used an interrupt instead of a
function call to test the printer port
status because I couldn't find a function call that fit my requirements and
worked as easily. So the code might
be sensitive to some computer/printer
combinations. A little risky, perhaps,
but probably not dangerous.
Altering Memory Directly
The last programming method is one
I'd avoid unless there were no other
choice - poking or reading values
directly to or from system memory or
ports. Software written this way will
be most sensitive to differences in
equipment.
I've found only one compelling reason for altering memory directly in the
MS-DOS programs I've written so far:
speeding up the screen (my CP/M
Kaypro 10 has much faster screen 110
than my Tandy). In this case, the
slowness of the standard function calls
and interrupts and the knowledge that
most hardware vendors place the video pages in the same memory locatiqns make this choice reasonably
sound.
Editor's note: This is one of the primary
reasons why very very few PC programs
run on the non-clones, and one of the
reasons that the clones are such close
copies of the original.
Screen Memory
Let's use Turbo's built-in Mem array
to alter the screen memory.
There are two things we need to
know before writing directly to screen
memory - where the screen memory
is, and its format. To simplify things,
we'll write to the current video page
(it's also possible to write to a video
page other than the current one and
then switch to it, making the screen
"change instantly").
The base or starting location of the
screen memory is usually in one of
two places (in hexadecimal segment:offset notation): BOOO:OOOO or
B800:0000.
The former is used for monochrome
video controller cards and the latter for
18
Figure 5 - Fast Procedure To Display A String
Note that there is no check in the procedure below to insure that the text
of the line will not wrap around to the next line; it is assumed that the
line will fit. Note also that the use" of the Turbo whereX and whereY
functions assumes that the entire screen is being used. If you wish to use
this procedure with windows, it will be necessary to subtract the first
column number of the window from whereX and the first line number from
whereY in order to calculate the offset. }
type
string255 = string[255];
PROCEDURE SpeedWrite( Line: string255 );
const
ScreenSegment = $B800;
{for color card, change to $BOOO for monochrome
var
Offset, i : integer;
begin
Offset:= pred( whereX )-2 + pred( whereY )-160;
calculate mem. location
for i:= 1 to length( Line ) do
begin
Hem[ ScreenSegment:Offset ]:= ord( Line[i] );
{ set character byte
Offset:= Offset + 2;
{ skip attribute byte
end;
gotoXY( whereX + length( Line ), whereY );
{ move cursor to end of line
end; {SpeedWrite}
Figure 6 - Reverse Video Toggle
{This procedure swaps the colors of the character and the background at the
current cursor pOSition, which effectively toggles reverse video on and off}
PROCEDURE InvertCharacter;
var
Registers : RegisterRecord;
begin
fillchar( Registers, sizeof( Registers ), 0 );
with Registers do
begin
AH:= 8;
{ code for read character and attribute at cursor location}
BH:= 0;
{ video page number, 0 = normally active page}
intr( $10,Registers );
{ call video interrupt}
BL:= (AU shr 4) and $07 + (AU and $07) shl 4 + (AU and $08); {do invert}
BH:= 0;
{ video page number, as above}
AH:= 9;
code for write character and attribute}
CX:= 1;
{ number of characters to write}
intr( $10,Registers );
{ call video interrupt}
end;
end; {InvertCharacter
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
color (which I use).
The format goes like this - each
character location in memory occupies
two bytes, a character byte which is
the ASCII (or extended ASCII) character and an attribute byte. The attribute
byte describes character color, background color, and whether or not the
character is blinking. The two bytes
are one after the other with the character byte first. Thus each screen line (80
characters) occupies 160 bytes. Check
Figure 7 - Procedure To Change The Data Transfer Area
{ The ColI owing procedure will set the DTA to the memory location
defined by the values Segment and Offset. All subsequent disk
read and write data will be buffered at the new DTA, where you
can look at'it and modify it if you like. Remember that the DTA
must be at least as large as the size of one sector. Default DTA
is located at 80h in the program segment preCix. }
PROCEDURE SetDataTransCerArea( Segment, Offset: integer )j
var
Registers : RegisterRecordj
begin
fillchar( Registers, sizeof( Registers ), 0 );
with Registers do
begin
AH:=$1A;
function code for set DTA }
DS:= Segment;
segment portion oC address }
DX:= Offset;
offset portion of address }
HSDos( Registers };
make service call }
end·
end; '{ SetDataTransCerArea
Figure 8 - Function To Check Disk Type
The following function returns the disk type of the drive number passed to
it, where Cixed disk = F8h, quad density = F9h, SS 9 sector = FCh,
DS 9 sector = FDh, SS 8 sector = FEh, and DS 8 sector = FFh. }
PROCEDURE DiskType( Drive: byte };
var
Registers : RegisterRecordj
begin
Cillchar( Registers, sizeof( Registers }, 0 );
with Registers do
begin
{ function code for get FAT information
AH:= $lC;
{ disk drive number, 0= Default, 1= A, etc.
DL:= Drivej
HsDos( Registers };
{ make service call }
DiskType:= Hem[ DS:BX J;
end;
end; {DiskType}
Figure 9 - Function To Find Logged Drive
The function below returns the number of the currently logged drive, where
for consistency's sake (0 often refers to the default drive) 1 = A, 2 = B,
and so on. }
FUNCTION CurrentDrive : byte;
var
Registers : RegisterRecordj
begin
fillchar( Registers, sizeof( Registers ), 0 )j
with Registers do
begin
function code for get current drive number }
AH:= $19;
MsDos( Registers );
make service call }
CurrentDrive:= succ( AL )j
1 = A, 2 = B, etc. }
end;
endj {CurrentDrive}
the DOS reference manual of your
choice for a list of attributes.
If we assume that the attributes are
fine as they are, we can use the
procedure in Figure 5 to add a string
beginning at the current cursor location.
If you use this procedure with a
standard IBM video controller, you
may see snow on the screen while the
data's being written. You can stop the
snow by poking data into screen memory only during horizontal or vertical
retrace.
To further illustrate the use of function calls and interrupts, I have included several additional routines (see Figures 6-10). These are variations of
procedures and functions that I use in
my own programming.
Where To Go For Help
Now that you know something
about system level routines, the real
challenge rears its recurring head:
where do you find the information
you need to apply these system level
hooks?
A natural response is - ask someone who already knows how to apply
them, the "use an expert" ploy.
Good idea, but unfortunately many
professional programmers don't know
how to apply service calls. Besides, it's
more fun sometimes to muck around
yourself, and it won'.t take much
mucking to become an expert. Which
leads to question two, "Where does
an expert turn for help?"
Public domain and shareware programs that include source code, and
technical magazines like Micro C and
PC Tech Journal are good sources.
Books
Another alternative is to buy aftermarket books that address the needs
at hand.
The first book almost everyone buys
is Programmer's Guide to the IBM PC by
Peter Norton. It contains a. great deal
of information, is written in a style
noticeably better than Norton's articles
in PC Week or PC Magazine, and is
reasonably well-organized. However,
Programmer's Guide suffers from an
attitude problem.
Too many times Norton pushes his
(continued next page)
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
19
USING TURBO PASCAL
(continued from page 79)
other books and programs or leaves
the reader hanging with phrases like
"since this book does not cover (subject goes here), you should look elsewhere for that information." I call the
first irritation commercialism. The latter is nothing less than "whimping"
in a book that proclaims to be the
"ultimate reference guide to the entire
family of IBM PCs." Perhaps Norton's
"Utilities" ($99) have destroyed his
candor.
For example, when he discusses
reading a hard disk sector via interrupt
13h, Norton writes that service OAh of
this interrupt will perform a long read
of an AT hard disk sector. Allegedly,
the CH register should contain the
cylinder number, but since this only
allows cylinder numbers below 256,
and we find elsewhere in the book
that an AT hard disk contains 605
cylinders, we must conclude that this
information is either incomplete or
incorrect. To make matters worse,
Norton adds:
"We'll outline the new services
here, but we won't go into any great
detail for the same reason we have
passed lightly over many other modeldependent features: Our main concern
Byte Magazine called it.
in this book is to explore the entire PC
family, not the peculiarities of one
model or another."
Norton sometime forgets that he's
titled his book, Programmer's Guide to
the IBM PC, and that programmers are
likely to want to know this type of
information.
IIMapping The IBM PC & PC}r"
A book that doesn't share this attitude problem is Compute's Mapping the
IBM PC and PC]r by Russ Davies.
It thoroughly covers the memory
and port organization of the PC, with
many programming examples in BASIC and assembly, as well as interrupts and service calls. Its organization
isn't quite as good as Programmer's
Guide, so it's not as easy to use as a
reference, but it doesn't leave the
impression that the author purposely
withheld information.
Finally
If you're really interested in improving your programming style, I heartily
recommend you write a disk editor.
After writing CP/M PROBE for Micro
C's Pascal programming contest and
working on an MS-DOS version, I'm
convinced there's no better way to
learn the quirks of an operating sys• ••
tem.
Figure 70 - Cursor Switch
{ The following procedure will turn the cursor on or off
PROCEDURE TurnCursor( State: boolean );
const
Visible = 0;
Invisible = 1;
StartLine : integer = $06;
start and end lines should be changed }
EndLine : ·integer = $07;
for monochrome cards }
CursorType : integer = $00;
begin
fillchar( Registers, sizeof( Registers ), 0 );
with Registers do
begin
case State of
false : begin
{ blanks cursor }
CursorType:= Invisible;
CH:= CursorType shl 5 + StartLine;
CL:= EndLine;
end;
true
begin
{ sets cursor on }
CursorType:= Visible;
CH:= Cursor Type shl 5 + StartLine;
CL:= EndLine;
end;
end; {of case statement
AH:= $01;
code for set cursor }
intr( $10, Registers );
call video interrupt }
end;
end; {TurnCursor}
"CIARCIA'S
SUPER
SYSTEM"
The S8180
Computer/Controller
Featured on the cover of Byte, Sept. 1985,
the SB180 lets CP/M users upgrade to a
fast, 4" x 7W'sing/e board system.
• SMHz 64180 CPU
(Z80 instruction supersetl, 256K RAM,
SK Monitor ROM with device test, disk
format, read/write.
• Mini/Micro Aoppy Controller
(1-4 drives, Single/Double Density,
1-2 sided, 40/77/S0 track 3Yz': 5%"
and S" drives).
• Measures 4" x 7W: with mounting holes
• One Centronics Printer Port
• Two RS232C Serial Ports
(75-19,200 baud with console port
auto-baud rate select!.
• Power Supply Requirements
+5V +/-5% @500 mA
+12V +/- 20% @40mA
• ZCPR3 (CP/M 2.2/3 compatible)
• Multiple disk formats supported
• Menu-based system customization
SB180-1
SB 180 computer board w/256K
bytes RAM and ROM monitor
... ,................................... $369.00
SB180-1-20
same as above w/ZCPR3, ZRDOS
and BIOS source ............. $499.00
-Quantity discounts available-
~COMM1BO-M-S
optional peripheral board adds
1200 bps modem and SCSI
hard disk interface.
TO ORDER
CALL TOLL FREE
TELEX
1-800-635-3355
643331
For technical assistance or
to request a data sheet, call:
1-203-871-6170
t7/F4.~.
~-
20
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
Micromint, Inc.
25 Terrace Drive
Vernon, CT 06066
ERAC co.
*
*
SPECIAL
DBASE BOOK OF
BUSINESS APPLICATIONS
by Michael J. Clifford,J.S,9S"
1" •
Reg. $19.95
While they last
ONL Y
.$.k9s-
KAYPRO EQUIPMENT
9" Amber CRT ......... : .... $39.00
9" Green Monitor ............. 35.00
12" Green Monitor ............ 45.00
81 Series ROM's ............... 7.00
Keyboard (Kaypro) ............ 75.00
Keyboard Siemens w/case ...... 65.00
KAYPRO MAINBOARDS
K2 With Sockets ............. $39.00
K2 Populated - Tested ......... 129.00
K2 with PR08-3 Mod .......... 239.00
TillS one rullS 55. OS. 01 Quad duves.
Wittl manual & software. tested iJnd
guaranteed 30 days.
K2 PR08-3 Mod. EXCHANGE ... 149.00
WD1002-5 Hard Disk Controller .200.00
Host Interface Board ........... 15.00
CABINETS
K2X ....................... $35.00
K10 ........................ 35.00
Bottom portion
WillI
front and back only.
CRT Bezel ................... 12.00
MISC. CABLES
9"
14"
9"
14"
50 Pin - 50 Pin Header ..... $2.50
40 Pin - 40 Pin Header ...... 2.25
Hard Disk - 20 Pin Header .... 2.00
Dual Inline 16 Pin Male (2) ... 2.00
CPU/SUPPORT
MC68000-8 CPU .............. $9.99
l80 CPU ..................... 1.00
l80A CPU .................... 2.50
l80A PIO ..................... 2.50
Z80A SIO ..................... 5.00
l80A DMA ................... 10.00
8088 ....................... 10.00
8089-3 ...................... 29.00
TEST EQUIPMENT
OSCILLOSCOPES
Tek 485 350 MHz ............ $2995
H-P 1725A 275 MHz ........... 2095
Tek 454 150 MHz ............. 825
Phillips 3260E 120 MHz ........ 995
Phillips 3214 25 MHz .......... 575
SPECTRUM ANALYZERS
H-P 140T/8554B/8552A ....... $4900
Tek49110Mhz-40GHz ........ 4600
H-P 851B/8551B 10 MHz-40 GHz 1500
t:i0URS:
Mon;· Fri.g::: 6 - Sat. 10':4 :
MINIMUM ORDER ~'$15,OO
TERM~: VISA, MasterCard, C,ertified
,Checks, 'Money Order; NO COD.' Visa
and' MasterCard .add 3% .. Peisonal
checks must' clea,:'SEFOREwe'ship.
Include shipping charges. Caiifor'nia
'residents add 6% Sales Tax; FOrfnore .
info please call __ DON'T WRITE! We
don't have time to answer your letters.
8280 Clairemont Mesa Blvd., Suite 117
San Diego, California 92111
(619 569·1864 Call for our Test Equipment Mailer!
IBM/PC COMPATIBLES
Mainboard, 8 Slot, Case,
Power Supply ... : ........ $225
To make this a complete system, add
A) Memory B) Floppy Control/er
C) Drive D) Keyboard E) Video Card
F) Video Monitor G) Multifunction Card
A) MEMORY
256K 150 NS .............. $25
512K 150 NS .............. 50
640K 150 NS ...... : ....... 68
B) FLOPPY DISK CONTROLLER
Card for 2 Floppy Drives ....... $36
Card for 4 Floppy Drives ..... " 42
C) 5114 FLOPPY DISK DRIVES
Mitsubishi M4851 DSDD 40 Tr .. $99
Mitsubishi M4853 DSDD 80 Tr ... 99
Fujitsu M2551A DSDD 40 Tr ..... 99
Panasonic JU455 DSDD 40 Tr ... 105
Shugart 475 DS Quad 1.2Mb ... 159
D) KEYBOARDS
Cherry Keyboard (no case) ..... $38
AT Style Keyboard. . . . . . . . . . .. 69
E) VIDEO CARDS
Tomcat with Parallel and
Lightpen Port .............. $53
Hercules compatible Video Board 75
Color Graphics Adapter ...... " 69
Enhanced Graphics Adptr-(EGA) .275
F) VIDEO MONITORS
Roland MB-122G, 12" (no case) $39
Samsung MD-1254G, 12" Green 82
Samsung MD-1254A, 12" Amber 88
Goldstar MBM-2015, 12" Amber 106
Mitsi AT-1332A 13" RGB TTL .. 295
Goldstar MCH-4015 13" RGB ... 420
Goldstar MCL4333 12"
Composite Color Monitor ..... 159
II
1 year parts & labor. Apple & Comma·
modore compatible. with audio amp
& volume control. Great for VCRs.
G) MULTI FUNCTION CARD
Parallel & Serial Port, Game Port
Floppy Controller, Clock & Cal. $96
EGA PACKAGE DEAL
Package consists of Intergraph + 4 EGA
Card and the Autoseek 2000 EGA Monitor by Int'l Graphics. No software
patches necessary. 1 yr. guar. .., $795
EPROMS
2716 ....................... $3.50
2732 ........................ 3.75
2764-25 ...................... 3.50
PRINTERS
Centronics 703 ............. $395.00
Centronics 588 - As Is ........ 125.00
NEC2000 w/Single Sheet Feed .. 999.00
Sweda Cash Registers
Models 303, 2640 & 2650
From major supermarket ... $99 ea.
SYSTEM EXAMPLE #1
For the Hacker (Cheap)
Mainboard, Case, Power Supply .. $225
256K Memory 150 NS .. .. .. ... 25
Floppy Controller (2 Drives) . . . . .. 36
Floppy Drive 112 Ht DSDD...... 99
Keyboard Cherry (no case) ..... 38
Video Board with Parallel and
Lightpen Port. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 53
Roland MB-122G, 12" Green
Monitor (no case) ............ ~
$515
SYSTEM EXAMPLE #2
FCC Approved (Not Cheap)
Mainboard, Case, Power Supply .. $225
640K Memory 150 NS .. .. .. ... 68
Multi I/O, Parallel, Serial,
Floppy, Clock/Cal. ........... 96
2 DSDD Floppy Drives (minimum) . 198
EGA Package .................. 795
AT Style Keyboard ............. ~
$1451
Oh, you wanted a turbo board .... 40
and a 20M Hard Drive & Controller. 410
Now how much would you pay?
JUST $1901
HARD DISK DRIVES
10M
10M
20M
20M
20M
20M
32M
40M
60M
70M
Seagate 212 ............... 200
Rodin RO-252 .............. 230
ST-225 .................. 385
Tandon TM252 ............. 350
Tulin (Oki) ............... 345
Half Height with Controller. .. 410
Half Height with Controller. .. 667
Quantum Q540 . . . . . . . . . . .. 650
with Controller ............ 1150
Vertex V170 . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 725
HARD DISK CONTROLLERS
WD-1 002-WX2 with Cable ....... $156
Omni-5510 '" ................ 150
Adaptec 2770A
(Get 15M on 10M Drive) ....... 156
POWER SUPPLIES
Elgar 400W Unint. Power Sup .. $375.00
+ 5V/1A, - 5V/.2A, + 12V/1A,
-12V/.2A, - 24V/.05A ....... 15.00
+ 24V/2.2A .................. 8.00
SWITCHERS
5V/9.5A, 12V/3.8A, -12V/.8A $39.00
5V/3A, 12V/2A, -12V/.4A ..... 29.00
5V/10A ..................... 25.00
5V175A, + 12V/8A, + 12V/8A .. 55.00
5V/20A ..................... 35.00
MISCELLANEOUS
Headset/Boom Microphone ...... $3.95
Nicad Pack 12V/.5AH ........... 6.50
5 Blade Muffin Fans ............ 7.50
Joystick 4 Switches 1" Knob ..... 5.50
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
21
Controlling The Real W orId
With Your PC
By Bruce Eckel
John Fluke Mfg. Co
P.D.Box C9090 MIS 266D
Everett, WA 98206
Intro To Electronics Step 2
Bruce continues his easy, low-tech
approach to explaining hi-tech. Once
you realize how easy it is for a
computer to control electro/mechanical
devices, you'll probably have the computer controlling your whole house
(teenagers and all). (If you're interested in controlling 120VAC with your
system, check out the' 5-100 column
in this issue.)
T
his article is the second in a
series. In the first, I discussed
setting up a lab and showed
how to connect a computer (via the
parallel port) to a breadboard using
optocouplers to control non-TIL voltage and current levels. These are the
voltages required by many "real
world" gadgets, including stepper motors.
This time, I'll .describe a stepper
motor, hook it up to a breadboard,
and program it to move.
Magnetism & Motors
Think of a motor as having two
main parts - a rotor (turning part)
and a stator (stationary part). Each
part contains magnets, which can be
manipulated to turn and stop the
rotor. The north pole of one magnet
attracts the south pole of another, but
north repels north (& south repels
south) causing the rotor to turn.
You can make the stator a north or
south pole by driving a current
through it.
In an AC motor, a "rotating magnetic field" is produced in the stator by
the AC line current. The rotor tries to
catch up to this rotating field.
In a DC motor, mechanical or electronic switching changes the field every time the rotor gets close (lithe
poles are always more attractive in the
next field?") so it keeps moving.
In a stepper motor, the rotor (instead of being continually teas~d forward, as in a DC motor) is allowed to
rest in little pockets of stable magnetism. If you grasp the shaft of a stepper
and twist, you'll find it takes quite a
bit of force to move it out of one of
these little pockets. But by changing
the polarity of the pockets; you can
I ANALOCIC I
I PCB EDIT I
o
o
22
CREATE [tOUBLE SIDED
o
BOARDS ON YOUR PC OR
XT -- FAST-MOUSE SUPPORT - CUT AND
o
o
MUCH HORE - CALL FOR INFO
o
ONLY
$89.95
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
32 CHANNEL LOGIC ANAL
FOR'THE PC/XT (STAND
ALONE CPM-80 VERSION
READY JANUARY 19B7)
PASTE -- UNLIMITED TRACE
WIDTHS -- 10 MIL TRACE
SEPERATION -- BLOCK PAD
OR TRACE DELETE.
OUTPUT TO.DOT MATRIX
PRINTER (PLOTTER DRIUER
DUE SEPT 86).
make the rotor jump from one magnetic pocket to the next.
The stator consists of many magnetic
pockets. Some motors have more stators than others; you can determine
how many if you know the "step
angle" - the number of degrees the
shaft turns when the rotor jumps from
one pocket to the next.
7.5 and 15 degrees are common step
angles, and the steppers would have
48 and 24 magnetic pockets, respectively (360 degrees - a full revolution
- divided by 7.5 and 15" the step
angles).
Your printer uses a stepper motor to
position the print head. Turn the
printer off and grasp the head (careful
if it's been printing - it's probably
hot!).
Slide it back and forth. Now turn
the printer on (most printers will
whack the print head against the left
stop a few times - to find the head
position in case somebody just moved
it back and forth). Now move the
head. Harder! What did you find out?
Most. stepper motors have permanent magnets with windings around
o 16 BIT TRIGGER NORD,
4 CLOCK QUALIFIERS
DOH FLETCHER
o
TIMING DIAGRAM, HEX, OR
o
BARE BOARD WITH SOFTWARE
o
ONLY
RT 7 BOX 120
COLUIIBIA .. liD
65202
(314) 443-7294
DEBUG/DDT DISPLAY
AND. SCEMATICS - $75.00
$389 .. 95
them. The windings bump the rotor
from one magnetic pocket to the next
and hold the rotor in a particular
pocket. Changing the polarity of one
of the windings causes the rotor to
move. Leaving the polarities alone
holds the motor in place; but current
will continue to flow through the coils,
making it difficult to move when you
push on it.
Where To Find Steppers?
I got my mine out of old 8" disk
drives which had been sold for scrap. I
highly recommend this route, since it's
a tremendous education to take a drive
apart.
If you can't find any scrap which
isn't more expensive than a new motor, try a mail-order house (get a name
from Micro C or Computer Shopper)
like American Design Components, 62
Joseph St., Moonachie, NJ 07074. If
you're really in a hurry, try Radio
Shack. It might have them, and you
shouldn't have to pay more than $10
for one.
Fooling With A Motor
The best way I found to get· a feel
for one of these things requires a ninevolt battery and a willingness to play
around with it.
Although most steppers say they
require 24 Volts (this is indeed what
the final circuit was designed for), you
can usually get some kind of action
out of them with a nine volt battery.
They just won't have much twist on
nine volts.
Some steppers have two coils; some
have four. Sometimes they have a
common ground; sometimes the two
terminals of each coil are brought out
on a separate wire.
In any case, by playing around with
the battery, you should be able to
figure out enough about the connection to hook the motor into our circuit
from last issue.
Exploring A Stepper
Here's my. approach ....:- using a stepper from a scrap drive.
I had five wires coming out of the
stepper motor. I took the ground wire
of the nine-volt battery clip and connected it to what looked like it might
be ground on the stepper motor (probably a black wire).
I didn't worry too much about hurting it; I didn't think I could do much
damage with a nine-volt battery. The
other four wires on the stepper were
connected to the four coils. I poked
them with the plus wire from the
battery clip.
Here I noticed a strange thing when the stepper is in some positions,
poking some wires has no effect; poking some others will cause it to go
backward, others will send it forward.
The trick is to determine the sequence
of wires that have to be pulsed to
make the motor go forward and backward. We need to know these sequences in order to program it.
There are actually many ways to set
a motor up to do its job. For example,
if you need more "holding torque" (it
resists more when it's at rest in a well
and you try to move it), you can run
current through two coils at once. It
can get complicated. Fortunately, you
can make it work usefully just by
determining the step sequence and
turning on one wire at a time.
Keep it stupid, simple (at least at
first). If, for example, you appear to
have two wires for each coil (the coils
have no electrical contact with each
other), just tie one end of each coil to
ground.
Modifying The Circuit
Once you have the step. sequence
worked out, let's modify our circuit
(from last issue) so the computer can
directly control the stepper motor.
That circuit drove an LED through a
current-limiting resistor.
In the diagram (Figure 1), you'll see
the LED and resistor have been re':'
placed with an inductor (representing
a single stepper motor coil) and a
parallel diode. You should have one of
these for each coil of your· stepper
motor.
Now, when the Darlington transistor
is turned on, the stepper motor coil
will be energized. Since each coil is
controlled by one bit from the parallel
port, we can write software. to drive
the motor.
What's the Diode For?
When any kind of inductor is energized, it creates a magnetic field and
stores energy in it. When there's no
voltage across the coil, there's no field.
The instant a voltage appears across
the coil, current wants to flow, but the
coil refuses to let it pass until it builds
up its magnetic field. As the field
builds, current starts to flow.
When the field is completely built
up, current zooms through. (The coil
is happy, having exacted its energy
toll from the first electrons through in
order to build its field, so it doesn't
care about the rest.) In fact, at this
point there is no voltage across the coil
anymore - it just looks like a piece of
wire.
The coil resists any change in the
current flow through it. When the
current tries to start, it resists. And
when the current tries to stop, it
resists as well.
If you suddenly' stop driving current
through the coil, it will continue to
push current through itself, getting
energy by collapsing the magnetic field
it built up. It stores energy in the
magnetic field when you try to start it,
and draws energy from the field when
you try to shut it down.
This energy is formidable. I've heard
stories of attempts to develop a circuit
breaker for use in DC power transmission. Apparently, the currents are so
tremendous that even small inductances in the power lines can cause
amazing destruction of the circuit
breaker, its housing, transformers, etc.
I guess it just blows everything apart.
Of course, we aren't working with
anywhere near those voltages or currents in this case, but the principle is
the same: if you try to abruptly shut
off the current through an inductor, it
won't let you at first because current
continues to flow.
So if we were to shut the Darlington
off abruptly (and, compared to the
coil, the Darlington shuts off virtually
instantaneously), the coil would force
current through the transistor and
punch a hole through it. Bad news.
Shunt
This is where the shunt diode comes
in.
When we turn the coil on, the
voltage appears from the emitter of the
Darlington to ground (you can see this
in Figure 1) and attempts to pass
current through the little bar part of
(continued next page)
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
23
CONTROLLING THE REAL WORLD
(continued from page 23)
the diode, in the opposite direction of
the arrow. But it's no go. It's as if the
diode isn't there.
.
If we suddenly shut the transistor
off, the current wants to continue
flowing from the emitter through the
coil through ground. It can't pull any
more out of the emitter (without damaging it), but it CAN easily circulate
current around through the shunt
diode, since the direction the coil is
pushing the current is in the direction
of the diode's arrow. Thus, the current
just runs around in a· circle until the
magnetic field dissipates.
If you were using .a relay to switch
even higher voltages/currents (110
volts, for instance), yo~ would use the
same circuit to prevent damage to the
transistor by the relay coil.
Hook Up
The best way I've found to connect
the stepper is to arrange the coils in
their "forward" step order; that is, the
first coil to be energized should be
connected to bit zero of the parallel
24
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
port, the second should be connected
to bit one, etc.. This makes programming a lot easier.
Programming can also be simplified
by the following - if you want to set a
bit, the byte to put to the output port
is 2"(that bit). Thus, bit 0 is set by
outputting 2"0, bit one is set with 2"1,
etc.. So, if you write the BASIC code
100 FOR I - 0 TO 3 : OUT &H19,2"I :
NEXT
you'll cause the motor to move
through four of its steps (the port
number works for my Kaypro 2X;
yours will differ). This could be made
into a subroutine or function and
called as many times as you need to
move the motor to the desired position.
If you follow this line of development, you'll discover something rather
fascinating - the overhead of the
function or subroutine call will cause
the motor to move inconsistently. For
example, if you write the code 10 FOR J - 1 TO 50 : GOSUB 100
NEXT
and add
110 RETURN
you'll discover an uneven sound.
While statement 100 is executing, the
steps come out fairly evenly, but when
it RETURNs and then GOSUBs agqin,
there's extra time inserted.
In this case, BASIC is the culprit.
My version is interpreted, so a fundamental piece of code is running all the
time which looks at the statements,
decodes them, decides what to. do
with them, and then does it. A slow
approach. In addition, the exponential
calculation 2"BIT is usually floating
point, so while it's easy to program,
it's lousy during execution.
But it gives you an idea of some of
the problems involved in real-time
programming (hooray for BASIC!).
You're not just concerned with getting
the job done; you also have to worry
about the details - timing, speed;
etc. Everything counts when you're
affecting things in the real world.
The solution to this problem is fairly
simple, since even the BASIC interpreter is fairly fast in comparison with
the maximum speed at which stepper
motors usually operate. All we need
do is get the time between writes to
the port to be fairly consistent. As a
subroutine 200
210
220
230
240
250
260
FOR J = 1 TO K
OUT &B19,1:'Set
OUT &B19,2:'Set
OUT &B19,4:'Set
OUT&H19,8:'Set
NEXT
IJETURN
bitO,Clear
bit1,Clear
bit2,Clear
b1t3,Clear
rest
rest
rest
rest
Which can be called with 20 K - 50 : GOSUB 200
I also eliminated the floating-point
exponentiation. It's not as elegant, but
it runs faster. So fast, in fact, that the
motor may begin to oscillate because
its coils are being energized faster than
it c~n physically respond.
There are a number of ways to fix
this (but be careful, one fix l~ads to
another). If you're using assembly
language you have enough control to
"ramp up" the stepper motor - slowly move it up to the speed you want
so it will be turning fast enough not to
oscillate. In BASIC we can create a
dummy loopFOR Q .... 1 TO 10 : NEXT
after each "OUT" statement to slow
the motor down.
You can tweak the delay time by
changing the number in the "FOR"
loop and experiment to determine
when it starts oscillating.
You can also get a little more control
of the timing by using a compiler which generates assembly code that
runs much faster than interpreted BASIC.
Since everything runs so much faster, you can write more elegant code
(procedure calls in Turbo Pascal are
much quicker than subroutine calls in
BASIC), add longer delays, and have a
lot more resolution when tweaking
times.
(continued next page)
Figure 2 - Moving The Stepper Motor
5 ' RANDOM STEP ANGLE GENERATOR FOR STEPPER MOTOR OUT PARALLEL PORT
FOR I = 1 TO 13 : GOSUB 1000 : NEXT ST = 10
AMOUNT = INT{RND • 20) -10
PRINT AMOUNT, ST, AMOUNT + ST
IF ST + AMOUNT < 0 THEN AMOUNT = ST : FOR I = 1 TO AMOUNT : GOSUB 2000
NEXT : GOTO 20
40 IF ST + AMOUNT > 20 THEN AMOUNT = 20 - ST FOR I = 1 TO AMOUNT
: GOSUB 1000 :
NEXT : GOTO 20
50 IF ST + AMOUNT < ST THEN ST = ST + AMOUNT FOR· I = 1 TO AMOUNT
.
GOSUB 2000 : NEXT : GOTO 20
60 IF ST + AMOUNT > ST THEN ST = ST + AMOUNT FOR I = 1 TO AMOUNT
GOSUB 2000 : NEXT : GOTO 20
65 IF AMOUNT = 0 THEN 20
70 PRINT "ERROR"
80 END
1000 ' GO FORWARD SUBROUTINE
1010 OUT &H18, 1
1020 X = X+1:Y = Y+1 :' These kill Bome time
1030 OUT &818, 2
1040 X = X+1:Y = Y+1
1050 OUT &H18, 4
1060 X = X+1:Y=Y+1
1070 OUT &818, 8
1080 X = X+l:Y=Y+1
10g0 RETURN
2000 ' GO BACK SUBROUTINE
2010 OUT &818,4
2020 X = X+1: Y = Y+1
2030 OUT &818,2
2040 X = X+1:Y=Y+1
2050 OUT &818,1
2060 X=X+1:Y=Y+1
2070 OUT &818,8
2080 X=X+l:Y=Y+1
2110 RETURN
10
20
25
30
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
2~
/
/
CONTROLLING
XT CLONE SYSTEMS
(continued from page 25)
I decided to make the motor move a
random number of steps, forward or
backward, wait a random period of
time, then repeat the loop. The BASIC's in Figure 2.
You Have The Power
Now you can drive two stepper
motors with your PC (4 lines per
motor). This gives you the power to
do some kind of X-Y positioning, or
linear positioning of two independent
objects~ Lots of possibilities here.
You can also use the eight lines as
independent switches to control 24volt, low current (depending on the
ability of the Darlingtons you use, a
few amps) devices, or to drive relays
to control higher voltages.
Unfortunately, most parallel ports
are unable to read their lines, so you
can't discover whether switches in the
outside world are open or closed, or
hook up an analog-to-digital (AID)
converter to read variable voltages. A
digital-to-analog converter (DAC)
could be connected to give a variable
output voltage.
•••
Turbo Mother Board 4.77 and 8 MHz.
640 K Ram installed on board
Serial, Parallel, Game Ports
Clock/Calendar
Color Video Board (CGA)
150 Watt Power Supply
Flip Top Case
AT style Keyboard
ABOVE WITH 2 FLOPPY DISK DRIVES $ 699.00
WITH 1 FLOPPY AND 20 MEG $1049.00
WITH 1 FLOPPY AND 30 MEG $1199.00
Assembled and Tested for 24 Hours
Color Monitor RGB (CGA)
Color Monitor RGB (EGA)
Monochrome TTL (Green)
Monochrome TTL (Amber)
EGA Color Video Card
MS DOS 3.1
MAG TAPE CONVERSION
800/1600 BPI
ASCII/EBCDIC
Yz I!...9 Track Data Transfer to
Microcomputer Magnetic Media
.
• PC DOS Diskettes
Raw Data Dump to one Diskette $ 50 00
Batch Service·
Setup Fee:
$40 00
Each Diskette:
$18 00
• Alternative Media
8" or 5 ~" Diskette, Hard
Disk or Cassette Tape:
Inquire
Informatlonal Brochure Available
MICRO LOGIC SYSTEMS
207 Kent Avenue #1, Kentfield, CA 94904
(415) 461-8077
26
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
310.00
490.00
125.00
135.00
195.00
50.00
CLONE PARTS
Motherboard Standard 4.77 MHz
Motherboard Turbo 4.77 & 8 MHz
Color Video Card (CGA)
Monochrome Video TTL
Floppy Disk Controller
Hard Disk Controller
Disk I/O
RS 232 Serial Card
Power Supply 150 watt
Flip Top Case
AT Style Keyboard
20
20
30
30
[(;3711
$
$
$
$
$
$
$ 110.00
$ 135.00
$ 65.00
$ 75.00
$ 45.00
$ 100.00
$ 95",00
$ 45.00
$ 75.00
$ 45.00
$ 65.00
BARD DISK DRIVES
Meg Rodime 202E
$
Meg Seagate ST4026 (for AT) $
Meg Seagate ST4038 (for AT) $
Meg CDC Wren 1
(for AT) $
Does NOT include controller
249.00
399.00
479.00
479.00
$
$
$
39.00
69.00
69.00
SA800-2 Disk Drive
SA8S0 Disk Drive
Mitsubishi M2894 (850 Comp)
Call for Shugart Parts
Cabinet and Power Supply for
Two Disk Drives
Cabinet, PS, and TWO SA850s
$ 100.00
$ 200.00
CASCADE ELECTRONICS, INC.
ROUTE 1 BOX 8
RANDOLPH, MN 55065
507-645-7997
Please ADD Shipping on all Orders
COD Add $3.00
Credit Cards ADD 5%
Limited to Stock on Hand Subject to change
I.
TEXT
LINE
6
COL:
12
FILE:
VEDPLUS.TXT
INSERT
VEDIT PLUS is an advanced editor that
makes your program development and
word processing as efficient and
easy as possible. VEDIT PLUS is
simple eno!!9h to learn and use for
the novice, l]et has the speed,
flexibility ana power to satisfy the
most demanding computer professional.
VEDIT PLUS is particularly suited for
writing all types of programs and
lengthy documents such as reports or
manuscripts.
This shows how VEDIT PLUS can perform
windowing. One window is used for
word processing, a second for program
development, and the third for
commands.
WINDOW $ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _- - L _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
CHOICE IN
PROGRAMMABLE
EDITORS
~
VPLUSPC .COM
LIGHT
.COM
VEDIT
.INI
LIGHT
.HLP
INSTALL .EXE lIHARD
ENVI
.COM LONG
RAM2
.DIC KEYS
RAM3
.DIC PRINT
VEDIT PLUS has been the #1 choice of professionals
since 1980. Our latest release is even better - you can
open windows to simultaneously edit several files, access many editing functions with pop-up menus, use
keystroke macros to speed editing, and run other programs or DOS commands from within VEDIT PLUS.
Whether your needs are program development, technical writing or word processing, VEDIT PLUS is your
answer. With over 40,000 users you can depend on
VEDIT PLUS to perform consistently and reliably. It is
simple enough to learn for the novice, yet has the
speed, flexibility and power to satisfy the most demanding professional.
Compare. No other editor is as powerful - unlimited
keystroke macros, instant 'off-the-cuff' command macros utilizing a complete programming language, single command file comparison, special word processing and programming features. No other editor is as
easy to use - on-line help, pop-up menus, 75 page
tutorial, 380 page manual, and VEDIT PLUS is completely customizable.
Fully supports color windows on IBM CGA & EGA, and
even windowson most CRTterminals (including CRT's
\ connected to an IBM PC). Available for IBM PC, TI
Professional, Tandy 2000, DEC Rainbow, Wang PC,
MS-DOS, CP/M-86 and CP/M-80. Order direct or from
your dealer. $185
"To sum things up, VEDIT PLUS is a small, fast,
sophisticated editor with a wealth of features and a
good macro language. It offers many rewards forthe
dedicated programmer."
Computer Language, Chris Wolf, Scott
Lewis, Mark Gayman 6/86
"VEDIT PLUS is a wholly remarkable program:
blindingly fast, extremely powerful, and highly flexible."
Profiles Magazine, Robert Lavenda 4/86
VEDIT and CompuView are registered trademarks of CompuView Products. Inc. MSDOS is a registered trademark of Microsoft. CP/M is a registered trademark of Digital
Research. WordStar is a registered trademark of MicroPro.
VEDIT PLUS FEATURES
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Simultaneously edit up to 37 files of unlimited size.
Split the screen into variable sized windows.
'Virtual' disk buffering simplifies editing of large files.
Memory management supports up to 640K.
Execute DOS commands or other programs.
MS-DOS pathname and CP/M user number support.
Horizontal scrolling - edit long lines.
Flexible 'cut and paste' with 36 text registers.
Customization - determine your own keyboard layout, create
your own editing functions, support any screen size, any CRT.
• Optimized for IBM PC/XT/AT. Also 132 column & up to 70 lines.
EASY TO USE
• Interactive on-line help is user changeable and expandable.
• On-line integer calculator (also algebraic expressions).
• Single key search and global or selective replace.
• Pop-up menus for easy access to many editing functions.
• Keystroke macros speed editing, 'hot keys' for menu functions.
FOR PROGRAMMERS
• Automatic Indent/Undent for 'C', PUI or PASCAL.
• Match/check nested parentheses, i.e. '{' and,}, for 'C'.
• Automatic conversion to upper case for assembly language
labels, opcodes, operands with comments unchanged.
• Optional 8080 to 8086 source code translator.
FOR WRITERS
• Word Wrap and paragraph formatting at adjustable margins.
• Right margin justification.
• Support foreign, graphic and special characters.
• Convert WordStar and mainframe files.
• Print any portion of file; separate printer margins.
MACRO PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE
• 'If-then-else', looping, testing, branching, user prompts keyboard input, 17 bit algebraic expressions, variables.
• CRT emulation within windows, Forms entry.
• Simplifies complex text processing, formatting, conversions
and translations.
• Complete TECO capability.
• Free macros: • Full screen file compare/merge • Sort mailing
lists. Print Formatter. Main menu
CotnpuView
1955 Pauline Blvd., Ann Arbor, MI 48103 (313) 996-1299, TELEX 701821
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
27
PD-32
By Larry Fogg
Sysop
Messages From The Board
We've received a lot of calls lately
that begin with, "I'm really excited
about the PD-32, is it really for
real?" Yes, it's for real but you might
not know it if you haven't logged into
the. Micro C RBBS. In fact, the PD32 has more than doubled the activity
on the board. Join the fun; the PD-32
is being shipped right now!
T
he hottest topic in these parts is
the PD32 project introduced last
issue in Micro C. Let's take a
cruise through the more interesting of
the PD32 messages on the Micro C
RBBS's PD32 conference.
Once you've logged on (see "The
Bulletin Board Blues" in this issue for
general information on bulletin board
use), type· "j I" to join the PD32
conference. Then an "r I" reads the
first mesage. Notice that a response of
I I +" to the "More" prompt will allow
reading of successive messages simply
by pressing carriage return. Here we
go.
CONNECT
Micro Cornucopia Bulletin Board
PCBoard Software - Ver. 10.0 - 011081
86
System up at 20:37 on 10-21-1986 at
1200 baud.
Please enter C/R [C/R] - no?
Micro Cornucopia Magazine RBBS
300/1200/2400 Baud - 24 Hours/day
Larry Fogg < < Sysops > > Margret
Rosenberg
What is your first name? jim
What is your last name? davis
Checking user file. Please wait ...
Password (Dots Will Echo)? ...
Good evening Jim. Check your mail
again [C/R] - yes? n
28
(40 min. left) Main Board Command?
j 1
Welcome to the PD32 Conference Jim!
Conference file directories are now
active.
had with George and Dave is that they
will sell the kits for less than what a
hobbyist could purchase parts for.
That will be $1,000 for a 10 MHz 2
megabyte kit with UNIX. They expect
to be shipping within a month.
View other conference members [CI
R]-no?
Check your conference mail [CI
R]-yes? n
Definicon will not be supporting the
kit. Dan Efron will handle that via
boards such as this one. He will also
be talking directly with Definicon.
(40 min. left) PD32 Conference Command? r 1
Dan likes this option because it means
he doesn't have to deal with boards
and parts. He's really interested in the
system and will enjoy the supporting
role.
Date: 09-26-86 (10:13)
To: ALL
From: SYSOP
Subj: DEFINICON BUILDS PD-32S
I received a call from Trevor Marshall
that Definicon will be handling commercial manufacture of the PD-32
board. The user group will still be
handling kit and board sales to· individual hackers.
To contact the user group, leave a
message for Dan Efron here.
To contact Definicon, call 818-889-1646,
or see their adJin Micro C.
More: [Y]es l [N]o, [NS]non-stop,
[T]hread, [I], [RE]ply? +
Date: 10-06-86 (17:52)
To: ALL
From: DAVID THOMPSON
Subj: EFRON LIVES
I talked to Dan Efron today (10-6-86)
and George Scolaro, and I have good
news. Dan will be logging onto this
board beginning the end of this week.
He loaned out his modem but it will
be back in a couple of days.
Also, George has boards running. Defin icon has several as well. Definicon
will be selling the kits and the assembled boards. The agreement Definicon
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
Definicon will sell assembled and tested boards for $1500. They will provide
support for those boards.
The CP/M interface will be available
(hopefully) when George gets back
from Australia which should be
around January 1 1987. Dan will work
on the interface boards and George is
doing the software.
Even if you are planning to build a
CP/M board, you will start with the
same board from Definicon. However,
I think I'd waite 'IBM AT COMPATIBLE SYSTEMS ,QlJe
-Why Pay More - Build Your Own With Ease-Have Fun-Save a Fortune-
Introducing
McKnight XT Self-Assembly Kit
Assembled in Less Than 1 Hour with Screw Driver at SUPER LOW COST
• Including 1 Mega Byte PC2 CPU Mother Board wi 256K, Color
Graphic Card or TTL Monochrome Card, Floppy Disk Controller
Card, One lh-height DS/DD Drive, Flip-Top Case, 135W Power
Supply, Keyboard, Clock Calendar and Game Port.
• AT Mother Board for above $555
ONLY
• AT-32 Self-Assembly kit $Call
• IBM PC/AT fully compatible
$775.00
XT, AT POWER SUPPLY
HARD DISK
XT-135W $75.00
•
•
•
•
20 meg kit $455
30 meg kit $555
88 meg kit $1250
Flip-Top For Easy & Quick
Access to Inside
ONLY $50.00
XT,. AT MOTHER
BO~RD
• XT-16 CPU Mother Board - $199-229
• IBM PC/XT Fully Compatible,
Run all Popular IBM Softwares
• 8088 Microprocessor
w/8087 Optional
.8 I/O Slots
• Up to 1 Mega Byte Memory on
Mother Board
• Fully Assembled & Tested
AT -32 CPU MOTHER BOARD
AT-200W $CALL
.
.
XT, AT KEYBOARD
.
"
XT -LED for Cap Lock
& Num. Lock
84 Keys
$75.00
AT-Same Layout as IBM PC/AT $75
PC/AT ADD-ON CARD
• AT 1MB memory card $CALL
• AT 1.5MB Multifunction Card $CALL
• AT 1.2MB Floppy Disk Controller
$CALL
PC/XT ADD-ON CARD
• PCP-128 Eprom Programmer ...... $129
• 384 Multifunction Card - Serial.
Parallel. Clock. Game. w/Cables
& Software - OK ................... $99
• Mono/Graphic w/Printer Card Version II Hi-Res (Lotus 1 23) ....• $109
• IBM PC/AT Fully Compatible
• Color Graphic Card w/Manual .....• $69
• 80286 Microprocessor
• Monochrome TTL Card 2 left .•..... $50
w/80287 Optional
• 512K RAM Card OK w/Manual ..... $75
• 640K Standard, Upgrade to 1 MB
• Floppy Disk Controller w/Cable
on Board
(handle 4 drives) .•••............... $45
• On Board Clock Calendar
• RS232C Card w/Manual •........... $45
• 8 I/O Slots
$795
• Parallel Printer Card ............... $35
• Networks ....................... $CALL
All Cards Fully Tested. Assembled & Warranteed I School & InstitutIonal P.O. Accepted
OEM Dealers Welcome - Please call for our Special Dealer Prices
A-OK COMPUTERS
2005 S E 82nd Ste 2 • Portland. Oregon 97216. 503/771-6758 503/771-6862
IBM
30
IS
a trademark
Of.
International Business Machines Corporation
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
I
'
Date: 10-21-86 (21:52)
To: SAM WARD
From: DANIEL EFRON
Subj: PD32
Right now we're looking into providing bare PCB's with the PROMs and
the PALs and maybe memory, but
we're waiting to see if there is significant interest. I can provide you with
artwork, schematics, PAL and PROM
listings if you desire. See a following
message for more info on full kit
purchases.
Date: 10-21-86 (22:11)
To: ALL
From: DANIEL EFRON
Subj: PD32
Here's the latest scoop orithe PD32. I
will be sending out more information
to people who have written to me
(and are therefore on my mailing list).
Definicon has come through with a
full kit that can be purchased immediately. There are a few things that one
should consider before purchasing. 1)
The PD32 purchased from Definicon
will only be supported by the PD32
users group. 2) All the hardware is
sold basically on an as is basis (although you should expect working
parts). 3) Do not buy this system if
you are not capable of building it or of
having someone else build it for you.
4) To run Unix you'll need at least 20
megs of diskspace.
With that said, here are the details:
You purchase the board direct from
Definicon. You can either call them or
write them. Their address and phone
number are:
~ INTEGRATED BIOS
~
BIGBOARD II
Definicon Systems
31324 Via Colinas #108/9
Westlake Village, CA 91362
(818) 889-1646
Please send me your name for more
info. We'll be supplying a lot of nice
little extras through the users group.
You must ask for the LOW COST
UNIX board. The prices are as follows:
(36 min. left) PD32 Conference Command? g
Time Logged: 7 minutes
Time Used: 7 minutes
6 MHz, 1 Meg = $287
6 MHz, 2 Meg = 425
10 MHz, 1 Meg = 473
10 MHz, 2 Meg = 610
Thanks for calling Jim ...
•••
That's a little misleading though, everyone MUST purchase Unix from
Definicon when they order a board
through them. The cost of Unix Sys
V.2 is $500. These prices do not include shipping. You can get second
day shipping for about $20.
The best deal here seems to be the
6Mhz, 2 Meg board. Anyway order to
your heart's content. We will probably
be providing bare boards with PALs
and PROMs. Any interest? You will be
able to buy Unix for these separately
through the users group.
FOR
This BIOS adds special features to your
Bigboard II floppydisk and/or Winchester
system.
Read, write and format any 5" and/or 8"
disk formats. 40 formats included. Use
any type of 5" and/or 8" drive. New
SYSGEN works between 5" and 8".
INCLUDES:
• CONFIGuration program that lets you
install any new floppy disk format
INTERACTIVELY.
• FORMATTER allows you to format
almost any diskformat.
• PC-COpy reads and writes PC diskettes on your Bigboard II.;
• MONITOR EPROM with serial keyboard
and translate table.
• 300 page ZCPR2 manual.
• 60 page BIGBOARD II tech manual.
• BOOTABlE DISK contains free ZCPR2
and P2DOS system. With TIME and DATE
stamping. BIOS also has provisions for
256K RAM disk, Centronics, system
in ROM.
• WINCHESTER FORMATTER and SYSGEN
Supports XEBEC, W-D and ADAPTEC
type controllers. Subdivides into any
specified number of drives.
Price: S99.95 [specify disk)
ANDY BAKKERS
de Gervelink 12 • 7591 DT Denekamp
The Netherlands. Tel: 31-5413-2488
Please pay with US$ Money Order.
MC or VISA welcome.
MODULAR DATA ACQUISITION SYSTEM
We Bring Engineers, Scientists And The IBM-PC
Together. Our unique high-performance modular
data acquisition system allows you to purchase
the configuration that exactly meets your
requirements. All of Qua Tech's data acquisition
products include LABSTAR, powerful software
designed to give BASIC programmers total control of their application.
8 BIT AID
12 BIT AID
SYSTEM
SYSTEM
~.
.'V
O"UA TECH:.1NC.·· .CALLNOW
478 E.
Exc~ange St.
Akron,QH.>' 44304(216) 434-3154
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33," Dec-Jan 1987
31
TOTAL CONTROL
with LMI FORTHTM
DSD86, 1be PC-DOS Debugger ................. 69.95
DSD87, 1be PC-DOS Debugger with 8087 Support. 99.95
DSD80, 1be CPIM Debugger ................... 125.00
SoftAdvances
P.O. Box 49473tAustin, Texas 78765 t (512) 478-4763
1-800-232-8088
Ie
S
For Development:
Interactive Forth·S3 Interpreter/Compilers
PROMPT DELIVERY!!!
SAME DAY SHIPPING (USUALLY)
•
•
•
•
•
QUANTITY ONE PRICES SHOWN for OCT. 26, 1986
•
•
•
•
Unique table-driven multi-pass Forth compiler
Compiles compact ROMabie or disk-based applications
Excellent error handling
Produces headerless code, compiles from intermediate
states, and performs conditional compilation
• Cross-compiles to 8080, l-80, 8086, 68000, 6502, 8051,
8096, 1802, and 6303
• No license fee or royalty for compiled applications
For Speed: CForth Application Compiler
• Translates "high-level" Forth into in-line, optimized
machine code
• Can generate ROMabie code
Support Services for registered users:
• Technical Assistance Hotline
• Periodic newsletters and low-cost updates
• Bulletin Board System
Call or write for detailed product Information
and prices. Consulting and Educational Services
available by special arrangement.
P
SAT DELIVERY
MasterCardNISA or UPS CASH COD
INCLUDED ON
QO
FED-EX ORDERS
C
RECEIVED BY:
MI ROPROCESSORS UNLIMITED. INC.
Th: StdAir $6/41bs 24,000 S. Peoria Ave.,
.........
Fr:_p_-O_ne_$1_3/_2_lbS...J BEGGS, OK. 74421
No minimum order
Factory New, Prime Parts.1J
(918) 267-4961
Please call for current prices because prices are subject to change. Shipping & insurance extra.
Cash disrount prices shown. Orders received by 9 PM CST can usually be delivered to you the
next momlng, via Federal Express Standard Air (iI' $6.00, or Priority One (ill $13.001
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
16-bit and 32-bit Implementations
Full screen editor and assembler
Uses standard operating system files
400 page manual written in plain English
Options include software floating point, arithmetic
coprocessor support, symbolic debugger, native code
compilers, and graphics support
For Applications: Forth·S3 Metacompiler
DYNAMIC RAM
1Mbit
1000Kx1 100 ns $40.00
4464
64Kx4 150 ns
4.10
41256
256Kx1 1 00 ns
4.85
41256
256Kx1 120 ns
3.30
41256
256Kx1 150 ns
2.75
41128
4.99
128Kx1 150 ns
4164
64Kx1 150 ns
1.35
EPROM
27512
64Kx8 250 ns $22.00
27C256 32Kx8 250 ns
6.50
32Kx8 250 ns
27256
5.25
27128
4.25
16Kx8 250 ns
27C64
4.75
8Kx8 200.ns
2764
8Kx8 250 ns
3.95
STATIC RAM
43256L-12 32Kx8 120 ns $23.00
6264LP-15 8Kx8 150 ns
3.05
32
For Programming Professionals:
an expanding family of
compatible, high-performance,
Forth-83 Standard compilers
for microcomputers
[/fA •
Laboratory Mlcrosystems Incorporated
rlpos t Office Box 10430, Marina del Rey, CA 90295
~~hone credit card orders to: (213) 306-7412
Overseas Distributors.
Germany: Forth·Systeme Angelika Flesch, Titisee-Neustadt, 7651·1665
UK: System Science Ltd., London, 01-248 0962
France: Micro-Sigma S.A.R.L., Paris, (1) 42.65.95.16
Japan: Southern Pacific Ltd., Yokohama, 045-314·9514
Australia: Wave-onic Associates, Wilson, W.A., (09) 451-2946
IT'S EMERALD MICROWARE FOR EXPANSION AND SUPPORT FOR YOUR CP/M COMPUTER
HARD DISKS FOR YOUR zao SYSTEM
by Emerald Microware
If you have been thinking about moving up to a hard drive,
why wait any longer? We have everything you need to
complete your system, hardware and software, for the
Xerox 820, Kaypro, or almost ANY zao system.
HDS Host Board - If your computer does not have a hard
disk interface, this is the hardware that you need to connect
your computer to the WD1002 hard disk controller board.
• Plugs into the Z80 socket, no other wiring required
• Interfaces to the WD1002 controller board
• Switch selectable 110 addressing
• Comes fully assembled and tested
THE WINCHESTER CONNECTION
by MICROCode Consulting
The most comprehensive hard disk software package that
you can buy.
• Designed for use with the WD1002 controller board
• Works with one or two hard disks - 5 to 64 meg
• Menu installation, no software to assemble
• Complete testing and error handling
• Automatic swap, warm boot from hard drive
• BIOS drivers install above or below CP/M, your option
• Allows custom partitioning and mixed drives types
• Includes manual, format, test, park, and swap utilities
WD1002-05 HARD DISK CONTROLLER BOARD
by Western Digital
• Standard ST506 drive interface
• Same size as standard 5114 " drive
• 40 pin host interface
• WD2797 floppy disk controller interface on board
• Can control up to three hard drives
• Direct replacement for Kaypro 10 controller
HDS Board with Winchester Connection Software $ 89.00
WD1002-05 Controller Board ..................$185.00
HDS Board, WD1002 Board, and software ......$250.00
ACCESSORIES FOR THE KAYPRO
AND THE XEROX a20
Xerox 820-2 Main Computer Board .............$ 75.00
Xerox 820-2 Floppy Controller board ...........$ 65.00
Xerox 820-2 Main board w/Floppy Controller .....$125.00
Xerox High Profile Keyboard - bare ...........$ 25.00
Xerox internal video cable ....................$ 8.00
Board mount power connector ................$ 2.50
Parallel ASCII keyboard (not stanqard Xerox) .... $ 15.00
Dual 5114" Disk Drives - DSDD 48 TPI, in cabinet with
standard Xerox cable ......................$265.00
Panasonic DSDD 48 TPI Disk Drives .' ..........$114.00
Panasonic DSQD 96 TPI Disk Drives .......... '.$129.00
Rodime R0252 - 10 Meg - 3112" Hard Drive .... $275.00
Kaypro 2X Real-time Clock parts kit ............$ 29.00
Kaypro 2X Hard Disk interface parts kit .........$ 16.00
UniForm by Micro Solutions, in stock for Xerox 820,
Kaypro, Morrow, Bondwell, and IBM-PC ......$ 64.95
Prices subject to change without notice. Include $4.00 shipping and handling, $7.00 for COD. Phone hours: 8;00 am to
5:00 pm weekdays; check our bulletin board - RQP/M,
5:30 pm to 8:00 am seven days a week, for our latest stock
and prices. 30 day money back guarantee on all products.
THE KayPLUS ROM PACKAGE
by MICROCode Consulting
The most important element in the performance of your
Kaypro computer is its monitor rom. With KayPLUS you
get all of the advantages of a Kaypro 4 or 10, even on your
Kaypr02.
• No software assembly required
• Install up to four floppies and two hard drives
• Boots from floppy or hard disk
• Supports 96 TPI, 48 TPI, and 3112" disk drives
• 32 character keyboard buffer
• Automatic screen blanking (not avail. on 83 series)
• 12 disk formats built-in
• Full automatic disk relogging with QP/M
• Internal real-time clock and ram card suport
• Includes manual, format, configuration, diagnostics, sysgen, AND hard disk utilities
• Available for '83 and '84 series Kaypros
KayPLUS ROM Set. .........................$ 69.95
KayPLUS ROM Set with QP/M * * * SPECIAL * * * $115.00
QP/M by MICROCode Consulting
Full CP/M 2.2 compatability with many more features.
You've seen the replacements that eat up memory and
need auxiliary programs to run. Not QP/M. Fifteen internal
commands, automatic disk relogging (no more control C),
user area selection from colon, 31 user areas, drive search
path, archive bit maintanence, and transparent time/date
stamping, all in the same space as CP/M 2.2. Installs from
a convenient customization menu, without any software to
assemble. Bootable systems availble for Kaypro, Xerox
820 and Big Board.
QP/M Operating System, complete bootable copy $ 80.00
QP/M without BIOS ..........................$ 60.00
PLUS2 ROM by MICROCode Consulting
X120 DOUBLE DENSITY BOARD by Emerald Microware
Clearly the most versatile double density package for the
Xerox 820-1. Run up to four floppy disk drives at once, both
8" and 5114" at the same time. Software compatable with
Kaypro and Xerox 820. Supports all standard printers, and
most add ons like the Ferguson Ram Board. You get minimonitor functions, autoboot capability, 19 built in disk formats, and bank mode ROM operation for more space in
your TPA. Lets you run 48 TPI disks on 96 track drives.
Works with Uniform and QP/M.
PLUS2 ROM Set and X120 Board A&T ........ $ 135.00
PLUS2 ROM Set and X120 Bare Board ........$ 62.00
PLUS2 ROM Set only .......................$ 49.95
120 Bare Board only * * * SPECIAL * * * ........$ 15.00
Other kits, parts, and packages available
Service and parts available for Kaypro, Xerox, B81, and
others. Call for information.
. ..
(EMERRLD ~~
(MICRONRREj
P.O. Box 1726, Beaverton, OR 97075· (503) 641-0347
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
33
Selecting Subsets From Sets
By Ramachandran Bharath
The Formula For Combinations
In PROLOG
In this short paper, Ramachandran
takes on sets, statistics, combinations,
recursion, and PROLOG, all (and
more) in just 6K of text - a pretty
fair combination in itself. Problem
lovers, gather 'round.
I
n many decision-making situations,
we need to know how many smaller groups or subsets of a given size
can be selected from a larger group of
objects.
In statistics, we draw samples of a
particular size from the bigger group
we want to study. We then use statistical formulas to make realistic estimates about, for example, the average
income of the entire population of a
country by determining the average
income of a sample. These formulas
are based, among other things, on
knowing how many possible samples
could have been selected.
Math Review
N! is the factorial function (N * (N-l)
* (N-2) * ... * 1). (For example, 6! - 6
* 5 * 4 * 3 * 2 * 1 - 720.)
And a standard formula to find the
number of combinations is:
n! / (r! * «n-r)!»
where n is the number of objects in
the large group from which the selection' is made, and r is the number of
objects to be selected.
For example, the number of subsets
of size 3 that can be selected from a
group of 10 is:
read - "Number of COMBINATIONS
of r from n".
C (n-l,r-l).
Each of. these subproblems can be
changed to two even simpler problems
by the same technique, so we now
have a recursive algorithm. But it can't
go on forever.
In one of our subproblems, we'll
sooner or later subdivide until we're
considering choosing 0 objects. Obviously, the number of ways of choosing 0 objects from a group is just' one
-leave everything out!
In the other subproblem, by repeating the process, we'll come to a stage
where the size of the group shrinks to
the same number as the number of
objects to be selected. So there's obviously only one way of selecting select all the objects!
And all the selections which do not'
include A must consist of r objects
selected from the n-l objects left when
A'is excluded. So the number of such
selections must be C (n-l,r).
We arrive at the equation:
Recursion Boundaries
The conditions of a recursive definition when the solution becomes obvious are called the BOUNDARY
CONDITIONS of the problem. In this
example, the boundary conditions are:
A Recursive Algorithm
Consider the number of ways in
which a subgroup of r objects can be
selected from a larger group of n
objects. If one of the objects is A, then
all selections fall into one of two
distinct categories - those which include A, and those which don't.
All the selections which include A
consist of A along with r-l objects
selected from the remaining n-l objects of the bigger group. So, the
number of such selections must be:
C (n,r) - C (n-l,r-l) + C(n-l,r)
a definition of something in terms of a
simpler version of itself.
One problem now equals two simpler problems. The first tells us to
consider choosing one less object from
a group with one less in it, and the
second tells us to select the same
number from a group with one less in
it.
10! / (3! * «10-3)!»
or 120.
The standard notation for expressing
the number of ways of selecting r
objects from a set of nis:
C (n,r).
34
Dept Mgmt, Mktg & Computer Information
Northern Michigan University
Marquette, MI 49855
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
, C(Anynumber,O) = 1
C (Same, Same) - 1
For example, if we want to know C
(5,3), we can logically say:
C(5,3)
~
C,(4,2) + C(4,3).
But that raises the question - What
is C(4,2)?
By the same argument, C(4, 2) =
C(3, 1) + C(3,2). Similarly, we can
apply this argument to C(4,3) as well.
The result of this recursive process is
shown diagrammatically in Figure 1.
We see that as we keep "recursing",
we reach one or the other of the
boundary conditions:
C(Anynumber,O)
C(5ame,Same)
50 C(2,l) = C(l,O) + C(l,l)
- 2.
=-
C(2,O) + C(2,l)
=
?-combs(5,5,Howmany).
?-combs(7,O,Howmany).
?-combs(8,3,Howmany).
1 + 1
Figure 2 - Recursive Solution
And moving back up the tree to
C(3,l):
C(3, 1)
OG. In the three PROLOG clauses in
Figure 2, notice that the first two
clauses are the boundary conditions
and the third is the recursive reduction
to simpler conditions. Try it with
questions like:
1
+ 2 =
3.
Similarly, we can see that C(3,2) is 3,
and C(4,2) is 3 + 3 = 6.
And on the right branch, C(4,3) = 14,
and (finally) C(5,3) = 6 + 4 = 10.
PROLOG
This kind of recursive calculation can
be expressed very concisely in PROL-
combs(Anynumber,0,1).
combs(Same,Same,l).
combs(Group,Wanted,Result) :Groupless Is Group - 1,
~antless is Wanted - 1,
combs(Groupless,Wantless,Leftbranch),
combs(Groupleaa,Wanted,Rlghtbranch),
Result Is Leftbranch + Rlgbtbranch.
After it finds the first solution, the
system asks the user if more solutions
are wanted.
In this case, we'd say "no" since
there's only one answer. But in systems where all possible solutions are
searched for automatically, the code
would have to be modified with a cut
operator to prevent the system from
erroneously trying to use other clauses
for finding alternative solutions when
the first (and only valid) solution has
been found. Eventually this would
lead to an overflow.
You could also ask the question
using a cut operator, which is how I
tested this out on PROLOG86:
combs(5,3, What), !.'
and the system won't search for alternative solutions.
• ••
Wrap Up
I tested this program in PDPROLOG
(written by Robert Morein at A.D.A.
and available on Micro C MS-Disk 19).
SLICER ... THE
TRUE LOW COST
MULTI-USER
MICRO
THE SLICER
Real 16 Bit Power on a Single BoardFeaturing the Intel 80186 (C) Step CPU
• Complete 8 MHz 16-bit microprocessor on a 6" x 12" board
• 256K RAM, plus up to 64K EPROM
• SASI port for hard disk controller
• Two full function RS232C serial ports
with individually programmed
transmission rates-50 to 38.4K baud
• Software compatibility with the 8086
and 8088.
• 8K of EPROM contains drivers for
peripherals, commands for hardware
checkout and software testing
• Software supports most types and
sizes of disk drives
• Source for monitor included on disk
• Bios supports Xebec 1410 and
Western Digital WD 1002 SHD.
controller for hard disks
Fully assembled and tested only $445
THE SLICER l-MByte
-.1.~~
EXPANSION BOARD
"
For expanded memory, additional ports,
and real time clock
• . 1- MByte additional dynamic RAM
• 2 RS232C asychronous ports
with baud rates to 38.4K for
serial communication
• 2 additional serial ports for asynch
(RS 232) or synch (Zilog 8530 SCC)
communication
• Real Time Clock with battery backup
• Centronics type parallel printer port
Fully assembled and tested only $450
SLiCER/1MByte EXPANSION COMBO
The Slicer (wIthout RAM or RAM
ll~~
controllers) with Fu111-MByte
Memory Expansion
CCP/M (Digital Research)
$950
THE SLICER PC EXPANSION BOARD
Gives your Slicer high performance
video capability
• IBM compatible monochrome video
• Video memory provides 8 pages of
text or special graphics capability
• 2 IBM type card slots for color video,
1/0 expansion, etc.
• IBM type keyboard port
Fully assembled and tested only $495
All boards available in kit forms
The SLICER Bulletin Board (30011200 baud)
612/788-5909
Runs MS DOS generic software; PC DOS
program operation not guaranteed
Also available: The pSlicer 188 $400;
8087 Math Co-PrQcessor Bd. (call); 10 MB
Hard Disk$465;W.D.l002-SHD H.D.C. Bd.
$200; Enclosures, Power Supply, and
Support Hardware.
CPIM 86 $85, CCPIM $250 (Digital
Research, Inc.); MS DOS $175
(Microsoft Corp.)
MasterCard. Visa, Check, Money Order. or C.O.D.
Allow four weeks for delivery. Prices subject to change
without notice.
QUALIFIED DEALER INQUIRIES INVITED
~~~~~. Slicer Computers Inc.
~
SLICER-
2543 Marshall St. N.E.
Minneapolis, MN 55418
6121788-9481
Telex 501357
SLICER UD
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
35
Introduction To Fractals
By Larry Fogg
Micro C Staff
Math Can Be Beautiful
Larry was staring intently at his
screen. At first glance it appeared that
something was working its way haphazardly across his screen. On closer
look I could see that it was leaving a
trail so detailed that when I stepped
back it lost all trail ness, becoming a
solid design with holes.
"Fractals, " he said.
That was my first introduction to
the beasties. I understand that before
computers, mathefracticians (or whatever they're called) used to create
them with paper and pencil. Drawing
and erasing over and over as they
worked their way towards tinier and
tinier detail (these same folks discovered Life'S gliders with pencil and
Pink Pearl eraser). Who says computers aren't essential?
A
few years back I got. my first
computer. It was an Apple II
that had been run over by a
fork lift. After much fixing and cursing
I got it up and running. One of the
first programs that resurrected Apple
ran was a Hilbert curve generator.
Even on such a primitive computer,
I enjoyed watching the curve slooowly
trace its way around the screen. This
was my first taste of fractals.
What's A Fractal Anyway?
Consider a sheet of paper. Herr
Entsminger's "Last Page" perhaps.
Surely a flatter object does not exist.
But after reading the page, if we begin
to crumple it up in a fit of disgust, the
two dimensional surface becomes
more and more irregular. It eventually
becomes a space filling wad and looks
more like a three dimensional object. It
now has a fractal dimension between
two and three.
A one dimensional line shows the
same behavior as it becomes more
irregular. 'A line can be made to pass
through every point on a surface and
36
so become two dimensional. The Hilbert curve (see Figure 1) is an example
of this kind of plane filling curve.
Defining fractals is an iffy proposition. Even the father of fractals, Dr.
Benoit Mandelbrot, has said that it
would be best not to bother. It makes
more sense to try to get an intuitive
feel for fractals and state some of their
properties.
Think about the common garden
variety circle. Looking at successively
smaller segments of the circle you'll
end up with a straight line. There is
no new detail at the smaller scales.
Unlike the circle, fractals are irregular geometric objects which show
greater and greater detail no matter
how small the scale. Many fractals also
exhibit self similarity. That is, the
detail at small scales looks just like the
detail at larger scales.
The Length Of A Fractal Curve
The coastline of England provides
the classic example of a fractal curve in
nature. How would you measure the
length of the coast? You could get a
first approximation by stepping
around a map with a pair of calipers,
but think of all the details you'd miss.
A much better (and larger) answer
would come from strapping on a pedometer and walking the coastline.
As you're enjoying the walking tour,
look at a one-step section of the coast.
Aha! More detail. The point is that as
you consider ever smaller details of
the coastline, there will always be
more details within the details and the
length will grow without bound. (If it
sounds to you as though some recursion is lurking around the corner,
you're right.)
A Swipe At Mathematics
It's time to offend the mathematicians out there. The English coastline
problem illustrates perfectly the trouble you can get into by applying
mathematics to the real world.
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
Mathematics is not reality. Mathematics models reality. It is purely a
construct: an elegant system devised
by people for their own enjoyment
and to help understand certain aspects
of physical reality.
To say that the coastline becomes
infinite ignores the fact that there is no
infinitely small piece of matter and
therefore no infinitely small step along
the coast. Matter at the smallest scale
becomes energy and is next to impossible to measure with a ruler. So it
doesn't make sense physically to talk
about an infinite coastline.
However, fractal· geometry does remain one of the most fascinating and
useful areas of mathematics. Fractals
are used to model natural phenomena
such as turbulent flow, interactions of
plant communities, Brownian motion,
and the distribution of stars. Fractals
can even describe the activity of the
stock market (a very unnatural phenomenon). And remember the new
world created in Star Trek II? Fractals
again.
Figure 1 - Hibert Curve
Figure 2 - Mandelbrot's Square Snowflakes
Generator
~ ~
itself to overlay the generator on successively smaller line segments until
the segments are shorter than a given
resolution. Then we draw the last set
of generators. Nothin' to it.
Geometric Fractals
This class of fractals involves repetition of exactly the same pattern in
progressively smaller scale. Mandelbrot's square snowflake (see Figure 2)
is a good example. A generator replaces each side of the square initiator.
Each segment of the new shape is
then replaced by a scaled down copy
of the generator. And each segment of
that shape is replaced by still smaller
generators and on and on ...
An interesting property of this generator is that each iteration removes
exactly the same area as is added. The
area bounded by the snowflake remains constant while the perimeter
continues to increase. So we end up
with a finite area bounded by an
infinitely long perimeter.
Figure 3 shows recursion coming to
the rescue. This partial listing forms
the basis for FRACTAL.PAS, which
resides on the Micro C bulletin board
in the CURRENT ISSUE LISTINGS
/
area.
The heart of the program is the
procedure Generate. This routine calls
More To Come
We've barely scratched the surface
of fractal geometry. Exploration between integer dimensions is virtually
unlimited. For example, just as objects
exist with fractal dimensions between
two and three, they also exist with
dimensions greater than three. Three
dimensional "slices" of these beasties
create truly bizarre pictures.
I'll be looking into some of the more
interesting applications of fractals including fractal music. Stay tuned for
the results. Until then, grab yourself a
copy of FRACTAL and have some fun.
•••
(Figure 3 begins on page 38)
GRAPHICS
starting at $49 95
W,A versus
S
2o00.-----------------~----~~~~--------------_r0.0005
1800
0.0006
1600
0.0007
::; 1400
0.0008
'"'
.!
i
!
1
1200
1000 0.0
0.0009
i
..
~
-'--r--r- -r- - . - - - , - - - , - . -........~I'--,,..-.....--r---r-r--r--...-r---r--+-
2.5
5.0
0.0010
10.0
1.5
t.lme = FirstX)
THEN
MidI := FirstX + (Lastl - FirstX)/2
ELSE
HidX := FirstX - (FirstX - LastX)/2j
IF (LastY >= FirstY)
THEN
MidY := FirstY + (LastY - FirstY)/2
ELSE
M1dY := FirstY - (FirstY - LastY)/2;
ENDj {F1ndHidPo1nt}
PROCEDURE FindPoints (Lne: LineRec; YAR Pts: PointAry);
{ finds screen coordinates of only those points used by the generator }
VAR
I: Integer;
a,b: Real;
{ used to find points not directly on Lne }
BEGIN
WITH Lne DO
BEGIN
FindM1dPoint (Xl, Yl, X2, Y2, Pts [13].X, Pts [13].Y);
FindHidPoint (X1, Y1, Pts [13].X, Pts [13].Y, Pts [12].X, Pta [12]. Y) ;
FindM1dPoint (Pts [13].X, Pts [13].Y, X2, Y2, Pts [14].X, Pta [14].Y);
a := Pts [12].Y - Y1;
b := Pts [12].X - X1;
FOR I := 1 TO GeneratorSize DO
CASE Generator [I] OF
1: BEGIN
Pts [Generator [I]].X := Xl + 2*a;
Pts [Generator [I]].Y := Y1 - 2*bj
END;
2: BEGIN
Pts [Generator [I]].X := Pts [12].X + 2.a;
Pts [Generator [I]].Y := Pts [12].Y - 2*b;
END;
{ you get the idea ••• }
25: BEGIN
Pts [Generator [I]].X :=X2 - 2·a;
Pts [Generator [I]].Y := Y2 + 2.b; .
END;
END; {CASE •• Finally I }
END; {WITH} ...
END; {FindPoints·}
(Fractals Listing continued next page)
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
39
Fractals Listing
(continued from page 39)
PROCEDURE DrawCurve (Pts: PointArYj Lne: LineRec)j
VAR
I: Integer;
BEGIN
FOR I := 1 TO (GeneratorSize - 1) DO
DrawLine (Pts [Generator [ill.X,Pts [Generator [I]].Y,
Pts [Generator [I + 1]].1, Pts [Generator [I + 1]].Y);·
ENDj {DrawCurve}
PROCEDURE Generate (Lyne: LineRec);
{ recursive procedure to generate the curve }
VAR
J: Integerj
Segment: LineRec;
Points: PointAryj
BEGIN
{ find coords of generator overlayed on Lyne
FindPoints (Lyne, Points);
{ this condition limits the recursion
IF Length (Lyne) > Resolution
THEN
BEGIN
{ for each segment of the
FOR J := 1 TO (GeneratorSize - 1) DO
{ generator, overlay another
BEGIN
{ smaller generator
WITH Segment DO
BEGIN
X1 := Points [Generator [J]].Xj
Y1 := Points [Generator [J]].Yj
X2 := Points [Generator [J + 1]].Xj
Y2 := Points [Generator [J + 1]].Y;
EN~;
{WITH}
{ DrawCurve here too if you want to see all orders of the curve }
Generate (Segment);
ENDj {FOR}
END {THEN}
ELSE .
DrawCurve (Points, Lyne)j
END; {Generate}
}
}
}
}
}
BEGIN {MAIN}
InitGraphicj
{ these 4 lines set up Turbo Graphics }
DefineWorld (1, 0, 0, 1000, 1000);{ play with 1000,1000 to set aspeot ratio}
SelectWorld (1);
SelectWindow (1)j
Get Initiator (Initiator, InitiatorSize)j
{ enter 0 to exit program }
WHILE InitiatorSize > 0 DO
BEGIN
GetGenerator (Generator, GeneratorSize)j
GetResolution (Resolution);
{ enter 0 to back out}
WHILE Resolution <> 0 DO
BEGIN
FOR I ;= 1 TO InitiatorSize DO
Generate (Initiator [I]) j
REPEAT UNTIL KeyPressed;
{ keep screen until a key is pressed J
GetResolution (Resolution);
END; {WHILE Resolution<>0 }
GetInitiator (Initiator, In1tiatorSize);
END; {WHILE InitiatorSize <> 0 }
LeaveGraphic;
{ restore text mode }
END.
40
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
V
FORTRAlY
'\
a structured language?
lIere's How!
New RF-77 ... a Ratfor-like
preprocessor for PC FORTRAN
.WHILE, FOR and REPEAT loops.
.Free form input. No column 1,6, & 7 to
worry about.
.DEFINED constants and INCLUDED files.
.Outputs standard ASCII source code. May
be compiled by any Fortran 77 compiler.
.Runs on any MS-DOS/PC-DOS equipped
personal computer.
$65
b
•
Postage paid.
Texas residents add $3.98 tax.
~ Logical
tJ Developments
P.o. Box 55798, Houston, Tx 77255
For VISA/MasterCard orders call:
1-800-835-2246,ext.41
/
C CODE FOR THE, PC
source code, of course
-
GraphiC 3.0 hi-res color plots
$300
Panache C Program Generator
$125
QC88 C Compiler. . . . . . . · $90
Concurrent C. . .
· $45
$45
Coder's Prolog in C .
Translate Rules to C
· $30
LEX
· $25
YACC & PREP
· $25
tiny-c interpreter & shell
· $20
Xlisp 1.5a & tiny-Prolog .
· $20
C Tools
· $15
The Austin Code Works
11100 Leafwood Lane
Austin, Texas 78750-9409
(512) 258-0785
Free shipping on prepaid ul.·ders
No credit cards
EMERALD MICROWARE
- YOUR IBM DISK SPECIALISTS
UniForm-PC by Micro Solutions
This program allows you to read, write, and format diskettes for over a
hundred CP/M and MSDOS computers, on your PC, XT, or AT. Once
installed, UniForm lives in the background while you use your standard DOS commands and other programs to operate on the files on
your disk. Copy files between CP/M, TRSDOS, and MSDOS, or work
on the files directly on original diskettes.
UniForm-PC ..........................................$ 64.95
UniDOS by Micro Solutions
UniDOS allows you to actually RUN your favorite 8080 code CP/M
programs on your IBM. Use UniDOS with UniForm-PC, and you can
run them directly from your CP/M format diskettes. UniDOS uses the
8080 mode of the NEC V20 and V30 CPU chips, or can run in emulation mode for Z80 programs, and machines still using the 8088. All
standard CP/M system calls are supported.
UniDOS ..............................................$ 64.95
UniDOS w/UniForm & V20 chip ..........................$129.95
CompatiCard by Micro Solutions
Finally a card that allows you to run 8" , 5% .. , and 3112" disk drives on
your IBM or compatible, all at the same time. This board works with the
UniForm-PC program to format, read, and write literally hundreds of
CP/M and MSDOS disk formats on your PC. Use this card to replace, or
in addition to your existing floppy controller card.
CompatiCard .........................................$169.95
MatchPoint-PC by Micro Solutions
This half-size card allows you to read and write to Apple II and NorthStar diskettes on your IBM. INCLUDES a copy of the UniForm-PC program, as well as utilities to format disks, copy, delete, and view files on
Apple DOS and Apple CP/M diskettes.
MatchPoint-PC ........................................$169.95
COpy II PC and the COPY II PC OPTION BOARD
by Central Point Software
Have you ever accidentally destroyed one of your important copyprotected disks, or worried that you might? Now you can back up those
important disks using COPY II PC and forget about those worries. The
COpy II PC program can back up most copy protected disks without
any additional hardware. The COpy II PC Option Board can back up
almost ALL copy protected diskettes including the more complicated
mechanical schemes.
COPY II PC OPTION BOARD ...........................$ 89.95
COPY II PC program only ...............................$ 34.95
PC TOOLS utility program ..............................$ 34.95
Adaptec 2070 - RLL Hard Disk Controller Card
Adaptec is the name for speed and quality in hard disk controller
boards. The Adaptec 2070 controller board uses the new Run Length
Limited technology to squeeze an additional 50% more capacity on a
conventional hard disk drive. For example, a 20 Meg MicroScience
HH325 can operate with a capacity of 30 Megabytes in RLL mode.
Works in both RLL and standard encoding modes. Please call or write
for compatibility list, as RLL mode works with selected brands of hard
disk drives.
Adaptec 2070 .........................................$136.00
Hard Disk Controller Cards by National Computer Ltd.
This line represents high quality with low cost in standard HALF CARD
hard disk controller boards. Versions available for XT and AT, some
with floppy controllers installed.
HDC 5127 for XT .......................................$105.00
HDC 5126 for AT .......................................$169.00
HDC 5125 for AT w/Floppy Controller ......................$195.00
Prices subject to change without notice. Include $4.00 shipping and
handling, $7.00 for COD. Phone hours: 8:00 am to 5:00 pm weekdays;
check our bulletin board - RQP/M, 5:30 pm to 8:00 am seven days a
week, for our latest stock and prices. 30 day money back guarantee on
all products.
[EMERRLD ~~
lMICROJ;.JRRE)
P.O. Box 1726, Beaverton, OR 97075 • (503) 641-0347
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
41
WSANVCJ
Prices don't get any lower.
MBC 1200 SPECIFICATIONS:
• Two Z-80A (main and subsidiary) CPUs with nowait mode for fast execution, substantial memory
capacity (RAM 64KB, ROM 4KB).
• High-resolution full graphic function with 640 x
400 dot matrix display.
• Choice of 33 or 40 line text mode.
• CP/M operating system complete with
assembler, editor and all utilities.
• Easy-to-use Sanyo graphic BASIC.
• One (MBC 1200) or two (MBC 1250) internal
double-sided, double-density, double-track, 5'!."
slim-type 640KB formatted mini floppy disk
drives.
• Keyboard With 15 user-programmable function
keys.
• Interfaces for Centronics printer and one RS232C port provided.
• Free software from Micropro: Wordstar,
Mailmerge, Spellstar, Infostar, Calcstar & Basic.
.SANVO
MBC 4000 SPECIFICATIONS:
MBC 1200
•
FREE SOFTWARE ~
FROM MICROPRO
•
•
•
•
• Thousands of FREE public
domain software available
• COMPAT disk utility for over 50
CP/M formats-only $39
• Professional accounting software available
• 20 meg hard rive optional
•
•
MS DOS - CP/M 86 operating system with
editor, assembler and all standard utilities.
128KB RAM memory capacity, expandable to
640KB.
Interfaces for one Centronics printer and one
RS-232C port.
12" no-glare green monitor display screen for
easy viewing.
One (MBC 4000) or two (MBC 4050) internal
double-sided, double-density, double-track,
5'!." Slim-type mini floppy disk drives with
640KB formatted capacity.
Keyboard with 15 user-programmable function
keys.
Free software from Micropro: Wordstar,
Mailmerge, Spellstar, Infostar, Calcstar &
Basic.
EDUCATIONAL
DISCOUNTS
At Micro Suppiy O~gani~ati~n we~ffer
the lowest prices on Sanyo computers
and software, With prices like these you
can afford the convenience of owning
and operating more than one computer,
Special pricing for printers
hUs-]
MICRO
SUPPLY
ORGANIZATION INC.
42
We also offer the User Support Hotline
for questions concerning your computer
or about software availability. Whether
you need one or a dozen computers,
Micro Supply Organization is the place
to get them.
.SANVCJ
MBC 4000
• 8086 Microprocesser
• Runs MS DOS & CP/M 86
• Floppy disk drive with 640K
capacity
• RAM expansion to 640K
available
• Utility pack including BIOS &
schematics option
$499
Special pricing for printers
For our catalog with complete
details and prices, send $2 to:
Micro Supply Organization, Inc_
4909 Stockdale Hwy. #180
Bakersfield, CA 93309
15% Restocking on Returned Orders
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
8051393·2247
--~=:.==~~
...... ~
--====----
- ----:====------- ---- -~-
MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE.
GEM·ST Specifications:
CPU - V20·8 Chip & Run CPM
Software
RAM - 640K
Clock Rate - 4.77 or 8 MHZ
Disk Interface and Drives (2)· 5·1W floppy drives 360K
ROM BIOS - Legal BIOS
Keyboard - AT Style Keyboard
Expansion Slots - 8 IBM> compatible slots
Power Supply - DC Voltage and Max Current
+ 5V @ 15A - . 5V @ .5A
+ 12V @ 6A· 12V @ .5A
Imput Voltage 115/230V
Meets UUFCC Standards
Standard Interface - (1) . Serial RS·232·Port
(1)· Game Port
(1)· Parallel Printer Port
Clock - Clock calendar battery backed up
Video - TIL Hi· Res Monographics Card
and TTL Monitor
Operating System· MS· DOS
Warranty: 1 year all parts.
90 day labor.
GEM-S1
Don't be fooled.
No hidden cost!
GEM·AT Specifications:
In keeping with industry trends
MSO is bringing our customers
high performance P.C. compatibles
and accessories. The GEM-STTM
features the V20-8 chip which runs
at three times the speed of the IBMPC XT* and also runs CPM 8080
software.
FREE 5 module
intergrated software
$1199
22 meg sub-system
with tape back-up
$599 w/purchase
!m§-)
MICRO
SUPPLY
ORGANIZATION INC.
CPU - 80286
RAM -1 Meg
Clock Rate - 8 MHZ
Disk Interface and Drives (1)· 5·1/4 n floppy drive 1.2 Meg
ROM BIOS - Legal BIOS
Keyboard - AT Style Keyboard
Expansion Slots - 8 IBM> compatible slots
Power Supply - 200 Watt
Meets UUFCC Standards
Standard Interface - (1) . Serial RS·232·Port
(1)· Parallel Printer Port
Clock - Clock calendar battery backed up
Video - TIL Hi· Res Monographics Card
and TTL Monitor
Operating System· MS· DOS
Warranty: 1 year all parts.
90 day labor.
I
EDUCA TIONAL
DISCOUNTS
At Micro Supply Organization we offer
the lowest prices on GEM computers.
With prices like these you can afford the
convenience of owning and operating
more than one computer.
We also offer the User Support Hotline
for questions concerning GEM computers. Whether you need one or a
dozen computers, Micro Supply
Organization is the place to get them.
GEM-AT
Performance for
the power user.
The GEM-AT™ runs eight times as
fast as an IBM-XTTM, for your multitasking and multi-user needs;
Including MS-DOS 3.2
with G.W. Basic. The GEM-AT™
is a complete turnkey system with
everything to plug and go!
FREE 5 module
Intergrated software
$1899
32 meg sub system
with tape backup
$799 w/purchase
For oLir catalog with complete
details and prices, send $2 to:
Micro Supply Organization, Inc.
4909 Stockdale Hwy. #180
Bakersfield. CA 93309
IIIIIIII§
MADE IN
15% Restocking on Returned Orders AMERICA
8051393·2247
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
43
By Peter McGovern
9304 SE Boise
Portland, OR 97266
Consulting With Writers
I was thinking the other day about
the differences between us computer
folks and writers. But then, we're all
the same, really. We just write different things: they write romances and
science fiction - we write technical
articles, manuals, Pascal routines,
schematics, and science fiction.
W
riters are artists. They paint
images and concepts using
letters, words, and sentences much as an Italian-American
chef creates a pizza using tomato
sauce, cheese, and spices.
Writers want to be loved, respected,
and published. ~ey are superstitious,
often certain that they write better
when wearing a favorite shirt. Writers
have been known for secreting manu, scripts next to the frozen peas - for
safekeeping. In spite of their image as
eccentric and reclusive ne'er do wells,
many writers are actually nice people.
I should know; I am a writer.
Until recently, the typewriter has
been a writer's basic tool. The bond
between a mother and her newborn
comes close in intensity to how writers
feel about their typewriters. They
know intimately the feel of its keys,
the sound of its bell, and the smell of
, its platen.
Consulting
. In addition to writing I've taken on
another job: helping writers replace
their typewriters .. For the past three
. years I have consulted with, instructed, consoled, answered questions for,
advised, and accepted payment from
writers for this privilege.
. I now spend 25% of my time consulting, the other 75% writing. I don't
charge for most· of my consulting time
because it turns out to be a few
minutes here and a few minutes there
answering questions on the phone. If
a call goes more than 1/2 hour I charge
for it, but most calls are short. If I
44
have to travel, I charge a two-hour
minimum (at $25 per hour).
It's especially hard to charge writers.
They don't think in terms of paying
for a consultant on top of paying for a
computer. Fortunately, I enjoy working with them, helping them.
Since I spend most of my time
writing, an occasional phone call isn't
a problem. In fact, it gives me a break.
Sometimes, however, people call me 6
or 7 times a day, so if I'm concentrating on a writing project I let my
recorder take the calls.
Frustrations
The biggest frustration of consulting?
I guess that it's seeing people being
overwhelmed by the process of acquiring and learning to use a computer.
They want to make the switch painlessly, quickly, and they find that
that's not the way it goes.
When I first talk with them, most
writers know little more about computersthan "I've heard I must have
one." They both under and overestimate what a computer can do.
They are dismayed, for example,
that it spelling checker won't automatically correct and' exchange every misspelled word in their document. They
are delighted when they. discover they
can recall a deleted paragraph. What
they REALLY want to know, however,
is "Where in the computer is my
document, anyway?"
Learning
The first problem confronting writers
is where to get information. Computer
magazines and books aren't much
help; writers want to get on with
writing as simply and· painlessly as
possible. They don't want to be confronted with page after page of jargon
or be advised to purchase an Altair or
a Commodore Pet.
There are, fortunately, several books
that have been written by writers
who've made the change themselves.
Poet and humorist Peter McWilliams
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
has written several books that are
informative, opinionated, and entertaining. The most popular of these,
The Personal Computer Book, was selfpublished by McWilliams before being
purchased commercially.
Another author, William Zinsser,
who wrote the style book On Writing
Well, has also written a book on the
process of moving from typewriter to
word processor. Writing With A Word
Processor is more an autobiographical
description of his own adaptation than
a 'how do you format a floppy disk'
presentation. It has probably comforted and encouraged many more technophobic writers than any number of
computer dealers saying "Don't worry; this Epson QX10 is totally user
friendly.' ,
Dealers
And speaking of dealers. Why IS it
so hard to find one who is genuinely
helpful? It is, in my opinion, because
of the very nature of the computer
industry. For a short while I worked
as a salesperson at a store which
advertised and sold computers for the
lowest price in the New York Metropolitan area.
If you were to buy a computer there
you would have gotten a great deal.
You probably still would. Unless, of
course, you bought a surge protector
at the same time. That's because although the surge protectors cost the
store only ten dollars apiece, their
price was $1201
Ideally, a salesperson would first
assess your needs and budget and
then recommend the appropriatesystem. But it doesn't always work that
way. Other factors sometimes influ-,
ence a salesperson's advice. When I
was selling computers, the Panasonic
company ,offered me a VCR free for
every ten Senior Partners I sold. Not
only that, but at one point our store
got stuck with a surplus of about 25
Epson QX10s. Epson had abandoned
that particular model and wouldn't
Advanced Concepts "Mini-Winnie"
HARD
DISK
SYSTEMS
buy them back. To aid us in our sales
effort our manager dropped the price
by $500 and offered us a $300 bonus
for every unit we sold.
This was great for me. But what did
it mean for the customer entering our
store? With so much financial incentive for us to sell particular machines it
was difficult to be objective.
Support
And what kind of suppo,rt can writers expect from a dealer? I've found
that the first week with a computer is
the most· important for writers. They
want to know everything from "What
is a macro?" to "What is going to
happen if I type 'format' and hit the
return key?"
Naturally, they want to know the
answers as soon as they discover the
questions. But because computer salespeople usually have a sales quota to
meet, they rarely have the time to
provide the quality of support a writer
needs. This is especially frustrating
since computer stores justify their high
prices by claiming to provide superior
support and service!
Another obstacle writers must face
when considering a transition to computers is that of deciphering technical
jargon. Fortunately, most writers are
proficient at learning new words.
Words, after all, are what writers are
all about. Unfortunately, many of the
words writers know and love have
totally different meanings when found
in hardware and software manuals.
Sex
Most writers are women but the
computing world is very technical,
very male oriented. Women have a
harder time learning computers partly
because examples used in manuals tie
in with male experiences. Also, women have more trouble with technical
information because they are afraid
they won't understand it.
If I present the information in terms
they understand then they can handle
Our EXTERNAL systems install in
seconds! Includes an attractive
vertical cabinet with integral PIS
and fan, 3 foot cables. Everything
necessary to plug in and go!
Our INTERNAL systems do not
displace a floppy drive, do not
require a power supply upgrade,
use the highest technology
wlnchesters available. No
compromises.
COMPLETE SUBSYSTEMS
Plug in and run! Includes software, documents, cables, brackets as req'd.
Kaypra (1.2.4,10)
Big Board I,ll
Xerox 82()"1,1I
Micro Mint 58-180
Gemini Zorba
Osborne
Sonyo MBC·1150/
1160/1200
AVL Eagle (with mods)
AI spa II
Epson Q)(·10
Marrow M1).2,3
Z.aO 5-100 Computers
$465.
$665.
$790.
$740.
$845.
5mb
External
10mb
External
20mb
External
10mb
Internal
20mb
Internal
.;
.;
.;
.;
.;
.;
.;
.;
.;
.;
.;
.;
.;
./
.;
./
./
.;
.;
.;
.;
./
./
./
./
./
./
.;
./
.;
./
./
./
./
./
./
.;
.;
(You may delete $90
for external systems
less PIS enclosure
Add $6.00 for extra
long cables.)
You may buy our controller, software, cables & PI S enclosure for $395. Add your own
ST-506 family disk drive (up to 26mb) to complete your system!
Compatible with most other add-ons, Including Microsphere & Advent RAM disks.
SNP CoPawer/RAM disk. Pro-8 Family. Advent Turbo ROM. all speedup and double/
quod density upgrades lCPR3. Microshell. Plu' Perfect 2.2E.
The key to the Mini-Winnie system is the INSTALL program. which links your drive and
your computer. the way YOU wont it. Extensive menu options allow selection ot any
ST-506 compatible drive. as 1 to 4 logical drives within CP/M at any drive letter.
Diagnostic and tormat capability provided to match the installation. Distributed with
SOURCE tiles. No programming required.
We have club, user group, OEM I Dealer programs. Call for quantity schedule. If for any
reason you are not satisfied, return for full refund within 30 days. All systems
warranteed for 90 days. Info and manual $8.00 credited with your system purchase.
ORDER INFO: Call (305) 482-7302. Terms: UPS cash COD; check or M.O. Please
allow 4 weeks for delivery. Fla. add 5% tax. Shipping extra. Please specify
desired floppy format.
C
OC
I
Advanced Concepts Engineering 6 Consulting
8926 S.w. 17th Street
Boca Raton, Florida 33433
it. If they are familiar with home
stereo systems, or cars, or cooking, or
whatever, then I use these to help
them understand how to use a computer.
More Than Just Word Processing
As a consultant, I can also suggest
additional uses for the new tool.
Writers can use Databases to store
everything from article ideas to editor
and publisher mailing lists. I use, for
example,. a product called Squarenotes
.
to keep track of all my clippings and
where they are filed. I can search
through a· list of hundreds of my
clipped articles by anyone of a couple
of hundred keywords. I use dBASE
III + to keep track of the queries I
send out. I also have databases filled
with information on hundreds of potential markets.
My first use of WordPerfect's mail
merge was to send off 127 letters to
(continued next page)
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
45
ON YOUR OWN
(continued from page 45)
127 magazines requesting writer's
guidelines. I sent them in 127 addressed envelopes with 127 stamped
and addressed return envelopes. With
a typewriter it would have taken over
a week. I probably wouldn't have
even considered doing it. With my
computer it took a day.
'Next to a computer, a modem is
perhaps the most useful and underused writer's tool. In addition to allowing electronic manuscript submissions, a modem can connect a writer
to the exciting world of information
and people. Online services such as
Compuserve and The Source provide
all kinds of special interest groups and
a host of other services potentially
'useful to authors. Databases such as
Dialog or its less costly cousin, Knowledge Index, can save hours of library
research -:- scanning millions of
records in seconds and providing
'pages of bibliographic citations. A
writer without a modem is like a
sleeper without any dreams.
When I sold computers and worked
. as a consultant in New York I made a
lot more money than I do now. But I
enjoy writing and working with writers more. I've been a voracious reader
as long as I can remember. lowe a
debt to the literary world. It's exciting
and gratifying to be able' to repay
some of my loan by sharing with
writers what I know about computers.
And besides, I don't think it would be
much fun being a typewriter consultant.
COMPLETE SOURCE, OF COURSEI
DOS-PACK: A disk full of useful MSDOS' programs, including a fancy C
listing utility, disk sector editor and many
others I ($19)
TELED Plus: Inter-system communications program, with Hayes I Zoom
modem support, text capture wi editing,
MODEM protocol wildcard file transfers.
Also available for MS·DOS, CPIM and
ISIS·II. ($89)
VIEW: The ultimate disk utility for CPIM
systems I Recovers erased files, even if
your directory is crashed. Displays or
modifies every sector. ($59)
ACCELER 8/16: Best of the CPIM
emulators for MS·DOS. Enables PC's
to run most CPIM programs, even Z-80
codel Also includes the Media Master
disk conversion program. (no source
code, V·20 chip included) ($89)
Editor's note: Peter is starting a special
interest group (SIC) associated with the
Willamette Writers Club. The group's focus will be on writing with a computer.
When I asked him if he really wasn't
giving away his expertise he said "Sure,
but I'm really a writer first. My payoff is
seeing writers get into a tool that magnifies their productivity. "
•••
Request a catalog of our productsl
I
"'"
CI''MlMDqMI_h
~
-
~~~~~
"'-~
- Weslern Wares
303·327...., .
BOll C • Norwood, CO .1413
SINGLE· BOARD
MAIN/FRAMES
FROM $125
(Including power supply)
• Heavy Duty All Metal Cabinet
• Fan & Dust Filter
• Full or Slim Drives
• Hefty Power Supplies (many with
start currents for Winchester drives)
• Line Fuse, EMI Filter
Detachable Line Cord
• Power Harness from
Supply to Drives
• Cabinets & Supplies
Available Separately
Write or call for complete catalog and prices.
- ..- - --.--- -----.....
_.................
._-~.,...-,.
••••• - -
!!~
8620 Roosevelt Ave./Visalia, CA 93291 (209) 651-1203
TELEX 5106012830 (INTEGRAND UD)
46
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
-=-~
.~
•••••••
1!! ~ ~~~ ~ ~~
ALL SALES ARE MADE SUBJECT TO THE TERMS OF OUR 90 DAY LIMITED WARRANTY. A COpy OF THIS WARRANTY IS AVAILABLE FREE, ON.REQUEST.
(214) 2~5-2309·
HOT COMPUTER BOOKS!
DIGITAL R.ESEARCH COMPUTERS
TEXT TO SPEECH BOARD!
PCIXT COMPATIBLE. MAKE YOUR COMPUTER TALKI
A VERY POWERFUL AND AMAZING SPEECH CARD. USES THE NEW GENERAL
INSTRUMENTS SP0256-AL2 SPEECH CHIP AND THE CTS256A-AL2 TEXT TO
SPEECH CONVERTER.
THIS BOARD USES ONE SLOT ON THE MOTHERBOARD AND REQUIRES A COM SERIAL PORT.
BOARD MAY ALSO BE USED IN A STAND ALONE
ENVIRONMENT WITH ALMOST ANY COMPUTER
~~~~~A:UAD~~2l~~E~:L~~:TB~E~~~~E~I~~
INEW' I
•
EXTERNAL AMPS.
DEMONSTRATION SOFTWARE AND A LIBRARY BUILDING PROGRAM ARE
INCLUDED ON A 5'1. INCH PC/XT DISKETTE. FULL DOCUMENTATION AND
SCHEMATICS ARE ALSO INCLUDED.
69.
89.
95
COMPLETE KIT
95
ASSEMBLED & TESTED
HARD DISK CONTROLLER CARD
THE FANTASTIC KONAN KDC-230. WITH MANUAL. SUPER EASY
TO CONFIGURE AND USE•.
HALF SIZE PCB. '99 00 - ADD $8.00 FOR CABLES
MEX-PC MODEM
SOFTWARE PACKAGE
$49.95
A FANTASTIC COMMUNICATIONS PACKAGE WITH FEATURES TOO
NUMEROUS TO LIST. SEE MAY/JUNE '86 MICRO SYSTEMS JOURNAL FOR
FULL REVIEW OR CALL FOR BROCHURE. SUPPORTS COLOR, KERMIT
PROTOCOL, Y MODEM BATCH, VT100 EMULATION, REMOTE OPERATION,
ON LINE HELP, ETC. RUNS UNDER PC/MS DOS. 180 PAGE MANUAL & BINDER.
MEX-PACK LIST IS $99.95 -
SPECIAL
$49.95
GET THE MOST OUT OF THE INVESTMENT YOU MADE IN YOUR
COMPUTER HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE WITH THE NEW WORDWARE
SERIES OF COMPUTER REFERENCE AND TRAINING MANUALS. LEARN
HOW TO MAKE ALL THAT EXPENSIVE SOFTWARE YOU BOUGHT REALLY
COOKI BUY ANY 3: TAKE AN EXTRA 10% DISCOUNTI
ILLUSTRATED TURBO PASCAL ................... $13.50
ILLUSTRATED AUTOCAD ......................... $18.50
. ::::::::::::::::::::::: ~~~:;~ ..\E,\ftJ\
:~~~~~::~~~ :~:~:~A~
ILLUSTRATED d BASE III .........................
ILLUSTRATED LOTUS 1-2-3 .......................
ILLUSTRATED SYMPHONY .......................
ILLUSTRATED C PROGRAMMING .................
ILLUSTRATED MS/PC DOS .......................
ILLUSTRATED MULTIMATE .............. " .. " ...
WORDSTAR CUSTOMIZING .......................
COMMUNICATIONS HANDBOOK .................
ADVANCED TURBO PASCAL
PROGRAMMING TECHNIQUES ...................
WORKS WITH PC'S AND COMPATIBLES. EASY TO USE WITH OFF THE SHELF
PRINTERS, MOUSES, VIDEO CARDS, ETC. COMES COMPLETE WITH A HUGE
COMPONENT DATABASE. SUPPORTS MONOCHROME, COLOR, OR EVEN EGA. FREE
BROCHURE AND DEMO DISKETTE ON REQUEST. LIST $500 - SPECIAL $398.1 5
PC/XT AT
ENHANCED GRAPHICS ADAPTER
$249
* LATEST DESIGN * PROGRAMS UP TO 4 DEVICES AT ONE TIME * FEATURES
* 3 CARDS IN ONEI
* 100% IBM COMPATIBLE.
EASY TO USE MENU DRIVEN SOFTWARE THAT RUNS UNDER PC OR MS-DOS.
USES AN INTELLIGENT PROGRAMMING ALGORITHM FOR SUPER FAST
(8X) EPROM BURNING. THIS PLUG-IN BOARD ATTACHES TO AN EXTERNAL
MINI CHASSIS CONTAINING 4 TEXTOOL Z.I.F. SOCKETS.
NO PERSONALITY·
MODULES REQUIRED
AUTOMATIC VPP SELECTION: 12.5V, 21V, OR 25V.
EPROM DATA CAN ALSO BE LOADED FROM OR SAVED TO A DISKETTE.
PROGRAMMING SOFTWARE SUPPORTS: 2716, 2732, 2732A, 2764, 2764A,
27128, 27128A, 27256, 27256A, 27512, AND 27512A.
ASSEMBLED AND TESTED,
BURNED. IN WITH MANUAL. $199 WITH SOFTWARE.
*
*
*
* COMPATIBLE WITH IBM EGA, COLOR GRAPHICS ADAPTER, OR
MONOCHROME ADAPTER.
*
*
* 256K VIDEO RAMI (4 TIMES MORE THAN IBMI)
* DUAL FREQUENCY OUTPUT FOR EITHER EGA OR
STANDARD RGB COLOR MONITORS.
* PERFECT MATE FOR NEC MULTISYNC COLOR MONITORI
*
MICROTEK 2 M.B. EXPANDED MEMORY BOARD
$195
* LIGHT PEN INPUT.
* FULL 16 COLORS.
* PARALLEL PRINTER PORT.
* A SUPERIOR BOARD AT ABOUT 1/3 THE COST OF IBM EGAI
* ASSEMBLED, TESTED, AND BURNED IN. WITH MANUAL.
* USES CHIPS & TECH. VLSI 4 CHIP SET.
* FIELD PROVEN BIOS.
(0. K)
MEETS LOTUSIINTEL/MICROSOFT SPEC. FOR EXPANDED MEMORY. FOR USE AS
EXPANDED MEMORY (EMS), ELECTRONIC DISK, OR PRINT SPOOLER. WITH A SUPERB
MANUAL AND INSTALLATION SOFTWARE. FOR PCIXT OR MOST COMPATIBLES. FOR 2
MEGABYTES OF 150 NS RAM (72 DEVICES) INSTALLED AND BURNED IN ADD $225.
ZRT-80 CRT TERMINAL BOARD!
A LOW COST Z-80 BASED SINGLE BOARD THAT ONL Y NEEDS AN
ASCII KEYBOARD, POWER SUPPL Y, AND VIDEO MONITOR TO MAKE A
COMPLETE CRT TERMINAL. USE AS A COMPUTER CONSOLE, OR
WITH A MODEM FOR USE WITH ANY OF THE PHONE-LINE COMPUTER
SERVICES.
FEATURES:
* Uses a Z80A and 6845 CRT
Conlroller for powerful video
capabilities.
• RS232 at 16 BAUD Rates from 75
to 19,200.
• 24 x 80 standard formal (60 Hz).
• Optional formats from 24 x 80
(50 Hz) to 64 lines x 96 characters
(60 Hz).
• Higher densily formals require up to
3 additional 2K x 8 6116 RAMS.
• Uses N.S. INS 8250 BAUD Rate Gen.
and USART combo IC.
• 3 Terminal Emulalion Modes which
are Dip Swilch seleclable. These
include the LSI-ADM3A. the Healh
H-19. and the Beehive.
It Composite or Splil Video.
* Any polarily of video or sync.
* Inverse Video Capability.
* Small Size: 6.5 x 9 inches.
• Upper & lower case with descenders.
* 7 x 9 Character Matrix.
• Requires Par. ASCII keyboard.
rOR 8 IN. SOURCE DISK
(CP/M COMPATIBLE)
ADD $10
SINGLE BOARDS.
FREE CATALOG.
$19.95 '----------
SCHEMA: Schematic Capture and Drawing Package
NEW!
PC/XT EPROM
PROGRAMMER
$199
*
$18.50 \ '
$15.50
$17.50
$17.95.------.
S1DO BUSS
$12.95
LlVESI
$17.50 WE STILL SELL
$18.50 S1DO PRODUCTS
AND CP/M
$12.50
A&T
ADD
$50
(COMPLETE KIT, ~K VIDEO RAM)
BLANK PCB WITH 2716
CHAR. ROM. 2732 MON. ROM
SOURCE DISKETTE - ADD $10
SET OF 2 CRYSTALS - ADD $7.50
Digital Research Computers
P.O. BOX 381450 • DUNCANVILLE, TX 75138 • (214) 225-2309
*TM OF DIGITAL RESEARCH INC. (CALIF.) ·IBM TM OF INT. BUS. MACHINES.
THE NEW 65/9028 VT
ANSI VIDEO TERMINAL BOARD!
*
*
FROM LINGER ENTERPRISES
A second generation, low cost, high performance, mini sized, single board
for making your own RS232 Video Terminal. This highly versatile board
can be used as a stand alone video terminal, or without a keyboard, as a
video console. VT100, VT52 Compatible.
MICRO SIZEI
FEATURES:
* Uses the new CRT9128 Video Controller
driven by a 6502A CPU
* On·Screen Non-Volatile Configuration
* 10 Terminal Modes: ANSI, H19, ADM-5,
WYSE 50, TVI-920, KT-7, HAZ-1500,
ADDS 60. aUME-101, and Datapoint 8200
* Supports IBM PCIXT, and Parallel ASCII
Keyboards
* Supporls standard 15.75 kHz (Horiz.)
* Composite or Split Video (50/60 Hz)
* 25 X 80 Format with Non·Scrolling
User Row
* Jump or Smooth Scroll
* RS·232 at 16 Baud Rates from 501019,200
On Board Printer Port
ADD $40 FOR A&T
* Wide and Thin Line Graphics
* Normal and Reverse Attributes
(Full Kit w/100 Page Manual)
* Cumulative Character Attributes: De·lnlen,
Reverse, Underline and Blank
SOURCE DISKETTE:
PC/XT FORMAT
* 10 Programmable Function Keys and
5'1. IN. $15
Answerback message
* 5 X 8 Character Matrix or 7 X 9 for IBM Monitors
* Mini Size: 6.5 X 5 inches
NEW OPTION
* Low Power: 5VDC @ .7A, ± 12VDC
PC/XT keyboard ROM. Allows use of
@ 20mA.
IBM style keyboard. $15
*
TERMS: Add $3.00 postage. Orders under $15add 75¢ handling. No C.O.D.
We accept Visa and MasterCharge. Tex. Res. add 5-1/8% Tax. Foreign
orders (except Canada) add 20% P & H. Orders over $50 add 85¢ for
insurance. Prices subject to change without notice.
WE ARE NOT ASSOCIATED WITH DIGITAL RESEARCH INC. (CALIF.) THE SUPPLIERS OF CPM SOFTWARE
The Bulletin Board Blues
By Larry Fogg
Micro C Staff
Moving the Micro C RBBS onto a
clone was a project not unlike digging
a well. Every time Larry thought he
had it licked, something caved in.
I caused most of the trouble. I really
didn't want to lose all those users and
all those messages (some really good
ones).
What he won't tell you in the
following article are the words he was
muttering as text translation after text
translation was rejected by that new
RBBS with nothing more than the
same, inscrutable error message. (BASIC strikes again.)
I
t was 1:30 Sunday morning. Dave
had left an hour earlier (the slacker) and my only companions were
the softly glowing screens scattered
around the World Headquarters of
Micro Cornucopia. (Surely having
branch offices in such exotic places as
Davis and Turkey entitles Bend to be a
World Headquarters.) I thought I'd
just bang my head against the machine a few more times, then bicycle
home.
Why was I doing this?
Mostly because the middle of the
night is the only time I can concentrate. To put it mildly, Micro C is a
madhouse in the daylight hours. But
what can you expect from a World
Headquarters? That morning I was
putting the finishing touches on Micro
C's new bulletin board system.
Our 5MHz Kaypro II with 3 quad
density drives had performed admirably as a host for the ROS BBS, but we
were feeling the crunch of limited
drive capacity. Retiring the venerable
Kaypro in favor of a Personal Clone
with a 20 Meg hard disk gave us room
to grow.
In Search Of The Perfect BBS
With the decision made to switch to
an MS-DOS BBS, I began the search
48
for software. I especially wanted support for subdirectories and conferences. PCBoard, a public domain offering, filled the bill very nicely. It even
supported Ymodem (lK block) file
transfers.
Many thanks to Steve Sanders for
alerting me to PCBoard's existence and
supplying the code.
Translating The Files
The ROS system had collected a
number of interesting messages and
over 600 individual user records. We
didn't want to lose these in the change
over. (Actually, DAVE didn't want to
lose them. I just wanted to go home to
bed.)
At first glance I expected that the
conversion of user and message files
from ROS format to PCBoard format
would be a disaster. Sort of like
shooting in the dark and hoping my
head wasn't in the way. I didn't have
the source code for PCBoard, but
luckily the documentation contained a
fairly complete description of the file
structures. ROS's documentation
didn't cover the files at all, but I had
the source code.
Strings And Things
PCBoard's files consist of a mixture
of text and integers. No problem, I
thought. ROS is written in Turbo
Pascal, my favorite language. I'll just
break out Turbo and borrow the necessary routines in ROS to read the files.
Then I'll add a routine to write the
information out to new files that
PCBoard will understand.
It wasn't that simple in practice.
PCBoard is written in BASIC and
handles strings very differently from
Pascal. In PCBoard's files, strings always take up as much space as the
maximum allowable size of the string.
This can waste a fair amount of disk
space since all strings are padded to
their maximum length with blanks. It
also means that each string must start
at exactly the right offset in the file to
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
be read correctly.
On the other hand, Pascal always
knows how long a string is. The first
byte of each string (StringName [0] in
Turbo) is an integer representing the
string length. When Turbo is told to
read a string from a file, it looks at the
string length, reads that many bytes,
and is automatically in position to read
the next field. Much simpler.
My solution was to write the strings
out one character at a time and carefully pad each string with blanks to its
proper length. I then added a CR/LF
combination to the end of each line of
the message file. PCBoard didn't understand the CR/LF, and printed each
message as a single line. So I finally
got around to what I should have
done in the first place. Out came the
disk editor to compare my translated
file to a valid PCBoard file. How
strange. They didn't look at all alike.
All lines of the'valid file were terminated with E3h, which is the pi character on the PC. Since I try to know as
little as possible about BASIC, I can't
say if this is the standard end of line
character or is peculiar to PCBoard. In
any case, it was simple to convert all
CR/LF combinations to pi.
Slipped Digits
Another problem was conversion of
integers. I created a text file with the
conversion program and therefore
could not simply write an integer.
Instead I wrote the two ASCII characters corresponding to the two bytes of
the integer.
For example, the integer 42 is represented by hexadecimal bytes 2A 00.
(Note that the least significant byte
comes first.) These in turn correspond
to an asterisk and a null. Turbo made
things easy with the ChrO function. To
convert the integer 42 I included the
line, Write (FileName, Chr(42),
Chr(O».
Most of the other problems I encountered had to do with getting each
field in its proper place. A disk editor
was invaluable for comparing my first
attempts with files actually generated
by PCBoard.
Use Of PCBoard
PCBoard wants to know all about
you. As a new user you'll be asked
where you're calling from, your phone
number, what default file transfer protocol you'd like, and your choice of
password. (Sysops browse through
passwords on Friday nights for entertainment, so be inventive.)
Choose the W)rite User Info selection to update your record if you're an
old user.
As of this writing there are four
separate locations for messages: the
main board, comments to the Sysop,
and two conferences. These conferences (Public Domain 32016 and Tech
Help) are open to all users. Please
leave messages in the appropriate
area.
When responding to a message, use
the RE option. Then we'll all be able
to read related messages with the
T)hread command. T)hread allows
both forward and backward browsing
through messages with the same subject heading.
Give Us A Call
The new board has been up for
several weeks now with a minimum- of
grief. We do have a problem with line
noise occasionally (the board signs on
and then, unceremoniously, dumps
you). Calling back at a slower baud
rate usually helps.
Anyone considering a similar project
can find the altered ROS files (for
message conversion) and CONUSRP AS (for user file conversion) in
PCBoard's ISSUE directory. Look for
ROS-PCB.ARC. We are also distributing PCBoard as a two-disk public
domain package ($8.00 for the twodisk set).
We'd love to hear your reactions to
Micro C's newest toy. Let us know if
you have any problems or suggestions. The board is available 24 hrs/day
and talks quite happily at 300, 1200,
and 2400 baud. Call us at (503)3827643.
•••
MODEMS
INTERNAL MODEM
EXTERNAL MODEM
Features:
-
Features:
-
IBM® Compatible
Internal Half Card
Bit ComTM Modem Software
Fully Hayes® Compatible
Requires Standard Serial Port
RS 232C Cable
Mite® Software
Hayes® Compatible (no speaker
but has all 8 LED's)
- Two Year Warranty
- Four Year Warranty
1200 Baud
2400 Baud
1200 Baud
2400 Baud
$145.00
$275.00
$150.00
$290.00
NEW FALL/WINTER '86 CATALOG NOW AVAILABLE
WITH CP/M & MS DOS HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE
Bulletin Board for Orders/Messages
503-388..9944
MicroSphere, Inc.
P.o. Box 1221
Bend, Oregon 97700
503..388.. 1194
9 ..5- Pacific Time
Hours: 5:30 p.m. ~ 8:30 a.m. Weekdays
Available 24 hrs. on Weekends
ii-II
Hayes is a registered trademark of Hayes Microcomputer Products, Inc.
Mite is a registered trademark of Microft Laboratories.
Bit Com is a trademark of Bit Software, Inc.
IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corp.
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
49
CONVERTing
By Gary Entsminger
1912 Haussler Dr
Davis, CA 95616
Pattern-Matching & List Processing
For Turbo Pascal Programmers
Harold McIntosh's work (the compilers REC and CONVERT) is wellknown to a small part of the hacker
community (he received a computer
hacker of the year award in 1984 for
his contributions to the compiler arts),
but not well-known to the general
public. He sent Micro C the new MSDOS versions a while back, with
compiler source and manual-on-disk,
and I've had a go at understanding
this intriguing pair of compilers.
What follows is an introduction to
CONVERT, a pattern-matching language with a simple and elegant
structure, from a Turbo Pascal perspective.
C
ONVERT is a pattern-matching
language designed to translate
literary or formal text (the
source code of programming languages, for example). It's been around
(on mainframes) since the mid-60s,
originally as an interpreter within LISP
(one of the two leading AI languages
in the world).
The version available for MS-DOS
and CP/M was written in REC, a
language that has also been evolving
from LISP, and has been used to
translate Intel 8080 to 8086 assembler.
In theory, CONVERT could be used
for just about any kind of translation
- natural language to computer language, for example.
Not much is happening, and note
that everything is optional (program
heading and declarations).
The same do-nothing program in
CONVERT is «)()OO)
Which could also be written (
O()()( )
)
to illustrate its "block" structure.
The first paren signals the CONVERT ,compiler to begin matching
symbols. The middle parens are for
declarations (patterns, functions, and
variables) and the main (or execution)
body. The end paren says we're done.
Let's consider a slightly more complex example, a program that reads
How To CONVERT
A CONVERT program is a list of
symbols, enclosed by parentheses. The
CONVERT compiler looks at the list,
translates it symbol by symbol, and
acts on what it sees. Like Pascal,
really, except - the structure's different.
For example, the emptiest program
(a do nothing affair used exclusively
for demonstrations) looks like this in
Turbo Pascal begin
end.
50
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
the keyboard, and decides whether a
vowel has been pressed. After it decides, it writes a message - "vowel"
or "other".
We'll also have it look out for an
expression or special character (an escape) which will tell it to exit gracefully.
See Figures 1 and 2 for the Turbo
Pascal and CONVERT versions.
The programs work identically, except that Turbo Pascal looks for an
escape to tell it it's finished; CONVERT looks for "stop".
Let's compare the two line by line.
And Part By Part
Each program begins with its title.
Notice that "Vowel" is enclosed by
brackets in CONVERT's version. The
are comment designators
brackets
/I [ ] "
Figure 1 -In Pascal
program Vowel;
var
X : char;
begin
repeat
Read(KBD,X);
IF Upcase(X) in ['A','E','I','O','U'] THEN
writeln('vowel')
ELSE
IF X in ['a','e','i','o','u'] THEN
write( 'vowel')
ELSE write('other')
until X = 127;
writeln('goodbye');
end.
Figure 2 - In CON VE RT
[VOWEL]
(
()()()
(
[program starts here]
[declarations go here]
[main body starts here]
(stop,goodbyel);
«or,a,e,i,o,u),(JW"vowel)(JR,TTY:»:
«or,A,E,I,O,U),(Jt,VOWEL)(JR»:
«JW"other)(JR»:
[main body ends here]
[program ends here]
equivalent to Pascal's "{ }". The program title is ignored by the CONVERT
compiler. (The Turbo Pascal compiler
also ignores the program title, but
doesn't require it to be separated by
brackets. It's understood. So a Turbo
Pascal program will compile without
the program header.)
In Turbo Pascal, we need to declare
a variable to hold the character
pressed at the keyboard. Our CONVERT program doesn't need a variable
in this case because it doesn't save the
character, it just processes it.
In general, you don't need variables
in CONVERT when all the rules of a
set are of the form "pattern to recognize, response." A program which
makes substitutions from a table, for
example, doesn't need variables. (Later, we'll look at a program that does.)
In our Turbo Pascal version, we
don't need any types or constants, so
we leave that part of our program
blank and signal the compiler. that
we're ready to begin by using "begin," which seems appropriate.
In CONVERT, our declaration area
(designated by the second line of
parentheses) -
000
is empty. The parenthesis on line 3 -
signals the beginning of the main
body, or execution part of the' program.
The important distinction is that
CONVERT requires you to represent
the empty parts' of the program. Turbo
Pascal doesn't. (CONVERT is really
Eco-C C Compiler
"This is the only package we reviewed that we
would be willing to call a professional tool."
Computer Language, Feb., 1985
When the review mentioned above was written,
the Eco-C C Compiler was priced at $250.00. Now
you can have the same compiler for a mere $59.95.
And that price is complete, including a library of
120 functions, all operators (except bit fields),
structures, unions, long, floats, doubles, plus user's
manual. We've even included a special version
of the SLR Systems assembler and linker.
Benchmarks·
(Seconds)
Eco·C
29
Benchmark
Seive
75
19
42
Fib
....:
.. <
Deref
Matmult .
Aztec
'.'.
33
125
reNG
...
OIC
40
99
31
p115< I?···N/A
"Times courtesy of Dr. David Clark
CNC - Could Not Compile
NIA - Does not support floating point
Eco-C requires 56K of free memory, 240K disk
space (one or two disk drives or hard disk), Z80
CPU and CP/M 2.2 or later. We also have an
MSDOS version at the same low price. Call today!
1-800~952-04 72
(orders only)
1-317 -255-6476 (information)
( ...:Ii
(stop,goodbye!);
means: If "stop" at the keyboard (the
default for input), write "goodbye!"to
the CRT (the default) and exit. Otherwise, continue to the next parenthesis
and do what it tells you.
Next, the CONVERT line «or,a,e,i,o,u),(%W"vowel)(%R,TI'Y:)):
says, "IF you see an a, e, i, 0, OR u",
THEN write (%W) "vowel", THEN
read the keyboard. (In this
case,"TTY:" represents ·the keyboard,
but if we had left it out, as we did
before, the keyboard would have been
assumed).
THEN, repeat (":"). The colon says,
"let's start again at the beginning" or,
"let's read another character and see
what it is".
The next line handles uppercase «or,A,E,I,O,U),(%t,VOWEL)(%R)):
says, "IF you see an uppercase
A,E,I,O, OR U, writeLN (%t) "VOWEL", THEN read the keyboard (%R),
and REPEAT (:) from the beginning.
The next line handles the general
case (everything else) «%W"other)(%R)):
•
(317) 255-6476
6413 N. College Ave. • Indianapolis,
structured!) Otherwise, they're basically very similar until they begin to
execute.
Pascal has complex control structures
- IF, THEN; REPEAT,UNTIL; etc.,
which must be specified. CONVERT
has complex structures (WHILEs, etc.),
but assumes an IF, THEN process order, if no execution flow is specified.
The CONVERT compiler by default
assumes it's to READ A PATIERN,
and THEN DO SOMETHING.
So the CONVERT line-
says, "IF you see anything else (,,)
(continued next page)
6220
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
51
CONVERT
(continued from page 51)
write (%W) other" and THEN read
(%R) another character and REPEAT(:).
The next to· closing paren II
lems whose solutions may conveniently be expressed in terms of transformation rules.
In order to use VOWEL, we have to
compile it. Figure 3 shows the ·compilation process.
Figure 4 - File Copy Utility
[COPY.CNV]
«)()(O)( «A Z»; «O>,(W)(R»: -»
a
[main program]
says, "this is the end of the execution
part" of the program.
And the closing paren -
says, "this is the end of the program."
Program Flow & Rules
CONVERT works by isolating parts
of a text which satisfy some requirement (letters between a pair of parentheses, for example).
The isolated parts are then combined
into new text, with the help of general
or programmer-defined functions or
subroutines.
The main body (the execution part)
is a set. of rules for processing the
incoming patterns. In our example,
our rule was .:...- compare the character
input from the keyboard, see if it
matches our definition of a vowel, and
report the results of the attempted
match.
Its pattern-matching flow pattern
makes CONVERT well-suited to prob-
(
Reading & Writing Files
Let's consider a slightly more complex CONVERT program (see Figure 4)
which uses variables and functions to
copy files.
.
It's a bit more complicated, so we'll
look closely at each line.
The line after [COPY.CNV] and before [main program] defines a function, "~", which has a variable (0),
declared in the declaration part -
()
(
eeJR,(8):<9>.OLD» R
«JW,<8>:<9>.NEW,(AHJ)}} w.
)(8 9)
«<8>:<9>(or, ,.),«
»(JOr,<8>:<9>.OLD)«
»(JOw,<8>:<9>.NEW)«
»(a,(R»«
»);
«9>,<8>:<9»:
)
(00(0)( «"Z),); «0> ,(W)(R»: » a
I've written the function on one line
for convenience, but if you count the
parens, you'll come up with the function's main part beginning with
"«"Z" .
It says, IF the character (represented
by the variable 0) read is a "Z (or end
of file), THEN end (;), ELSE write the
character (0), and THEN read a character, and REPEAT (:).
The variable is declared in the variable part-
function, so it can be called from the
main program. Note that this function
is global (Le. declared outside the
main program, so it can be used by
any function in the main body).
In the main body, two functions, R
and W, are declared in the function
section of the declaration part of the
main program [main program]
(
o
(
(00(0)
«%R, : <9> .OLD» R
The
II
a" at the end names the
The R function (for read) «%R,:<9>.OLD» R
Figure 3 - A Dialogue
reads from a file (9.0LD) on drive B.
And W writes -
A>rec86 convert vowel
jfirst compile VOWEL.CNV
iCONVERT.REC will output something here
A>rec86 .vowel
Next: 2A66
convert/icuap/1985
;now execute VOWEL.REC
;memory used by the program
jdefault message
> avowel
i(CR> won't show, reply on same line
> A(CR>
VOWEL
; denotes the user's
ireply on new line
> bother
;different response
> stop
goodbye I
; time to quit
; acknowledgement
the character represented by the variable "0" and a carriage returnlline feed
("MJ) to a file (9.NEW) on drive B.
The numbers Band 9 are declared in
the variable section and represent the
drive (B) and the file name (9).
In the next line -
A>
iback to DOS
«:<9>(OR".),«
eR
«%W, : <9> .NEW, ("MJ))
W
we use OR to indicate that the filename can terminate with either a space
( ), a period(.), or nothing( < ».
52
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
"< <" is a continuation marker,
needed because CONVERT reads everything (spaces, tabs, etc.) literally.
So, the pair" < < ... > >" can be used
to format programs into lines and
columns. For example (and,<[S]>,< <
> > <0»
is identical to
(and, < [S]>, <0»
This program uses only one filename, but distinguishes the input file
from the output file by adding the
extensions "OLD" and "NEW" in the
next two lines. The first opens a file
for reading (%Or); the second opens a
file for writing (%Ow) > >(%Or,:<9>.OLD)< <
> >(%Ow,:<9>.NEW)< <
Function (or function) "a" which we
declared globally gets called in line 7
to process the file -
Semicolon if it's a terminal rule (i.e.
"quit"); colon if it's repetitive. The
pair consists of a pattern (something to
look for) and a skeleton (a function or
functions) .
A successful pattern match is followed by substitution in the skeleton;
an unsuccessful match results in passing ·to the next rule. If no rules
remain, the process ends.
Several functions, as we've seen,
can work in sequence.
Patterns are either simple or composite. Simple patterns are variables or
constants. Composite patterns are either boolean combinations of simpler
patterns, pattern definitions, or recursive combinations of the two.
Skeletons are either constants, variables, or functions. Anything which
isn't explicitly defined is implicitly a
constant, which saves a great deal of
quotation (and allows CONVERT to be
more of a bare bones language).
Functions are defined either externally or internally as we've seen.·
Internal functions include input and
output routines, and conditional and
iterative constructs (such as IFs and
WHILEs).
Wrap Up
CONVERT programs have been
used to manipulate algebraic expressions, translate assembler, compile and
decompile FORTRAN, C, and PLlM,
and parse complex natural language
expressions.
If you're interested in getting to
know this intriguing list processing
language, it's available from SIG/M
(for CP/M) and from Micro C (for MSDOS). I'm not familiar with the CP/M
version, but the MS-DOS version includes REC, CONVERT, a Manual-onDisk, sample programs, and source for
the CONVERT and REC compilers. In
other words, everything you need to
get CONVERTed.
• ••
> > (a,(R» < <
The function a says to read the· old
file (until we find a AZ) and write the
new file (by calling function W). Function R defines the read - read from a
file.
CONVERT takes file names from the
command line when we run the program. So, the variables for drive and
file name will be bound at runtime.
The line«9>, : <9»:
sends us back to the beginning, and -
wraps it up.
A Few Details
Variables are numbers in the range 0
to 30 (a restriction imposed by the
REC implementation) separated by
spaces. There are ways around this,
but we won't go into them here.
The rule set (or main program) is a
sequence of pairs. Each pair must be
followed by a colon or semicolon.
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
53
Path S
earc.hillg
Archiver
S'll....
y
./.b P e
' Aliases
TM
.~Ul ,~f:)
-4.
l"J.tlta
~/Jo
+
,)
'" -paging
~~\\~\e
_-l\.o.~
Co~~
MeIIlO~
" ......"\¢e~t \13.
~o-
IXTM
O·n·
o.te,l-
Disk Variables
SCTee~.
..:l~l:rect\o.n
110 lteu
.
' . Keys
Function.
.y'\,.:l,,\~\..y'\d
O~
...
Virtual Disk
el"lajr SeCQ-ClJleh '
. . . .g
1V::~6rya Files ....
Pipes
M-a~QgeIllent
.
~~q
Perfected Us mmercial use are not eligible.
This offer fully replaces Sweepstakes previously advertised.
FREE! Pull-Down Menu System:
As a special offer, the ConlX Pull-Down Menu System is
included FREEwith all Operating System purchases.
That's a savings of $24.95 off the regular list pricel
All ConlX Packages Above
SPECIAL! Buy 'Em All Discount Offer:
As a special incentive, when you buy all three ConlX
packages, you get the Library for only $10. That's right,
for $69.95 you'll get the ConlX Operating System.
Programming System, Library I, and three instructional
manuals. In addition, we'll throw in the Pull-Down Menu
at no extra cost. Act now and secure your copy of the
complete line of ConlX products at our lowest price, everl
Computer Brand:
----------------------------------~
* Add one format charge for each package
FREE-Order Give-Away
Name: ___________________________________
Address: _________________
City: ________ State: _ _ _ Zip: ______
Dear Computer Helper Industries:
Please enter my name in your Give-Away offer. I understand that
every 100th qualified order will be shipped with a Credit Certificate
for the full price of the order or $100.00, which ever is lower, and I
will have up to ninety (90) days to exchange the credit for a check in
full. I also understand that I am only eligible to enter if the order is
for private, non-commercial, or non-profit institution use.
Signature: ________________________________
Void where prohibited by law. Offer may be cancelled without prior notice.
OT:
0#:
C#:
PP$:
Disk Format Information: *
8" SSSD Standard
5114" DSDD 48 TPI Soft Sector
51A" SSDD 48 TPI Soft Sector
5114" _5 ___ D ___TPI
Sector
$ _ __
$ _ __
$ _ __
$ _ __
$ 69.95 $ _ __
$
$
$
$
5.00
5.00
6.00
10.00
$ _ __
$ _ __
$ _ __
$ _ __
ordered (complete system counts as one).
Format Brand:
Shipping Information:
UPS Ground USA
o Air Mail Canada
o Air Mail Foreign
o
$ 4.50 $ _ __
$ 9.50 $ _ __
$12.50 $ _ __
Subtotal:
Tax (N.Y. Residents Only):
Total (Thank You!):
$--$--$---
POs and UPS COOs accepted' by phone only. Sorry, credit card
payment unavailable. Personal checks require 10 days to clear. .
Non-USA orders must be prepaid by bank draft in US dollars.
Computer Helper·lndustrles Inc.
Post Office Box 680
Parkchester Station, N.Y. 10462
(212) 652-1786 9AM-5PM M-F
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
55
___________________________________________________________,.1 I
I
~
By Howard Saltzm../
t
38 Mainv/, Ct
Randallstown, MI .1133
)
7MHz On An 83 Kaypro
I
.I
/.
I
/,
Every time we do another speedup,
memory expansion, or video mod to a
system, there's a flurry of hardware
activity and a flurry of questions left
on the Micro C RBBS. (Now there's a
Tech Help conference just for such
occasions.)
So, this 7MHz Upgrade for 83s,
ought to fill up the board (503-38?--'.
7643, 24 hrs, 300-1200-2400). I {! .
ure it will be at least as popul~'" 15
5MHz - you should see thEY" lata
flash up on the screen. (On/ .!cond
thought, maybe you ShOl~lrI11~/ /
~
,
I
f you have an '83 series Kaypro II
or 4 and are still running at
2.5MHz, then you're long overdue
for a speed-up. If you've already done
the 5MHz tJ:ten you already have an
idea what 7MHz will do.
The modification is really simple. A
Z80H, rated at 8MHz, I/B" parts for
the PIa's and SIO, a 74LS04, and two
74F157s are all you'll need. If you
can't get a Z80H, a Z80B will probably
also run at 7MHz. The RAM and ROM
need only be 200ns parts. (But faster
is, of course, fine.) Many Kaypro's
have 200ns RAM (a -2 or -20 following
the device number). Check yours to
see if it needs to be replaced.
Addressing The RAM
The RAM chips receive the 16-bit
address put out by the Z80 in two
eight-bit chunks. U33 and U34 decide
which 8 bits are sent to the RAM
depending on whether the MUX signal
is high or low.
The first 8 bits are read by the RAM
when the RAS (Row Address Strobe)
goes low. Subsequently, the MUX signal goes high causing U33 and U34 to
switch to .the second 8 bits of the
address. The CAS (Column Address
Strobe) goes low next and the RAM
reads in the second 8 bits.
On the 83 Kaypro, U66 generates
56
I
/.
/.
CAS and MUX signals, and it works
up since these pin~' / iere originally
tied. high for U6f ,lmilarly, pins 8
find at 5MHz. However, at 7MHz, the
CAS signal is too far behind the RAS.
and_ 9, the d r - - , /nd CLR inputs,
So the RAM doesn't have time to put
pr;o
~ ;Up. The other pins
~'/jd into the socket
data on the bus before the Z80 reads
it.
_-----/not connected to any
For 150ns RAM~ thp TOlAT ;;-~
_-----buctlS.'
Another consideration is that the
.._ --0....... &a·J.~'-ClVt:U. '1\IS0, the CAS
address multiplexers U33 and U34
signal should not be generated until at
must be able to change output in less
than the 24ns between the MUX and
least 25ns after the RAS signal. 200ns
the CAS signals. 74LS157 parts are not
RAMs need to have 5ns added to each
of these times.
fast enough, so faster parts will be
needed here. 74F157's will do the job
nicely.
Generating CAS & MUX
Editor's note: See Figures 1 and 2 for a
My solution is to remove U66 and
replace it with a hex inverter (74LS04).
wiring diagram of the entire 7MHz mod.
U39 pin 11 supplies RAS to the new
Also, 745157s worked fine in our 83
Kaypro, and they were a lot easier to get
74LS04. The new chip inverts RAS
than 74F157s. The 250ns ROMs we tried
three times and then sends it to U33
and U34 as a MUX signal.
also worked fine at 7MHz.
The signal is then passed through
Clock
two more inverters and becomes the
Now all we need is a 7MHz signal
CAS signal. The propagation delay
and we'll be off and flying. U86
through a 74LS04 inverter averages
receives the 20MHz. master clock signal
8ns (that is, it takes about 8ns for a
and divides it by two to produce a
signal to get through each gate).
10MHz clock. This 10MHz clock is fed
So RAS goes valid and 24ns (3 gates)
back into the chip at pin 11 and
later, the MUX line changes. Then
divided by 2 and 4 to produce 5 and
24ns later (2 gates in the new U66 and
2.5MHz signals respectively.
1 gate in U48 which is part of the
A 13.9776MHz clock is available
original circuit) CAS goes valid.
from the video section of the board on
pin 8 of U2. ConneCting this signal to
Wiring The New U66
the bent out pin 11 on U86 gives a 7
The 74LS04 replacement for U66
and 3.5MHz output where the 5 and
should have pin 2 connected to pin 13
2.5MHz signals were before.
and pin 12 connected to pin 3. The
This completes the 7MHz mod.
output of this inverter is pin 4 from
Editor's note: I've added the following to
which the MUX signal is sent· to U33
and U34.
this article because I figured you'd have
some questions. I hope this helps.
Pin 4 is then connected to pin 11
and pin 10 should be connected to pin
For Original lIs
9. The output of this inverter is pin 8
Those of you who have an original
which shouid be connected to pin 5
Kaypro i with 1/81-149" marked on
which is connected on the board to
U48 where it is inverted one last time
the paper sttick to the top of your
monitor ROM are going to have to
to become the CAS signal. (Le. The
cheekbone's connected to the jawreplace that ROM.
ROMs marked that way are 2716s
bone, the jawbone's connected to the
funnybone, and the ... )
(continued on page 58)
Pins 1 and 2 oil U66 should be bent
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
__ - • .aI.C
.
i
Figure 1- Using 74LS04 To Delay The MUX And CAS Signals
NEW UGG - 74LS04
RAS
FROM
NOT
U39
USED
pin 11
MUX
OUTPUT
OUTPUT
U66 pin 4
U66 pin 5
CAS
Figure 2 - 7MHz Speedup Wiring Diagram. (Pin 1 is immediately counterclockwise from the notch.)
U47
U39
[ : : : :2:0:: : : : : :
f: :7~~~4:: IU48
U49~::: ~4~~4!::: I
r:
f:
c;: :: :::IU63
:
U64 ~~~2~3:: :~~2~3: IU65
f: :7~~~4: :IU67
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
57
KAYPRO
(continued from page 56)
(2K bytes) and they are very slow. The
fast 2716s are marked 2716-1 but they
are·350ns parts (barely fast enough for
4MHz). The ones marked just 2716
were 450ns parts (barely fast enough
for 2.5MHz).
If you want a cheap way to speed
up your system, you can do one of
two things. You can copy the data
from your 2716 into the upper half of a
fast 2732. Or, you can do the II to 4
upgrade (see Micro C issue #15 or #21
or #24) and then plug in a Kaypro 4
monitor ROM. (You can use your
original single-sided drives with the 4 .
monitor if you wish.)
Our monitor ROMs are 250ns parts
and the ones we've tested have
worked at 7MHz. We've had trouble
finding faster 2732s, and so far we
haven't needed them. Anyway, if you
have a Micro C Pro-Monitor ROM in
an '83 machine, then you should be
able to run the upgrade without replacing the ROM.
5MHz Speedsters
Those of you who did the U66 mod
when you speeded up your system to
5MHz may have to undo that mod
when you replace the 74164 (current
U66) with the 74LS04.
If you did the modification by pulling out pins on the 74164 (MUX
output on pin 3, CAS output on pin 4)
and then jumpered from the chip to
pads underneath the board, then all
you have to do is remove the jumpers
when you remove the 74164.
If you cut traces and added jumpers
under the board, then you need to
repair the traces and remove the jumpers (just the ones at U66) before you
plug in the modified 74LS04.
ers came out with 8MHz speedups just
after the 84s were introduced. In fact,
they came out with those products
right after Kaypro called me, wondering why a lot of their machines were
very sensitive to ROM chips and autodialers and 6545 video chips. The
reason was that the poor Z80 was
trying to drive too many things on the
data and address busses.
Needless to say, the 8MHz speedups
didn't last very long.
So, if you have an 84 and it's
working, then don't fuss with the
clock speed. After all, there's no reason to slow it down while it's still
working.
84 Kaypros
This 7MHz mod is for 83 Kaypros.
There is a reason. First, the clock
circuit for the latest 84s is pretty much
hidden inside a large custom LSI chip.
Second, 84s have trouble enough
working at 4MHz much less 7MHz.
Advent and a few other manufactur-
• Only $49.95 plus shipping.
• 8080 to Z80 Source Code Converter.
• Generates Microsoft compatible
REL files or INTEL compatible hex
files.
• Compatible with Digital Research
macro assemblers MAC.& RMAC.
• Generates Digital Research compatible SYM files.
• Conditional assembly.
•••
•
•
•
•
•
Phase/dephase.
Cross-reference generation.
Full Zilog mnemonics.
INCLUDE and MACLIB FILES.
Separate data, program, common,
and absolute program spaces.
• Supports Hitachi HD64180.
• Z80 Linker and Library Manager for
Microsoft compatible REL files available as an add-on to Assembler.
ATTENTION Turbo Pascal Users:
Assembler will generate Turbo Pascal in-line machine code include files.
58
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
.
.
. . . . .
sec MART
NOW AT THE
COMPUTING SALE-A-THON
HARD DISKS
1.2MB Floppy on your PC or XT
* Now you can have a 1.2MB-and-360K AT-compatible floppy disk drive on your IBM
-
(or compatible) PC or XT. Our 1.2MB _controller replaces your floppy disk controller.
The controller is $149, a TEAC 1.2MB/360K disk drive is $135. No software driver
required. This is a super reliable subsystem. You can boot from the 1.2MB drive.
w/purchase of any
disk drive. IBM PC-DOS 3.2 (the real thing) Reg $95 only $70, w/purchase of motherboard.
SBC PLEDGE
* service after sale
• multifunction card 384K, c1k/cal wlbattey,
serial, parallel, and game ports, with OK
save $50 Model MFC-4 $89
* low prices
-
• color adapter w/light pen port, RGB and
composite outputs Reg $140 Model CC-1
now just $79
-
* better
-
than the Super 7: floppy disk
controller, c1k/calendar, serial, parallel &
game ports, spooler & RAMDISK slw Sale
$99 ideal mate for 640K motherboards
-
• clock/calendar card Reg $58, CL-1 $49
-
* Turbo RAM AT 2MB RAM card. Its size
'*
and speed enable it to be used in all
6 to 10MHz 80286 computers. EMS,
works with 1-2-3, etc. Reg. $249 Model
CS5-EMS now $199 w/OK
.---------------..
POXT systems Model PCC-EMS $179
w/OK
AT COMPATIBLES
5510-7 hard disk controller with cables
and OMTIDISK utilities HDC-4 only $159
full IBM POXT
compatibility
8110 slots
runs IBM's PCDOS 3.1 & 3.2
BASIC interpreter available
great foundation
for business or
personal system
1 year warranty
Model MB-2 640K Turbo motherboard
4.77 & true 8MHz clock (switchable from
~:~b~;~~ C::o~ $~~;are) with 256K RAM
* Turbo RAM XT same as above but for
-'special
only $499
Generalized hard-disk controller works
* technical support * with
almost any drive. Just tell the
* one year warranty controller
your drive specs. Fast OMTI
MOTHERBOARDS
• monochrome graphics card runs 1-2-3
graphics, w/printer port, 720x348, MGC-1
now $99 (Hercules equiv.)
• Model MB-3' 640K motherboard
with OK Reg $199 now $159
• TURBO Pro ram see below, right.
__
-----liiiiiiii
ii_.---1
ABOUT OUR' MOTHERBOARDS
PRINTER BUFFER
Very easy to install BK· buffer
for Citizen MSP 10 & 15 printers.
List $45, reg $34, on sale $21
• "Assembling an IBM POXT Compatible
Computer System" A novice can put an
IBM PC compatible together with this new
detailed manual. $19
• Microsoft's new QuickBASIC full
BASIC compiler, Reg $99, only $89
ALMOST SILENT
~ ~~~~! SUPPLDY@:~~~
- side switch
"'~
-top quality
(;l>ttP
-one year warranty
- standard cables for 4 disk drives
-
boards available
-
AT motherboard w/512K $625
200 Watt power supply $125
AT hard & floppy disk controller
w/cables $279
AT case $99
AT keyboard $99
MS
very low noise
• Model PS-135 power supply Reg $129,
$75
-' the most IBM PC compatible mother- . ._now
_ _oniy
__
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _•
-
IBM AT compatible computers. Made in the
USA, complete systems, FCC approved.
Components:
complete
30 MB kit
• complete internal Yl-high 20MB kit, incl.
controller and cables, special $439
• complete 30 MB kit with Yl-high drive,
uses new Adaptec 2070-A controller,
$499
SPECIAL BONUS Norton Utilities Ver 3.0 Reg $99 only $60
ADD-ON CARDS
.
TURBO PROGRAM
each runs all commercially available
software
each works with all commercialily
available add-on cards,
These FOUNDATION motherboards are
the most compatible you can buy. All
work with V20 chips, have parity checked
memory, an 8087 socket, 8 adapter slots,
four empty ROM sockets. Super manual
includes complete data on how to put
together a complete PC system. It even includes schematics.
'* This program will
set virtually all turbo
motherboards to the turbo, or high-speed,
mode. Can be called from the keyboard or
from your AUTOTEXEC file only $19
BEST DOS MAN UAL
* Microsoft Press' "Running MS DOS". For
the less experienced and the most
knowledgeable MS/PC DOS user. 423
pages. We regularly get calls from our
customers telling us how great this book
is.
$21.95
Shipping and handling: driveslmotherboardslcaseslpower supplies $4.50 ea., cards $2 ea., software $2.50 ea., keyboardslmodems $4 ea.,
speedup kits $2 ea., memory $l/set, COMPUTERFACTS $3 first set then $l/set. CA residents add 6% sales tax.
Visa/MCIAmEx ORDERS:(619) 375-5744
The SBC MART, P. O. BOX -1296, Ridgecrest,CA 93555
The SBC Mart is p.1rt of Computing Technology, 247 Balsam Street, Ridgecrest, CA 93555
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
59
By Laine Stump
Logitech Modula VS Turbo Pascal
There comes a time in every adventure when things get a little (or a lot)
crazy. I don't know if it's culture
shock or computer shock that Laine's
suffering, maybe it's a bit of both.
Anyone who's been in the Peace
Corps or Vista, no doubt, understands
all too well.
S
a
louched on chair in the living
room listening to Jimmy Cliff on
the blaster (,Stop That Train, I
Wanna Get Off). I arrived in 'Stamboul (Istanbul, to those of you who
have never heard a local pronounce it)
yesterday afternoon after a 6 hour
drive through the mountains, forests,
and villages of Western Anatolia.
The little orange Opel performed
flawlessly, transporting myself and
two computers swiftly and smoothly
over the windblown passes, past the
fume-belching lorries, and through the
deathtrap maze of traffic jams that
start in Izmit at the east end of the Sea
of Marmara and continue for 130 kilometers all the way to the .Bosforus .
Bridge. The jams don't ease up even
when the freeway grows from four
lanes to six.
Now I am sitting in Russ and Gloria's apartment, back .bent into an
unnatural and spine damaging position, using the dull light coming
through the balcony door from the
wispy, "morning after the rain" sunshine to illuminate the LCD screen on
my little Toshiba.
I briefly' considered moving outside
to the balcony to let the view of the
European side of the Straits of the
Bosforus inspire my writing.
It is a typical 'Stamboul morning in
the city, Topkapi Palace, the Blue
Mosque, and Dolmabahce Palace faintly glimmering through the mist, minarets poking through the haze every
hundred meters or so, a constant
stream of ferry boats struggling from
60
Europe to Asia against the relentless
current into the Sea of Marmara.
There's an occasional tanker or cargo
ship chugging sluggishly north towards the Black Sea, reminding me of
Jason and his Argonauts, and the
similar journey that they made
through the Bosforus to the Black Sea.
They returned with tales of giant sea
monsters, beckoning sirens, and
treacherous currents that would toss
any but the most gallant and determined man to his death" in foaming
whirlpools that descended into the
depths of Hell itself.
It is late October - a bit too cold to
sit out on the balcony, especially the
morning after a rain storm. Besides,
I'm supposed to be writing about
computers and listings, and test runs
and utilities and bugs, not heroic
adventures and adventuresome heroes
of centuries long past.
Project? What Project?
Usually I attempt to have a small
programming project in every column.
Some little utility routine that can be
useful in' many programs, or maybe
act as a catalyst to help other people
discover new ideas and new uses for
old ideas. This month I am noticeably
lacking the normal· 'Assembly listing'
and 'Pascal listing' .that. everyone has
become accustomed to ..
There is a reason. for this. Usually I
spend at least one fourth· of my work
time solving small problems and writing utilities and interfaces to make life
easier. I haven't been doing much of
this lately. I haven't had time.
Oh, sure, I've done some interesting
things recently, but how many of you
are really interested in changing the
character set on your Hercules card ~o
add the seven Turkish characters missing from the IBM set? How many
people really want a program that gets
Turkish chara<;ters from a .keyboard?
How many of you really give a damn
about fixing non-working Turbo Clone
boards by hacking up the BIOS ROM?
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
Development Foundation of Turkey
Tunali Hilmi Cad. 22
Ankara Turkey
By the time you get them, either they
work or you send them back to the
dealer for a replacement.
(Actually, a few people might be
interested in some of this. Maybe I
should put together a disk of all the
little utilities I've written for editing
character sets, translating input keys,
and everything else. Someone may get
some use out of it someday ... )
Besides, I've been so busy trying to
make our worthless Clone boards run
that I haven't had time to do anything
really FUN in the last 3 months. My
time has been spent trying tricks with
resistors, modified ROMs, swapping
boards to try and consolidate pieces
from non-working systems into as
many working units as possible.
Clone Casualties
More and more little problems keep
showing up on the clone boards, and I
realize more and more that they are
not what they were represented to be.
Most noticeable is the fact that almost
none of them will run unmodified at
8MHz, as we were told they would.
This problem stems from two causes
- 1) some floppy disk controller cards
will not function at 8MHz reliably, and
2) if the system clock is changed back
to 4.77MHz for every floppy access,
the motherboard will eventually hiccup on a clock glitch and crash, sometimes rebooting, sometimes just dying
in its tracks.
This is really a Catch 22 problem. If I
leave in the ROM that slows down the
clock for every disk access then I am
98% sure that the system will crash
within the first 5 minutes of floppy
activity; if I remove the piece of code
in the ROM that switches speeds then
the floppy controller will immediately
begin getting 'read fault' errors. What
to do, what to do ...
I have found almost NO boards that
can handle the continual switching of
the system clock speed, but about 2/3
of the floppy controllers can handle
8MHz continuously (for everything
EXCEPT formatting). From this data, I
hit on the compromise solution of
using modified (non-switching) ROMs
and running full out all the time.
When I need to format a disk, I use a
short program to switch to slow mode,
format the disk, then switch back to
fast mode.
That still means that about 1/3 of the
machines will not work at BMHz. Ah
well, still better than a Commodore 64,
I guess.
Other than that, I found two or
three other motherboards that couldn't
run at BMHz (even when I didn't
switch speeds all the time), four
speakers that were connected improperly (they forgot to take the insulation off the wires before they crimped
on the connectors), several more
screws with stripped threads, and, of
course, the ten or so floppy controllers
that wouldn't work at BMHz.
I am somehow reminded of a caption I saw on a cartoon in Fortune
Magazine: "Gee, now I see it! If you
design the quality into the products
and manufacturing process to begin
with, you don't have to worry so
much about quality control and high
failure rates!" Something like that
anyway.
It's Only Logical
When I was in the States this summer, I got something I've been wanting for a long time - a compiler for
Modula II. The compiler I got was the
one from Logitech; when I called The
Programmer's Shop they said that it
had been the most popular Modula
among their customers, so I thought
I'd go along with the crowd for once.
It's already been three months since
I left the U.S. and I still haven't had
the time to tryout anything major
with it to see just how wonderful a
module is. Not that I need to write
something in Modula to discover that I've been writing my Pascal programs
that way for years.
The nice (??) thing about Modula is
that it FORCES you to follow the rules
of modularization and data hiding.
You can do the same things in Pascal
if you like, but when it comes down to
the deadline and things aren't finished, you can be lured into breaking
a few rules to "save time." If you are
working in a team with other programmers and you are using Pascal,
you can't TRULY hide any data types
or static data from them. If you are
using Modula, you don't have to trust
your teammates, you only have to
trust Modula.
Logitech Modula
Logitech's Modula is a full implementation of the Modula described in
the 2nd edition of Wirth's book on
Modula. It also contains most (but not
all) of the extensions and modifications
given in the 3rd edition of the same
book. It is a 4-pass compiler that
receives source code and generates a
. LNK and a .SYM file to later be
linked with Logitech's own object linker program. The linker produces a
.LOD file which can then be combined
with the runtime support package
with the LOD2EXE utility to create an
.EXE file.
A text editor (called MOD) is included with the package, and it is "kind
of" integrated with the compiler, but
not to the extent of Turbo's editor. I
think that I actually like the Logitech
approach to integration better.
The editor calls the compiler and the
compiler parses through the entire
program, finding ALL syntax errors
and placing them in a file. After
compilation, the editor works through
the error list, showing the error message on the screen along with the
section of the program that generated
the error.
This can be very nice if, for example,
you have 4 errors at the end of a
program that is several thousand lines
long. If you were using Turbo, it
would find the first error, abort the
compilation, let you fix it, compile
everything again, find another error
and abort, let you fix it, compile
everything again, etc. With Logitech
Modula, you only compile twice - once
to find the errors and once to generate
the object code.
Besides, I think the interactive feature of Turbo is being stressed much
too heavily. Good programmers have
their entire program designed, written,
and even partially debugged before
they send it to the compiler. The only
thing an integrated editor should be
used for, other than learning the language, is to correct stray syntax errors
that creep in.
The majority of time spent on a
project should not be spent recompiling and tinkering to try and make a
program work. Time should be spent
in the initial design, making it complete, clean, and compact (the three
C's ??) so that you won't spend so
much time guessing.
More Comparisons
I really hate to stoop to the level of
comparing Logitech Modula with Turbo Pascal, because they aren't even in
the same league; they both have their
place on my system disk and I plan to
continue using both of them. But I just
got done. reading a review of another
Modula compiler and the entire review
was geared toward showing how superior Turbo was to Modula. I feel the·
need to disagree and officially post a
rebuttal.
Program Size
One of the first complaints that I
heard about Logitech Modula (and
many other Modula compilers for
MSDOS) was that it didn't generate
tight code. While it may be true that
the .EXE files generated by Modula are
anywhere from 1.5 to 2 times the size
of a similar Turbo program, the problem is not that the code generation is
sloppy, it is that when one procedure
(continued next page)
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
61
86 WORLD
(continued from page 67)
of a utility module is used, the code
for the entire module must be included in the .EXE file. There is also the
overhead for the part of the runtime
package that handles processes and
concurrency. Besides, allowing a full
640K of code means that all procedure
calls must be 'far' calls (5 bytes)
instead of 'near' calls (only 3 bytes).
Of course, since Logitech does not
limit programs to only 64K of code,
and since you can rewrite your own II
o modules to contain only the procedures you need, this is not really a
problem. If you are that concerned
about code size, you should be programming in assembly language or
FORTH.
If you write new 110 libraries for
Turbo, you must include them, in
source form, in every program you
write. And even then, you are still
stuck with the original 10K 110 and
string library. If you want new libraries for Modula, you can completely throwaway the originals if you like.
Logitech even includes the assembly
language source code to their runtime
su pport package (process handling,
program initialization) which you can
change if you like.
Modula In ROM
They also have a package of libraries
that allows you to compile ROMabie
code. While I usually prefer assembly
for anything that will go into ROM,
this might be an interesting idea if you
were designing a complicated process
control or data acquisition system and
didn't want to have the extra expense
(initial and maintenance) of a disk
drive.
Converting From Pascal
In order to aid new converts to
Modula, Logitech has developed a
program (PAS2MOD) that will automatically translate a Turbo Pascal
source file into a Modula source file.
There are some instructions that can't
be done by machine, but most of the
drudge work of conversion is removed. Detailed instructions and examples are given in the P AS2MOD
manual describing how to take care of
the few "non-solvable" problems.
The translation program itself can be
62
quite an education for people trying to
shift their thinking from Pascal syntax
into Modula syntax. As the program is
running, it can optionally display the
original Pascal source code on the left
side of the screen and the Modula
code on the right.
A trap that .I fell into when I first
started reading the PAS2MOD manual
was to judge the relative strengths of
Pascal and Modula based on the conversion process.
"Look at how awkward this is!" I
silently screamed. "Why do I have to
make a procedure call just to empty a
set???"
This is not a fair way to judge
Modula, though. The problem is that
the P AS2MOD manual explains all the
areas where Modula is (apparently)
inferior to Pascal. Unfortunately, it
doesn't point out Modula's relative
strengths.
Modula Can't
An example would help here, I
think. One limitation of the· Logitech
implementation of Modula is that a
function cannot return a complex type.
For instance, you cannot have the
following function:
PROCEDURE
UpCaseStr(source:ARRAY OF CHAR)
:ARRAY OF CHAR;
as you can in Pascal. (Notice that
Modula removes the reserved word
FUNCTION and replaces it with PROCEDURE.) Instead, you must turn the
function into a procedure:
PROCEDURE
UpCaseStr (source
dest
ARRAY OF CHAR;
ARRAY OF CHAR);
At first this may not seem like any
hindrance at all. Instead of calling it
with:
str2 : = UpCaseStr(str1)
you would use:
UpCaseStr(str1, str2);
It does get to be bothersome,
though, when you realize that you
can't do:
str2 : = Trim(UpCaseStr(str1»;
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
or
IF (UpCaseStr(str1)
THEN
'ENGLISH')
Instead, you must cal,! the procedure, placing the result into a temporary variable, then call the second
procedure (or test the condition). I
agree, this is a bit of a bother. It takes
an extra local variable and a few extra
key taps to get things done.
Turbo Pascal Can't
On the other hand, let's consider a
feature of Modula that isn't in Turbo
Pascal. Modula allows procedures to
be passed as parameters to procedures. This makes Figure 1 possible.
Now, let's see you do THAT in an
understandable manner with Turbo.
So, you get my point. By its very
nature, the PAS2MOD manual points
out weaknesses of Modula while not
saying much about its strengths. Keep
that in mind as you are reading it.
Overall Impression
To sum up my feelings and thoughts
about Logitech Modula II - I must say
I'm looking forward to translating all
my Turbo 110 utilities into Modula.
Chances are, I'll be using Modula on
my next large project.
(Many of the extra utilities I wrote
for Turbo - like the Exec procedure a
few issues ago - are already included
in one of the Logitech library modules.)
Logitech has put together a very
complete program development system here. It includes a compiler, linker, and editor, as well as a postmortem debugger and a run-time debugger (how many times have you
wished you had THAT for Turbo?).
You also get an extensive set of library
modules including such necessities as
file system management and mouse
control (rat poison?).
Reservations
I do have a few small complaints.
(Never satisfied, am I??) First, a few of
the features of Modula as reported in
the 3rd edition of Wirth's report are
not yet implemented. Also, since sets
larger than 16 elements are implemented with a special library instead of
being built into the language, it's quite
inconvenient to use one of my favorites - "SET OF CHAR."
Another weakness is that there is no
straightforward way to link in a module written in assembly language.
Standard procedures for modifying
register contents and an inline type of
statement help alleviate the need for
this facility, but it would be much
nicer to have a utility program that
would convert an .OBJ file from,
MASM into a .LNK and a .SYM file
for Modula.
Final Score - 9.5 (make it fully
optimizing, linking to assembly, and
clairvoyant and maybe I'll raise it to
9.75).
Now Some Hardware
I hate disk drives that sound like
chainsaws. My Bigboard was so frightful that I finally resorted to handling
the stepping in software with timing'
loops to speed it up (the 1771 would
only go up to 6ms and I needed about
1.6ms). I still cringe every time I hear
the old familiar grrraaaakk grrraaakkk,
just imagining aluminum shavings fall-
ing into the diskette and collecting
right here on the very tracks where
my Micro C columns reside.
Well, when I got my Toshiba it had
mildly noisy drives. I lived with it for
awhile, knowing there must be SOME
way to change the step rate, but
unfortunately I didn't have any documents on the 765 disk controller.
Imagine my relief when I got a care
package from Cecil containing a new
mechanical pencil and Inside the IBM
PC by that guy Norton. Finally I
figured out what the 'disk parameter
table' pointed to by the address contained in the INT 1Eh location. The
high nibble of the first byte keeps the
step rate. Just change its value from D
(6 msec) to F (2 msec) and things are
magically quiet. F will work great for
most 80 track drives; you'll probably
use E (4 msec) for 40 track drives.
On the Toshiba, I only changed the
value in the disk parameter table in
the boot sector; on other systems you
may have to change it somewhere else
(in the BIOS maybe). There is a program on Micro C MSDOS disk 22 that
Figure 1 - Passing A Procedure To A Procedure In Modula-2
TYPE FunProc
= PROCEDURE
(REAL) : REAL;
PROCEDURE GraphFun (10, hi, step: REAL; Fx : FunProc);
VAR x : REAL;
BEGIN
x := 10;
WHILE (x <= hi) DO
GraphPoint(x,Fx(val»;
x := x + step;
END; {while x
END; {GraphFun}
Call it with:
<=
hi
}
GraphFun (1,10,1,Sqr)
GraphFun (2,30,.3,Sin)j
GraphFun (1,1.3,.002,MyFun);
Figure 2 - A Short Program To Change The Step Rate To 2 msec (or 4 msec)
A short program to change the step rate to 2 msec (or 4 msec).
MOV
MOV
LDS
MOV
MOV
INT
HOV
INT
AI,O
DS,AX
BX,[1Eh*4]
[BX],OFFh
AI,O
13h
AX,4COOh
21h
does the fix by patching in the value
after the system has booted. This
program works fine (for 4 msec) even
though the documentation is incorrect.
The documentation notes that changing the value from 0 to E "lengthens
the head settle from 26 to 28ms." This
isn't correct. Oh well, it works any'way. (See Figure 2.)
Ok, back to work now. I didn't
come to 'Stamboul just to ride back
and forth across the Bosforus on the
ferryboats and stare at mosques. I've
got things to do!
Next time: "How to learn that you
can't know that it is impossible to
learn that you are insane if you think
that you know it is impossible to learn
that you think that you can't know
you are insane."
•••
16 BIT SINGLE
BOARD COMPUTER
The Mlcro-86 SBC runs PC
DOS versions 2.1 or 3.1, and
hosts these features:
• 8 MHz 8086 16 bit CPU, can
be replaced with V30 processor.
• 128k/512k on board RAM
• 2 asynchronous serial lID
ports, 1 for system console,
1 general purpose.
• Centronics printer port.
• Floppy disk controller will
handle up to 4 drives, 5 or .
8 inch, SD or DD.
• Standard EPROM contains
BIOS, disk formatting program and setup program for
disk drive and serial terminal
set up.
• Small size, 5.75 x 8.5 in.
Mounts on a 51f.t inch drive.
$349 00 + 300 shipping
OEFh for 4msec
reset disks from ROM BIOS to
force reread of disk parameters
(128k)
California residents please
add sales tax.
Micro Technical DeSigns
7584 W. Azusa Rd.
Dos Palos, CA 93620
(209) 387-4235
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
63
'\,
PC Pursuit
By David Thompson
Cheap Communications
I first heard about PC Pursuit at a
meeting of a computer club in Eugene.
It was during descention (the time
when everyone descends on the speaker) that Richard Bear mentioned unlimited long distance RBBS access for
$25 per month. After that, no one
else had a chance. I asked Richard to
get me the info. He did. And the
following is the result.
T
hink for a moment: Why aren't
you spending 12 hours a day
exploring all those free boards
across the nation?
Because you wouldn't get any sleep?
Not a chance, you can get plenty of
sleep at work.
Because you have a family?
Not good enough. You carry pictures don't you? Besides, the little
tykes'll be a lot more interesting after
they've graduated from college.
Because you can't afford $4,500 a
month in long distance charges?
Right!
But hold on. If you're one of the
multitudes who's near a node (any of
17,000 Telenet nodes) there's something new that will let you feed your
information habit for nearly nothing.
(Better take the spare cot down to
work right away.)
For $25 per month (that's all, $25 per
month) PC Pursuit (a part of GTE
Telenet) will give you unlimited calling
into 14 cities (and any other burgs that
are within free calling distance of these
cities).
The cities and their area codes are:
(404)
(213)
(313)
(214)
(212)
(415)
(202)
(617)
(303)
64
Atlanta
Dallas
Detroit
Los Angeles
New York
San Fransisco
Washington DC
Boston
Denver
(713)
(210)
(215)
(206)
(312)
Houston
Newark
Philadelphia
Seattle
Chicago
(There'll be six more cities by the first
of the year.)
Unlimited But Limited
Your unlimited access doesn't include every RBBS within the specified
area code, just the ones within the free
calling distance of the specified city.
Your unlimited access is limited to
the hours between 6 p.m. and 7 a.m.
on weekdays. During business hours
you pay an additional $10.50 to $14.00
per hour. But, that's significantly less
than the $60.00 per hour for standard
long distance during prime time.
Your unlimited access is limited to
devices which answer the phone with
carriers. Telenet is an X.25 (packet
switching) network, so you aren't talking directly to the board. You're talking to a node - which is talking to
another node - which is talking to the
board.
You'll be talking to your node at· 300
or 1200 baud, but your data is put into
packets (up to 128 bytes each) and
passed along to the destination 'node
at 56K baud. There, it's unpacketed
and sent along to the destination system at 300 or 1200 baud. When the
destination responds, of course, the
whole process reverses itself.
With all this listening and packeting,
there are some delays, and Richard
Bear (the Springfield, Oregon fellow
who turned me on to this new service)
noted that the effective rate on his
1200 baud modem was about 600
baud.
Richard mentioned some bugs he'd
found in the system.
"Occasionally Telenet just seems to
drop me. This doesn't happen very
often, but it does happen. Also, after
, connecting and releasing three areas, I
get dropped' automatically. If I stay on
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
for a long time (over 2 1/2 hours),
can also get dropped. Of course, I can
get right back in."
"Despite these problems, PC pursuit
does provide a very affordable way to
access the country."
PC Pursuit Newsletter.
Richard sent along a PC Pursuit
newsletter, and one of the most significant bits I picked 'up is that the
network is set up for 7 bits per
character, even parity, one stop bit.
The newsletter says that you can
switch to 8 bits, no parity, for data
transfers. And it adds that you can
transfer information using XMODEM
or any of the other 8-bit protocols that
the board at the other end supports.
(Which makes sense; the CRC or
checksum looks like ordinary data to
the network.)
Telenet
I called the Telenet folks. I talked
first to customer support (the technical
types). There a young fellow told me
that the system could not support 8
bits, no parity.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because that's the way the software was written," he said, and then
paused to let the full gravity of what
he had said sink in.
"Then it can be changed," I said,
waiting to see how he would handle a
backspin lob.
He ducked.
I spent the next hour warming my
phone's earpiece as I was passed from
extension to extension. I could just
hear them whispering in the background. "Watch out for line 5, he
thinks we can change software."
Finally, I wound up in marketing.
Marketing is usually made up of
engineers who have lost touch with
technology, but in" this case I was
lucky.
"You want to log on in 8-bits, no
parity?"
"Yes. "
Ever Wondered Whnt Makes TclRBaPAscAl. TIck?
Source Code Generators
by c. C. Software can
"When you log on, you enter:"
H
terminal - (you enter)U1 < cr >
@
C"< area code> /3(or)/
12, < userID > < cr >
password (enter password) < cr >
connected (you enter)ATZ
ATDT, <7 digit phone number of "
board>
~.
::~~~:~ir;i~:;~~~;:!wer.~~, ~
all l.nterested l.n
what I s going on 1n
your system, it's
worth it."
Jerry Pournelle,
BYTE, Sept '83
U• "
,. 0
••{I~
-The Code Ouaten-
Ths SCG-TP p~ogram produces
full.y commented and labeled
source code for your TURBOPascal system. To modify,
just edit and assemble. Version 3.0xA (ZOO) is $45.
SCG's available for CP/M 2.2 ($45) and CP/M+ ($75).
Please include $1.50 postage (in Calif add 6.5%).
C. C. Software, 1907 Alvarado Ave.
Walnut Creek, \ 1\ 94596 (415) 939-6153
CP/M is a registered trademark of Digital Research, Inc.
Special note:
TURBO Pascal is a trademark of Borland International
The notes in parentheses are my
comments. The characters inside the
< > 's are carriage returns < cr > or
your own password, etc. /3 tells the
system you want 300 baud, /12 is 1200
baud.
PC pursuit will support 2400 baud to
80 of the dialup nodes (out of thousands) by the first of the year.
I mentioned Richard's problems
when I talked to the Pursuit folks.
They indicated that they had been
having some startup problems but said
that most of them had been fixed.
Whether they are fixed yet or not,
this is quite a service. How else could
you totally withdraw from society for
only $25 per month? How· else could
you call all over the U.S. for almost
nothing without having to change
phone booths every hour?
The only disadvantage I see to this
service is that we don't have a node in
Bend. On the other hand, with the
magazine and all, it might just be an
advantage. A big advantage.
PC Pursuit
1-800-368-4215 Voice
1-800-835-3001 FIDO - RBBS
-Issue #34
for
contest
results!
•••
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
65
Ron Miller
1157 Ellison Dr.
Pensacola, FL 32503
Text Displays, Fast And Fancy
At the heart of every C there's a
printfO. In many ways printfO is
indispensable. However, it's slow and
its characters have very few good
attributes. Ron has a fast fix.
A
s readers of my last column
might have noted, I've been
using C more and more often
for practical purposes. That worries
me a little. As an occasional English
professor I've taken great comfort in
the fact that my course on (say) Paradise Lost offers students no practical
benefit whatsoever. The best things in
life are not the means to some end but
the ends in themselves. "Relevant?!" I
love to bellow. "You're lucky if you
turn out to be relevant to John Milton." Editor's note: Who?
Ever since I discovered the beauty of
C I have thought of it as one of, these
goods-in-themselves, not quite like
Paradise Lost, maybe, but not like dental floss or box wrenches, either.
Consider the elegance of the Kernighan and Ritchie version of the
standard strcpyO function:
strcpyCt,s)
char It, Is;
whl1eC l s++ = It++);
Such a wedding of form and function
is a joy to concoct and a joy to
compile. Where else in this fallen,
messy world does one get that feeling,
that "Well done thou good and faithful servant?" (Editor's note: I think he
means it compiled without errors.)
Every software house can tell you,
however, that C does workaday jobs
quite well. And even I find myself
reaching for C to write programs, intended not just for myself but for
others. With C I get smaller programs,
clearer structures, and more explicit
control over the operation of my utilities.
66
I also get some pretty lousy screen
displays.
The Sins Of printf()
Though printfO allows extraordinary
flexibility in formatting columns and
displaying numbers - right justification, left justification, zero fill, signed
and unsigned integers, hexadecimal
representation - it does have its costs:
1. It is huge. Using printfO is like
joining a record club. Order the song
you want and you'll have to put up
with all the extra records.
2. It is slow. Functions with lots of
options also have numerous tests and
jumps during a simple function call.
Have you ever looked at the code of a
full implementation of printfO?
3. It doesn't take advantage of direct
writes to hardware. Since printfO does
all its screen 110 through the operating
system (for generality) it is slow and
lacks lots of the goodies a CRT showman dreams of.
4. PrintfO uses strings. Even if you
dump printfO and go to plain vanilla
putsO, C insists upon displaying text
one string at a time and that string
really has to fit on one line. You'd
have to do all kinds of unnatural acts
to get a string to continue on to the
next line, and the result would be
more of a stunt than a practical option.
If all you are doing is writing:
puts(ftftSave file? Answer: Y/N\bs\n")
No problem. Anyone who has ever
tried to get the right margin smooth
on a whole stack of printf("%s" ,xx)'s
in a row knows by painful experience,
however, that printfO is not the tool
for typing out lengthy passages of
explanation or'discussion.
Using A Word Processor Instead
My solution for this last or "text"
problem in C programs is to create a
text file with a word processor, which
is more than willing to trim the mar-
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
gins and set the necessary number of
carriage returns and free the programmer from the puzzle of "What will
this look like on the screen?" That of
course creates another problem, "How
do I get this text file into my program?" ,This second puzzle, however,
is easier to solve and leads to ways to
get around the other printfO problems.
I've tried three ways to get word
processor text (in the non-document
mode, of course: no control characters
unless you want smiley faces on the
screen) into a C program.
'1. Read the file sequentially with
fgetcO and display the characters as
they come up, stopping either at EOF
or some other, predetermined, character. If you stop at a special character,
the file pointer can save your place so
the program will be ready to write the
next screen.
2. Use readO to load the entire text
file into an array and then scan the
array with a character pointer. Let the
character pointer (a static, of course)
keep the place.
3. Create an .EXE file with blank
space in it and use another C program
to read the .EXE file into memory, find
the blank space, fill it with text, and
rewrite the .EXE file to disk to create a
program with one giant initialized array.
Each of these strategies has limitations:
1. CharaCter by character stream i/o
is about as slow as printfO. Without a
bunch of seekO games, which don't
'work too ~ell on text files anyway,
random access is impossible.
2. The load using low level i/o is
fast, and access is easily made random
with a character pointer, but you'll still
have to haul two files around to run
the program. The fewer the files, the
fewer that get lost.
3. The best solution - if you can
force your compiler' to insert long
patches of blank space into the .EXE
file. I've used "DB NN dup (?)"
Figure 1 - Fast Display Utility
successfully with compilers that. employ the Microsoft linker. It is a bother, however, to run the assembler, link
the files, and create and remember to
use a loader program.
Beating The Operating System
Once you've stuffed the word processor text into memory, the bottleneck in MS/PC-DOS becomes the operating system itself. A single
putcharO calls interrupt 21h, which
calls interrupt 10h, which performs an
equipment check, pops the registers a
handful of times, and then writes the
character. (And we haven't even written the attribute byte.) If we knew the
number of times DOS long jumps to
get one darned character plugged into
screen memory, we'd probably all
write nasty letters to Redmond, Washington.
All that rigmarole buys you machine
independence. But, if you are willing
to be limited to clones, you can write
directly to the screen.
If you're writing directly to the
screen you'll need to know where the
screen is so you know where to poke
characters (and attributes).
Take a look at the first two lines of
code in Figure 1 to see. how I used
interrupt 17 (l1h) to ferret out the
video RAM address. On return, the
interrupt reports the machine's equipment in the AX register. Bits 4 and 5
indicate the type of video board (you
set these bits with. the system DIP
switch). If bits 4 and 5 are high, then
you have a monochrome card; if 4 is
low and 5 is high, you have an 80column color card, otherwise you
should get your money back - your
system thinks it's a jr. with a 40
column monitor. A monochrome
card's memory lies at BOOOO, color
memory lies at B8000.
If you are using a large memory
model of C, a 32-bit pointer will do the
job nicely. All you have to do is treat
the screen area as an 80X25 integer
array, with the high bytes·· of the
integers as attributes and the low as
characters. Poking integers is by no
means a time-consuming operation.
If you want to diddle with characters·
and attributes from the cozy confines
of a small model C, you can dedicate a
(continued next page)
,. or however you generate interrupts .,
'include
,. however long the total text is .,
Idefine TEXTSPACE ????
'define SCREENCOUNT 111
ull5igned sorseg;
char 'charptr,'place[SCREENCOUNT], ,. placer] = pointers to screens .,
buff[4000],texthold[TEXTSPACE];
maine )
(
struct regs rr;
int i,fhand;
Interrupt(Ox11,rr);
,. equipment check interrupt .,
scrseg=«rr.ax » 4) & 3 == 3)1 OxbOOO:Oxb800;
which CnT adapter?
fhand=openCWtext.txt·,O); ,. load text area from word processor file .,
read(fhand,texthold,TEXTSPACE);
close(fhand) ;
place[O]=charptr=texthold;
,. setting addresses of screens .,
for(i=l;iOx7"
break;
"insert character .,
default: 'wptr++ = 'charptr;
"and attribute .,
Iwptr++ = att,
break;
,..................,
}
longmove(segment, offset, buffer, count)
unsigned seg,offset,ct;
char 'buffer;
,. This one depends on
a. How your version of C handles the stack.
b. What sort of assembler you are using.
I'll just give assembly pseudocode. lou'd probably be
using [BP+1] addressing .,
lasm
mov
mov
mov
mov
cld
rep
lendasm
es,segment
di,offset
si,buffer
cx,count
ids is already set
;increment si & di with each loop
movsb
}
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
67
C'ING CLEARL Y
(continued from page 67)
"screen" array down in the data segment. Then you can toss the whole
array up to screen memory with an
intersegmental move function based
on the speedy "rep movsb" utility of
the Intel chips.
If you read the original text from
memory with one character pointer
and write characters and attributes
into "screen" memory with another, a
screen chock full of text can be
processed and displayed in the blink
of an eye. Plus, you have COMPLETE
control over highlighting, color, underlining, reverse video, blinking, and
whatever else your monitor adapter
allows and your conscience permits.
Then, you only have to transfer the
"screen" to real screen memory to see
it on the monitor.
When I'm creating text screens I use
some of the less common characters to
flag attributes for the display utility.
For example, in Figure I, the caret (A)
toggles between highlighted and nor-
mal video and the tilde separates
pages. You could use the vertical bar
(I) to toggle reverse video, and the
backwards single quote (') to toggle
the blink. If you're curious about
which attributes you have, just whip
out your tech manual and look in the
index under "Video."
Noble Code, Vulgar Display
See Figure 1 for the fast display
utility. Notice that in this sample, I
load the word processor text into
memory at the beginning.
HiSpeed C Library
The HiSpeed replacement library for CP/M Toolworks C/SO uses either Microsoft Macro-SOl LInk-SO
or SLR Systems SLRMAC/SLRNK.
Compile HELLO.C into a 254-byte HELLO.COM in 10
seconds with a single command line.
Features:
Fast K&R incremental development.
Full STDIO stream library: fseek, fwrite, etc.
Function calls match major MS-DOS, CP/M-6SK
and UNIX compilers. Painless portable code.
Full math, strings, searching, sorting, timing.
One function per page documentation with
examples that work (410 pages, 310+ functions).
Utilities to archive, bold-print, beautify, crossreference, function map, .. ~ (27 in all).
Printed reference manual and object code
$29.95
One megabyte of source code on disk ••••••••
$19.95
My screens are much, much faster
than they were when I struggled with
printfO. You cannot imagine what unspeakably flashy, gaudy, and eye
catching screens I can stuff into a piece
of otherwise practical software; It sure
is fun to generate my vulgarities with
a most elegant run of C. One can't let
oneself be too much of this world, you
know.
•••
68000 OPERATING SYSTOEM
$50
Now you can put K-OS ONE, a 'simply' great
operating system, on your 68000. It is simple to
use and has all of the features you would expect
from an operating system in the class of MS-DOS or
CP/M. It's easy to customize because you get
source code for the operating system and the
command processor.
They are written in HTPL, a powerful, high level,
language hybrid.
You don't have HTPL? No problem,
the HTPL compiler is included. The K-OS ONE
operating system is small. You can edit and recompile the whole operating system in only 64K of
RAM.
The package also contains a line editor, a 68000
assembler and a manual covering the whole package.
With x-OS ONE, you can read and write ASCII files
on MS-DOS format diskettes. This gives you the
tools you will need to port K-OS ONE to your
hardware.
CP/H 1s a Trademark of D1g1tal Research
HS-DOS is a Trademark of Hicrosoft Corporation
K-oS ONE and HTP~ are Trademarks of Hawthorne Technology
To order, call: (503) 254-2005
Free brochure. Phone orders shipped immediately.
All Media Master formats and S" sssd.
Viking C Systems
2243 South
Belaire Drive
Salt Lake City,
UT S4109
1-S01-466-6S20
ask for Grant
68
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
Hawthorne Technology
8836 SE Stark
Portland, Or 97216
Graphics for the Rest of Us
If you own an '84, '85
_/'
.___~J
or '86 Kaypro CP/M )~ .~:~
computer, you can
}~1~A.A.J! ~~fl.tquickly " and easily . .F'/?:~(;':;::~-;;;;'
;====::1
.,.I;-t-J'...
J
"A fabulous program ••• SCS-Draw permits you
to draw to the best of your abilities -- and
your computer's."
- Profiles, March 1986
like those shown here. All you need is the
right software: SCS-Draw.
"A great way to fly ••• the power of this
program is unli mited."
- Cornerstone Magazine, June 1986
SCS-Draw turns your mild-mannered Kaypro
into a powerful drawing machine, with
fea tures like:
"Extremely easy to use ••• excellent for
creating logos, bulletins and newlsetters."
- Clergy KUG, July 1986
d
d
/o.I'•
a~~will~:;:aatToSns ./ :.Eiliilii~~~ u~-,
*
True pixel-by-pixel drawing
and editing capability.
"The documentation is among
lllj!l the bes t I've seen."
mm
1!1I11
* Multi-screen drawings, for a
total resolution of over
120,000 pixels. (336x362)
mm "Best use I have seen of the
111m
nun
rotation, enlargement, and
mirror image.
-
SCS-Draw user, Australia
"The best piece of commercial
mm software I have bought ••• the
mm quality is 4.0."
1!1111 SCS-Dra w user, Idaho
111111
* Block move and file merge.
T ....
~lthl
K.,.I.lE- ... ""
Context-sensitive help,
pop-up menus and a 96-page
user's guide. (Illustrated,
of .course.)
•
T"Imes, August 1986
MIcro
ml!l screen graphics."
* Powerful printing options like
*
-
t ... v.c -:t ... ·~wi .... ~ ,.,.. .. ~.,~M 4~ ..
r. .... II+~.Ytl., ...
CP/M
"n·" ..
Illlll
HHH
"A pleasure to use ••• user-
.111111
:~~;t~l~; .,;un,
m~~~
U=: : :;: :1 :; :;:; ~i i; :; 1m:; :;:;ml; :;:;:1 m: :; H ; :; H~1:;: ;: lmalml; :;:; H1l:; :;:;ilHalm·;:;:; ~ml;:;:;:;H!1: ;';nm~mi~Hg:; ;r: nm;:;:;:!lHl~nml:ilHi
-
well put
SC S- Dr a w us e r , Mi c h iga n
* NEW in Draw 1.1: X/V coordinate display, "SCS-Draw is the first program for the
vertical text for graph axis labels, print
to disk capability, and much more.
Get in on t~e excitement copy of SC5-Draw today.
get your
[]
Send me SCS-Draw immediately
by UPS 2nd-Day Air. Payment
of $59.95 is enclosed.
[]
I have to see it to believe it -send me a copy of the SCS-Draw
Demo Program. I have enclosed
$5.00 for shipping and handling.
(Specify Kaypro model when ordering.)
Kaypro that I have truly enjoyed."
- SCS-Dra w user, Kentucky
SCS-Draw supports most
dot-matrix printers,
including Okidata,
Epson, Star Gemini,
C. Itoh, and IBM.
Daisywheel printers from Juki, Diablo
and Brother are also supported, and a
custom installation program is provided
for printers not listed here.
Second City Software
312-577-7680
P.O. Box 442
Mount Prospect, IL 60056
This page was created and printed using only SCS-Draw and WordStar.
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
69
By John P. Jones
6245 Columbia Ave.
St. Louis, MO 63139
(314)645-1596
Queues, Stacks, And Residents
Queues are good for more than just
spelling contests. Here John takes
another look at queues (and stacks).
Then he looks at writing TSRs (terminate but stay resident routines), those
neat memory resident programs that
pop up when you least expect them.
(Now if you auto-installed one that
did something different every time it
saw a carriage return ... )
I
n issue 25 we talked about dynamic
variables and pointers, particularly
their use in list and tree structures.
For queues and stacks of indeterminate length, this is· the method of
choice. But when you know the maximum size, you can implement a stack
or queue more easily with an array
and one or two indexes.
First let's review just what a queue
is. There are two major types of queue
- the FIFO (for First In First Out), and
the LIFO (Last In First Out). A FIFO is
a list, designed so that data can be
added at one end, and later retrieved
and deleted from the other end. The
last time you were at the bank on a
Friday evening you were· in a FIFO
queue.
In a LIFO queue, data is added to
one end, and later retrieved. from the
same end. LIFOs are often referred to
as stacks.
Either structure has three possible
states: empty, not empty, and full.
LIFOs
To set up a LIFO, you need a data
array and one index. Since the next
item to be retrieved is always the last
item added, the same index can be
used for both adds and removes.
Figure 1 shows an implementation of a
simple LIFO.
The boolean functions PutOnQ and
GetFromQ add data to and remove
data from the queue. PutOnQ first
checks to see if the queue is full, and
70
Figure 1 - Last In, First Out Queue
Program LIFOdemo;
const
qsize = 20;
var
queue: array [O •• qsize] of char;
qptr : O•• qsize;
ch2, ch3 : char;
must be global vars since can be }
asynchronously updated J
function PutOnQ (ch:char):boolean;
begin
queue full? }
if succ(qptr) ) qsize then
yes, signal failure
PutOnQ : = false
else begin
not full, update pointer & add data
qptr := succ(qptr);
queue[qptr] := chj
PutOnQ := true;
endj
end;
function GetFromQ (var ch:char):booleanj
begin
queue empty?
if qptr = 0 then
yes, signal failure
GetFromQ := false
else begin
else get data & update pointer }
ch :=queue[qptr];
qptr := pred(qptr);
GetFromQ := true;
end;
end;
procedure Processlnput (ch:char); { not really much processing herel }
begin
write(ch) ;
end;
begin
qptr := 0;
ch2:= '@I;
( pred( IA') }
repeat
ch2 := succ(ch2);
{the following statement is to demonstrate the effects of async removal }
..
{ if random( 10) ) 3 then
if GetFromQ(ch3) then Processlnput(ch3);
until not(PutOnQ(ch2»;
while GetFromQ(ch2) do
Processlnput(ch2);
end.
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
Figure 2 - First In, First Out Queue
Program FIFOdemo;
const
qsize
= 20;
var
queue: array [O •• qsize] of char; { must be global vars }
~top-ptr, ~bot-ptr : O•• qsize;
ch2, ch3 : char;
functicn PutOnQ (ch:char):boolean;
begin
if succ(~bot-ptr) mod (qsize +1) = ~top-ptr then {queue full? }
PutOnQ : = false
{ if yes, can' t add }
else begin
~bot-ptr := succ(~bot-ptr) mod (qsize + 1); {update bottom pointer}
queue[~bot-ptr] := chi
{ store the data}
PutOnQ := true;
{ signal success}
end;
end;
function GetFromQ (var ch:char):boolean;
begin
queue empty? }
if ~top-ptr = ~bot-ptr then
if yes, then nothing to get
GetFromQ := false
else begin
update top pointer
~top-ptr := succ(~top-Ptr) mod (qsize + 1);
get the data }
ch := queue[~top-ptr];
signal success }
GetFromQ := true;
end;
end;
procedure Processlnput (ch:char);
begin
write(ch);
end;
{not a lot of processing herel }
{Program FIFO}
:= 0;
{ initialize pointers
~bot-ptr : = 0;
ch2 := '@I;
( pred ('A') for demo
begin
~top-ptr
repeat
ch2 := succ(ch2);
bump input data }
the following statement is to show asynchronous removal
if random(10) > 3 then
if GetFromQ(ch3) then ProcessInput(ch3};
until not(PutOnQ(ch2»;
while GetFromQ(ch2) do
Processlnput(ch2);
end.
exits with no action if it is. If space is
available, the array index is updated,
and the data stored. GetFromQ is, as
you would expect, the reverse of PutOnQ. It first checks for the empty
state, and if false, returns the last
datum added to the stack. You may
notice that the first array element (at
[0]) is unused because the index is
updated before data addition, and after data removal. If the reverse is
done, the last array element will be
unused.
I've included an asynchronous removal statement, which randomly removes about 1/3 of the data items
right after they are added. Try the
program both with and without it. As
you will see, without async removal, a
LIFO can be used to reverse the list
without using recursion. However,
when elements are being removed at
random times during input, the output
becomes jumbled.
FIFOs
A FIFO is what we generally mean
when we talk about a queue. To
implement a FIFO with an array, we
need the array itself, and two index
variables for adding and retrieving the
data. A FIFO is most efficiently organized as a circular queue - a new item
is stored in the first element of the
array after the last element has been
filled (if the queue is not full).
Figure 2 is a demonstration of a
simple FIFO. Data is always added at
the bottom of the queue with
Q_BOT~TR and removed from the
top with Q_TOP~TR. Each time we
increment an index, we divide it by
qsize + 1" and keep the remainder
(modulo arithmetic). Thus we reset the
index to .zero whenever its value
reaches qsize + 1.
The queue is full when the current
bottom position is 1 less than the
current top position. (So any new data
(continued next page)
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
71
PASCAL PROCEDURES
(continued from page 71)
would have to be written over the data
in the top position.) When the current
bottom position equals the current top
position the queue is empty.
When you run this program with
and without the async removal statement you will see that there is. no
difference in the sequence of the output, only in its. length. The data will
always be available in exactly the same
order it was queued.
FIFOs are especially useful for data
transfers between asynchronous
processes. For example, you might
have an interrupt-driven data capture
routine which cannot process the data
immediately. If the data capture routine queues the data in a FIFO, the
processing routine can retrieve it in
proper sequence at a later time.
TSRs
MS-DOS was designed to be extended on the fly using the "terminate but
stay resident" function. Put simply,
after initialiZation, a resident program
will hook into one or more interrupt
vectors, then invoke the terminate but
stay resident DOS interrupt. The
mechanism was designed for programs
like MODE, one of whose functions is
to add a serial printer driver to. the
operating system.
Unless you've been living in a closet
for the last 3 or 4 years, you'll be
aware that many software publishers
have used this mechanism for pop-up
productivity enhancement programs.
(Borland's Sidekick, Superkey, and
Turbo Lightning are all examples.)
These programs wait quietly in memory until invoked by a particular keystroke or event, then take over from the
currently running program until exited
again. If the utility is implemented
correctly, you should get back into
your original program precisely where
you left off, with no loss of data.
You can do the same thing yourself
with a Turbo Pascal program! There is
a set of routines available for downloading from the B0rland SIG on
CompuServe (and I assume, other
BB's) which you can incorporate into
your program to allow it to be a TSR.
Within about 2 hours after downloading the files, I had a resident Hercules
graphics screen dump to printer pro-
72
gram running. (See Issue· 30 for the
screen print procedur~.)
The package includes several files
within a single .ARC (archive) file:
STAYRES.340 .. the 'main' program
that sets up residency; your routine
will be activated by it when the proper
key is pressed.
STAYSAVE.340 STAYRSTR.340 save and restore stack & registers
when the program is .activate~ or
exited. Needed because DOS is not reentrant and 110 would be impossible
without this environment save.
STAYXIT .340 - removes the resident
program from memory. (Only to be
used if yours is the LAST resident
program!!! DOS will go bananas if you
remove a TSR from the MIDDLE of a
group.)
STAYWNDO .340 - routines to create
& use a wind~w, then restore original
screen before exit.
STAYSUBS.340 - routines to retrieve
current directory & display it. Used by
the demo program below.
STAYDEM.340 - demo of system pops-up a directory window.
There are no documentation files for
the routines, but all are liberally commented with explanations and instructions. Understandably, the core routines are mostly INLINE machine
code. Although not recommended, it
is more than possible to cookbook a
TSR program with these routines without understanding what is really going
on. My graphics dump was done this
way, but I did go back later to learn
more about the process.
I recommend that you test any TSRs
you write very thoroughly, in the
environment where they'll be used,
before you become dependent on
them. When another particular TSR is
resident with the screen dump, I can
crash the system about half the time if
I run Generic CADD.
You should be able to learn quite a
bit about DOS if you play around with
this set of routines and a good book
on DOS. (I just came back to this after
a session on CompuServe - there is
apparently a newer version of the
resident routines; they are contained
in the file STAY42.ARC in the DOS
Turbo Pascal data library of the Borland SIG. You may want to check it
out.)
STAY42.ARC is also available on the
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
Micro C board (503-382-7643) in the
CURRENT ISSUE LISTINGS.
Things To Come .•
Although Pascal is a very capable
programming language, and Turbo
Pascal is an especially efficient implementation of Pascal, neither is perfect.
One of the more serious limitations is
the lack of facilities for separate compilation of routines and routine libraries.
It is NOT the language of choice for a
large programming project (> 4000
lines of code or so), and definitely not
suitable if it's a team effort.
Modula-2 was developed to be the
successor to Pascal and was designed
to be a true general purpose language
for every~hingfrom operating systems
to applications.
I have begun to learn Modula-2, and
plan to include some of my experiences in this column. Next time, we'll
take a look at how Modula-2 compares
with Pascal and we'll check out a
couple of Modula-2 compilers.
•••
Cotnplete Your Education
If you're not working with a full set,
fill out your collection of Micro C today.
BACK ISSUES OF MICRO C.
Only $1.50 each when you order 6 or more
All Foreign $2.00 each for 6 or more
(includes surface postage)
ISSUE n4 (10/83)
BBII Installation
The Perfect Terminal
Interface To Electronic Typewriter
BBI Video Size
Video Jitter Fix
Slicer Column Begins
Kaypro Color Graphics Review
48 pages
ISSUE n (8/81)
Power Supply
RAM Protection
Video Wiggle
112 PFM.PRN
16 pages
ISSUE #2 (10/81)
Parallel Print Driver
Drive Motor Control
Shugart Jumpers
Program Storage Above PFM
1/2 PFM.PRN
16 pages
ISSUE 113 (12/81)
4 MHz Mods
Configuring Modem 7
Safer Formatter
Reverse Video Cursor
FORTHwords Begins
16 pages
ISSUE #4 (2/82)
Keyboard Translation
More 4 MHz Mods
Modems, Lync, and SIOs
Undoing CPIM ERASE
Keyboard Encoder
20 pages
ISSUE 115 (4/82)
Word Processing
Two Great Spells
Two Text Editors
Double Density Review
Scribble, A Formatter
20 pages
ISSUE #6 (6/82)
BBI EPROM Programmer
Customize Your Chars
Double Density Update
Self-Loading ROM
Terminal In FORTH
24 pages
ISSUE #7 (8/82)
6 Reviews Of C
Adding 6K of RAM
Viewing 50 Hz
On Your Own Begins
24 pages
ISSUE #8 (10/82)
Drive Maintenance
Interfacing Drives
Installing A New BIOS
Flippy Floppies
C'ing Clearly Begins
Xerox 820 Begins
28 pages
ISSUE 119 (12/82)
BBII EPROM Program
Relocating Your CPIM
Serial Print Driver
Big Board I Fixes
Bringing Up WordS tar
Cheap RAM Disk
32 pages
ISSUE no (2/83)
Saving A Fla~~,)isk
Hooking Wir~ YdBII
The Disk I- O.ctor
JRT Fix -Q
SeriaJo~ooard Interface
Pas~" . rocedures Begins
36 pages
ISSUE 1111 (4/83)
BBI Expansions A
BBII Details 0">
Dyna, RAt-' .,k Review
Easier R,~.,e Video Cursor
PlanI'~O.lc Review
Kaypl. Column Begins
36 pages
Y
ISSUE 1112 (6/83)
256K For BBI
Bringing UP BBII
dBase II
Look At WordStar
Double Sided Drives For BBI
Packet Radio
5 MHz For Kaypro
40 pages
ISSUE 1113 (8/83)
CPIM Disk Directory
More 256K FOR BBI
Mini Front Panel
Cheap Fast Modem
Nevada COBOL Review
BBI Printer Interface
Kaypro Reverse Video Mod
44 pages
ISSUE n5 (12/83)
Screen Dump Listing
Fixing Serial Ports
Playing Adventrue
SBASIC Column Begins
Upgrading Kaypro II to 4
Upgrading Kaypro 4 to 8
48 pages
ISSUE n6 (12/84)
Xerox 820 Column Restarts
BBI Double Density
BBII 5' 18' Interface Fix
Kaypro ZCPR Patch
Adding Joystick To Color Graphics
Recovering Text From Memory
52 pages
ISSUE 1117 (4/84)
Voice Synthesizer
820 RAM Disk
Kaypro Morse Code Interface
68000-Based System Review
Inside CPIM 86
56 pages
ISSUE 1118 (6/84)
Kaypro EPROM Programmer
1/0 Byte: A Primer
Kaypro Joystick
Serial To Parallel Interface
Business COBOL
60 pages
ISSUE 1119 (8/84)
Adding Winchester To BBII
6 MHz On The BBI
Bulletin Boards
Trac~ Buffering On Slicer
4 MHz For The 820-1
64 pages
ISSUE 1120 (10/84)
HSC 68000 CO-Processor
DynaDisk For The BBII
Serial Printer On BBI Sans SIO
Cheap & Dirty Talker For Kaypro
Extended 8' Single Density
72 pages
ISSUE 1127 (12/85)
Build An $800 Clone
Fixing Your Own System
NEC V20 Processor
Selling Your Own Software
Inside Small C Compiler
104 pages
ISSUE #21 (12/84)
Analog To Digital Interface
Installing Turbo Pascal
Low Intensity BBI Video
Turbo Pascal, The Early Days
80 pages
ISSUE 1128 (2/86)
Pascal Runoff Winners
Rescuing Lost Text From Memory
Introduction To Modula-2
First Look At Amiga
Inside The PC
104 pages
ISSUE 1122 (2/85)
Xerox 820-11 To A Kaypro-8
Sound Generator For The STD Bus
Reviews Of 256K RAM Expansion
In The Public Domain Begins
8B pages
ISSUE 1123 (4/85)
Automatic Disk Relogging
Interrupt Driven Serial Printer
Low Cost EPROM Eraser
Smart Video Controller
Review: MicroSphere RAM Disk
Future Tense Begins
86 pages
ISSUE #24 (6/85)
C'ing Into Turbo Pascal
8' Drives On The Kaypro
48 Lines On a BBI
68000 Versus 8OX86
Soldering: The First Steps
8B pages
ISSUE 1125 (8/85)
Why I Wrote A Debugger
The 32-Bit Super Chips
Programming The 32032
Modula II
RS-232C: The Interface
104 pages
ISSUE 1129 (4/86)
Speeding Up Your XT
Importing Systems From Taiwan
Proto typing In C
,
C Interpreters Reviewed
Benchmarking The PCs
104 pages
ISSUE 1130 (6/86)
PROLOG On The PC
Expert Systems
Logic Programming
BUilding Your Own Logic Analyzer
256 K RAM For Your 83 Kaypro
PC-DOS For Non-Clones
104 pages
ISSUE 1131 (8/86)
RAM Resident PC Speedup
Practical Programming In Modula-2
Unblinking the PC's Blinkin' Cursor
Game Theory in PROLOG and C
104 pages
ISSUE 1132 (10/86)
Public Domain 32000:
Hardware and Software
Writing A Printer Driver For MS-DOS
Recover A Directory By
Reading & Writing Disk Sectors
ISSUE 1126 (10/85)
Inside ZCPR3
Two Megabytes On DSI-32
SOGIV
The Future Of Computing
MS-DOS In The Public Domain
Graphics In Turbo Pascal
104 pages
BACK ISSUES
u.s. Regular Price ........•.••............•. $3.00 each
6 or more 1/2 price ..............•.•......... $1.50 each
Regular Foreign Price (air mail) ............•. $5.00 each
-6 or more (including Canada) ............••.. $2.00 each
(surface postage)
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
73
Super Chips & Parallel Architectures
By Gary Entsminger
1912 Haussler Dr
Davis, CA 95616
Designs For The Future
Hypercubes, doughnuts, wafers, Josephson junctions, fuzzy inferers,
transputers, LISP and PROLOG
chips, distributed networks, and
stream parallellism are just a few of
the new names in computer engineering.
If "fuzzy" is a word you associate
with stuffed animals, and "doughnut" implies something sweet to eat,
or you're reading Micro Cornucopia,
then you'll love this story.
T
he computer hasn't changed
much (seriously, folks) since von
Neumann designed the lAS Machine (built at Princeton's Institute for
Advanced Study about 1947). That is
in one sense, computers - lAS Machine, the IBM 7094, the IBM 360, the
Cray-1 right on through to the "Macintosh" and
Amiga" .- have
processed instructions sequentially.
A CPU fetches a pair of numbers
from memory, adds them, and returns
the' result to memory. How fast the
CPU can fetch is very important, but
. processing time is determined not only
by CPU speed, but also by the narrow
.path between the CPU and memory~
II
. Bottleneck
The high speed shuttle of data and
results between CPU and .memory
ultimately leads to a jam that would
make the air traffic controllers at
O'Hare International take notice. It's
known as von Neumann's Bottleneck,
and it can't be avoided.
You can speed up the processor, and
you can widen the path, but eventually something (memory speed or the
like) will jam the traffic. It's a problem, and it's been inherent in computers since the beginning.
Until recently, the big players (the
IBMs, the Control Datas, the Crays)
have compromised with the bottleneck, refining computers on the basis
74
of a fundamental principle
"Squeeze larger and larger numbers of
smaller and smaller components onto
a piece of silicon." Whatever computer
you use (micro, mini, or mainframe)
incorporates this principle.
Unfortunately, there are limits to
how long you can apply the principle.
Researchers working in the submicron
range have reported quantum fluctuations, unacceptable roughness on the
etched surfaces of chips. And submicron transistors are extremely sensitive
to low-level radiation. A stray ray can
switch a transistor from on to off. Not
acceptable.
Also, as wire diameter decreases,
resistance to current flow increases. To
overcome resistance, the voltage is
increased, generating more (and more)
heat. Eventually, you spend a lot more
money to get a little more· speed.
Alternative Architectures
In order to produce faster, more
cost-efficient computers, the big players (the Seymour Crays, the Lawrence
Snyders) must either find new materials for components or explore alternative architectures.
In the last five years, work has
begun. or continued on exotics like gallium arsenide semiconductors, Josephson junctions, organic transistors,
transphasors, and. wafer scale integration.
Research and development of new
technology has become so expensive
that the big players now aren't just
companies, they're countries.
Let's consider the major efforts to
refine and redefine computing in
America, Europe, and Japan.
In America
As usual, and· perhaps counter to
what you've heard, the good 01' USA
is still pacing laps for Europe and
Japan, but Europe and Japan are catching up.
Important attempts to produce fast-
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
er, conceptually different, computers
are in the works (or working) at Cray,
Control Data, Goodyear Aerospace
Corporation, Denelcor, Symbolics,
Texas Instruments, Apollo, Sun, IBM,
AT&T, Tectronix, MIT, Cal Tech,
NYU, Columbia, the Universities of
California and Washington, and others.
Most designs incorporate some form
of parallel (or multi-CPU) architecture.
(The Cray 1, for example, has four
processors and Control Data's Cyberplus will eventually be expandable to
64 processors.)
Parallel Developments
In 1964, Seymore R. Cray, the leading designer at Control Data, introduced the first computer to use a
parallel strategy within the CPU Control Data's CDC 6600.
It consisted of ten separate parts,
each of which specialized in one kind
of logic or arithmetic, and a queue
which looked ahead and redirected
operations that could be best handled
by a specialized function. Its memory
was partitioned into 32 banks, and, in
effect, executed individual programs in
separate memories .
This original idea took the computing world by storm and dominated the
mainframe industry until 1967 when
IBM introduced the 360/91 which used
another new concept, pipelining.
Pipelining
In a pipeline, a number of functions
are going on at the same time. Imagine a data assembly-line where two
numbers are fetched from memory
while at the same time two other
numbers are being summed and the
results from a previous math operation
are being sent back to memory.
In 1969, Control Data again passed
IBM, using the same pipelining strategy, but shortening the clock cycle (to
27.5 nanoseconds).
Pipelining has been around ever
since, and is still used in almost all
supercomputers.
In 1976, Cray introduced the first
commercially successful vector
processing computer, the Cray-l. With
this technique, strings of related 64-bit
numbers (vectors) can be processed in
parallel. Each clock cycle processes one
vector.
In addition, the Cray-l was more
compact, and the Cray-2 (now being
tested) is even smaller. Processors
have been reduced to minuscule size
and packed tightly into layout boards
stacked in banks. Communication lines
(busses or wires) have been shortened.
A combination which· while producing
the world's speediest computers, has
dramatically pointed out the limits of
the concept.
The Cray-l's 300,000 integrated circuits produce enough heat to fry a
gigabyte omelet. To keep it cool
enough to work, the refrigerant,
Freon, is circulated through each
board.
The Cray-2 (several Cray-l's combined in one system) has a 4.5 nanosecond clock. The individual CPUs function independently, but share data.
And their instruction streams can be
synchronized.
An up and running Cray-2 is expected to peak at about 1000 megaflops,
compared to the Cray-l's 160.
Cosmic Cubes
Of course, a supercomputer isn't
cheap. The Cray-l sells for $10 million
plus, and fewer than 50 have been
sold.
Another approach to parallel is
cheaper. The Cosmic (or Hyper) Cube
(designed at Cal Tech & licensed by
Intel) uses 64 microcomputers, each
with 8086s, 8087s, and 128K of memory, to create a network of nodes.
Each node equals one single-board
computer. Data is processed independently and information is passed in
packets between nodes. This distribution of memory is particularly useful in
large-scale symbolic processes.
The current Cube is, at best, about a
third as fast as the Cray-l, but anywhere from 10-15 times faster than a
DEC VAX 11/780.
The speed of the system is very
much dependent on the software. For
example, how do we avoid idling
when one node finishes its task before
another? For this or any other network
system to work efficiently, programs
have to be written to take advantage
of the network. Which means more
cooperation between hardware designers and software writers. Not an easy
task.
lops (10 trillion floating point operations per second). It will have a billion
bytes of primary memory - a memory
path (bandwidth) of 1.5, billion bytes
per second - and a distributed parallel-processing architecture. In short a supercomputer to match the best in
the US.
LISP & Fuzzy
One attempt at intimacy is the dedicated LISP processor. At Symbolics,
Texas Instruments, and others, a nonnumber crunching strategy is leading
to a new age in language chips.
LISP, a list-processing language used
in AI applications, is incorporated into
the hardware to speed up the timeconsuming searches inherent in AI
applications. A similar strategy heavily
influences computer design in Japan's
well-publicized Fifth Generation Project.
Along somewhat similar lines, AT&T
has announced plans to implement a
non-commercial fuzzy inference processor on a chip in the near future.
Rules in fuzzy logic are based on
concepts like "not very tall" which are
directly implemented in VLSI hardware with tree structured parallel sets.
Each rule has its own parallel execution path, so all rules are evaluated
simultaneously.
'
AT&T has apparently already
produced a chip capable of running at
20MHz and processing 80,000 fuzzy
logical inferences per second. Fast for
fuzzy.
In Europe
A new kind of computer (the IMS
T414) is already on sale in England.
It's based on the transputer, a 32-bit
RISC (reduced instruction set chip)
processor. It includes 4 10-megabitper-second full-duplex serial channels
("links") and 2K bytes of 50-ns static
RAM on a single chip. The links run
concurrently with the processor.
In the near future, transputers will
have on-chip hardware floating point
and will be capable of 1 megaflop at
the low, low price of $50 per chip.
Production versions of the transputer are about 4 times faster than the
68020 and 10 times faster than the
80286 when processing high level languages like LISP and PROLOG.
Future supercomputers on this front
will be a box of a hundred or more
parallel-processing transputers.
In Japan
The Japanese have set up two major
projects to produce super computers
- the "Fifth Generation" and the
lesser known, "Superspeed Computer:'
The Fifth Generation Project is oriented toward artificial intelligence refinement. AI applications - expert
systems, pattern-matching databases,
natural language interfaces - employ
time-consuming searching techniques
that use up a lot of memory. PROLOG
machines (with PROLOG operating
systems) are now up, incorporating
high-level PROLOG in the hardware
design. In effect, teaching the hardware a new language. Making it speak
software.
The lesser known Supercomputer
project is aimed at producing a supercomputer capable of 10 million megaf-
Wrap Up
The rush to create faster, more powerful computers is a rush for gold. The
horizon is checkered with amazing
machines. By the time you read this,
even more ingenious ideas will be on
the way to becoming computers. Maybe the architecture that will dominate
computing in the 1990s is still a notion.
If you have a guess about the future,
drop a line to Micro C's "Future Box",
P.O. Box 223, Bend, OR 97709 or write
me in Davis.
Although the big players will reap
the benefits of the next wave first, you
and I will definitely be affected.
•••
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
75
·PC/XT COMPATIBLE ·ADD ON & ACCESSORIES
MONITORS
RGB Color
TTL Monochrome amber/w/swivel base
$350.00
105.00
\
SYSTEM COMPONENTS
XT Motherboard 0-640K (2 layers) 4.77 mhz
XT Motherboard 4.77/8 MHZ
XT Case (flip-top)
XT Case (slide in)
XT 150W power supply
XT 5160 keyboard (AT style)
Floppy controller w/cable
Multi I/O card w/controller
384K Multifunction card (OK)
I/O Plus II .
Color graphic card
Monochrome graphic w/printer port I
Enchanced graphic card
Serial Card
Parallel Card
Ram Card
Color graphic w/printer card
Teac 55BV Floppy drive
Fujitsu Drive
Assembly & Test
HARD DISK SYSTEMS:
Internal SEAGATEST-225 20 MB hard disk drive
with controller
Internal 30MB hard disk drive with controller
Hard disk controller
EPROM COPIER
Eprom copier, burns 2716, 2732, 2764, 27128, 27256
burns 4 eproms at a time
109.00
145.00
40.00
45.00
80.00
68.00
35.00
85.00
85.00
62.00
60.00
76.00
250.00
35.00
24.00
50.00
85.00
99.00
95.00
25.00
415.00
650.00
105.00
179.00
HARDWARE FOR IBM AT
AT compatible motherboard
8 slots 1 MB memory on boaqrd, expandable to 1 M
Combined floppy/hard disk controller
Printer port/serial port card/game part
200 watt power supply
1.2MB floppy disk drive
3MB multifunction
OK expandable to 3M, parallel port, 2 serial ports,
game port
AT type case
AT compatible keyboard
20MB hard disk, SEAGATE 4026
30MB hard disk, SEAGATE 4038
40MB hard disk, SEAGATE 4051
ACCESSORIES
Surge Suppressed outlet strip
Surge Suppressed outlet strip (UL approved)
Parallel printer cable/serial cable
Disk storage w/lock (holds 100pcs)
A/B RS232 switch box
A/~ Centronics switch box
joystick
MODEM
30·0/1200 board 112 card modem Hayes compatible
RAM
64k 150 NS
256k 150 NS
DOS
DOS 3.1
DOS 3.2 w/GW BASIC
DISKETTE (Bulk)
Double side double density
$599.00
225.00
105.00
130.00
150.00
240.00
85.00
85.00
590.00
720.00
880.00
9.50
14.00
11.00
14.50
45.00
45.00
26.90
140.00
1.30
2.90
40.00
80.00
30.00/50
FOR DEALER & OEM INFORMATION, CALL
WDNDARL, INC.
741 E. 14th St.
Oakland, CA 94606
TEL: (415) 839·1718
76
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
ORDER INFORMATION:
WE ACCEPT VISA, MASTER CARD,
COD, PREPAID
, COD NEED 30% DEPOSIT
• Z Best Sellers •
(7 disks)
Z-COM
$119.00
Easy auto-installation complete Z-System for virtually any Z80
computer presently running CP/M 2.2. In minutes you can be
running ZCPR3'anCi ZRDOS'cihyourmachirie~:enjoyingt\1e vast
benefits. Includes 70+ utility programs and ZCPR3: The Manual)
Z-Tool~'
',(4disks) '"",' , , ;
$1 50.00
1
A bundleoLsoftware,tools...individually",priced at $260 total. I,neludes
the ZAS Macro Assembler, ZDM debuggers; REVAS4 disassembler,
and ITOZlZTOI source code converters. HD64180 support"i"
PUBLIC ZRDOS
(1 disk)
, ",:i':'"
$59.50*
If you have acquired ZCPR3 for your ZaO-compatible system and want
to upgrade to full Z-System, all you need is ZRDOS. ZRDOS features
elimination of control-C after' disk changer ,public directories, faster
execution than CP/M, archive status for easy backup, and morel
TERM III
, ,(6disks)'
$99.00*
TERM III has been called ,"a cosmC)s". Why? Because it's 29 prog rams,
featuring T3MASTER and T3SERVER, are galactic in scope. KERMIT,
XMODEM, 1k XMODEM. and batch YMODEM protocols supported.
DSD
" (1 disk)
,
$129.95
The prertlier debugger foryoufSOaO;ZSO;'oCHD641S0syste!11s. Full
screen. with windows for RAM. code listing, registers, and stack. We
feature ZCPR3 versions of this professional debugger.
';
Quick Task
(3, disks) ,:,,'
,i
""",,,,,,,,,,,,,:$249.00
Z80/HD64180 multitasking realtime executive for embedded computer applications. Full source code, no run time fees, site license for
development. Comparable to systems from $2000 to $40,000!
Request our free Q-T Demonstration Program.
·ZCPR3 required.
(_- •I)
-
Z·System OEM inquiries invited.
Visa/Mastercard accepted. Add $4.00
Echelon, Inc.
,h'''''''''''''''''''"' '" N,"" Am"",,,
actual cost elseWhere.
Specify disk format.
885 N. San Antonio Road • Los Altos, CA 94022
415/948-3820 (Order line and tech support)
Full implementation of "C" with standard floating
point, library, and I/O subroutines. UNIX VER 7
compatible. Produces relocatable BOBO (optional OlBO)
assembler code. Relocating assembler and linker
supplied with package or use Microsoft MBO and LBO,
SIO/lSIO debugger interface. FAST COMPILATION
AN 0 EXECUTION.
AZTEC CII FOR CP/M
--
$199
(Special price for Micro C subscribers $149)
MJ\NX
software
VISA
Systems
Box 55, Shrewsbury, N.J. 07701
(201) 780·4004
Also available for Apple DOS, HDOS, CP/M-86, PC-DOS
CP/M, MS-DOS EPROM
PROGRAMMING SYSTEM
2708
2758
2716
2516
2532*
2564*
68764*
2732
2732A
2764
27128
27256
27512
27CXX
2864A
2816A
*ADAPTER SOCKET REQUIRED
-
STAr-D ALON8 BOARD USBS NO BACKPLANS SLOT - PAST ALGORITHM
NO PSRSONALITY MODU13S - INSTAU.. PROGRAM POR SOP'T'WARB
USBS 24 VOLT XPMR POR POWER - LARGB COMPRBHSNSIVS MANUAL
PROGRAMS 26,2521 ! 12.5V B/88PROMS - ALL· SUPPLIES ON BOARD
NOT A SBRIAL P~OGRAMM8~, NO PILS DOWNLOADING REQUIRED
* * PARALLEL PRINTER INTERFACE * *
CONNBC1'S TO ANY PARALLBL PRIN'rBR IN'I'8RPAC8 - USBS 8 OU'l'PUT
DATA BI1'S AND ONS BIT (THB BUSY LINB) POR DATA INPUT.
<~.~ ~
* * CONTROL PROGRAM COMMANDS * *
-
PROGRAM BPROM(Sl PROM DISK
- SA VB BPROMCSl TO DISK
READ DISK PILE IN'T'"o RAM
- PROGRAM BPROMCSl PROM RAM
RBAD BPROM(S) 1N'l'0 RAM
- COMPARB BPROM WITH RAM
VSRIPY BPROM IS SRASBD.
- COPY BPROM
'
DISPLAY /MODIPY RAM - (MONITOR MODBl WITH 11 SUB COMMANDS
PILL-DUMP-XPSR-BXAM-"MODIPY-BIAS-PRGM-VSRIPY-CKSUM, BTC.)
ASSSMBL8D1-T8STBD-UNIT-WITHCO~----~~~>-$i99--------DOCUMBN'l'ATION AND SOP'l'WAR8 ON DISK8'T"l'8
PARTS KIT WITH SOPTWARB AND DOC->$179 PC~SOP1'WARB! OOC->$69
SOPTWARB ON 8! 51/4 DISK POO KAYPRO, AMP~O, IBM! OTHBR PMTS
:53='- ~
..
3
..
lit
~af1fuI~~
TO ORDSR SBND CH8CK, MONBY ORDBR, WRIT8 OR CALL
ANDRATECH
P.O. BOX 222
MILFORD, OHIO 45150
(513) 752-7218
.
CALL OR WRI'T'B POR MOR8 II\PORMATION -- ADD $4.00 PORSHIPPING
OHIO RBS. ADD 5.5% TAX -- VISA/M.C. ACCBP'T'SD -- $3.00 POR COD
\."
~~
(Fractal by Fogg)
~,~-__ ._ A,
"f,C,CI'Z,(J ~
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
77
By Dave Hardy
Driving Solid State Relays
As Bruce Eckel teaches us electronics by showing !tow to control stepper
motors, Dave Hardy gives us a look at
using solid-state relays to control high
voltage, even 110VAe. Both give us
an inside look at outside control.
W
e haven't talked very much
about how to 'interface an 5100 machine to the real
world. Of course, almost every 5-100
talks to the real world via its system
console or modem or printer, but I'm
talking about the kind of interface that
lets the 5-100 do more than conventional I/O.
Many 5-100 machines, for example,
are used as laboratory or industrial
controllers, or· instrumentation. In fact,
the 5-100' s capability for this kind of
application is just about limitless.
In the last few years, I've received
hundreds of real world applications
from readers, including some which
are so bizarre they defy description.
One reader uses an 5-100 frame to
monitor and control building temperatures on his duck farm (or is it
ranch?), while another, in a slightly
different business, uses an 5-100 machine to measure blood flow in laboratory animals, and to monitor strain
gauges. 5-100 frames have been used
to control instrumentation in airplanes
and ships, and have even been used
in yacht racing and sail manufacturing.
The list of applications seems endless.
Fortunately, I've pared the list down
a bit (those of you with duck farms
will have to wing it). The circuits
shown here will be enough to give a
reasonable idea of what other 5-100
users have been up to all these years.
Notice that these circuits can be
attached directly to a simple parallel 1/
o port. Actually, almost any computer
. could use these circuits, not just an 5100 machine, and the interface (shown
in Figure 1) is remarkably simple. If
you have an Apple, you're on your
own ...
78
Caveat Hacker
Before we discuss the general interface circuits shown, the reader should
. be aware that outside of the relatively
safe 8 and 16 volt world of the 5-100
frame, there are potentially deadly
voltages available in many electric devices, especially those that connect to
the power line. Editor's note: 35 volts is
a kind of break point between voltages' that
will harm humans and, voltages that
won't.
As a matter of fact, there are even
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
736 Notre Dame
Grosse Pointe, MI 48203
hazardous voltages available INSIDE
most 5-100 frames - in the power
supply. Obvious safety precautions
should be taken to prevent the reader
(and computer) from being unable- to
read future issues of Micro C.
The Simple Interface
Figure 1, as mentioned above, shows
a simple parallel I/O circuit. This interface takes up only a single parallel
port, which can be any address you
set in the switches.
This circuit assumes that only 8-bit II
is used in the 5-100 machine. (This
is the case in most 5-100' s, although
the IEEE-696 specification for the 5-100
bus allows 8 or 16-bit 110 addressing.)
This simple parallel 110 port also uses
no interrupts, no DMA or TMA, and
no exotic parts.
If you don't like soldering irons or
wire-wrap tools, there are many 5-100
manufacturers who offer boards with
simple parallel 110 ports. (Many 5-100
parallel printer driver boards are actually just simple parallel 110 ports in
disguise - or not so simple 8255 PIOs,
which can also be used, if you know
how to program them - or even less
simple Z80 PIOs which aren't so hard
to program but are very smart chips
manufactured by Zilog and designed
by the original team that moved over
from Intel.) If you want to do it
yourself, you'll need to add a 5-volt
regulator to your home-made board to
power these circuits.
o
Editor's note: Most multi-liD and Herc
graphics cards contain parallel ports often called parallel printer ports. There
are also two unused 8-bit parallel ports
inside every 83 Kaypro.
5easoned "5-100 Bus" readers will
instantly recognize Figure 1, because it
has probably appeared here a dozen
times in the past few years.
Controlled Output
Figure 2 shows the first step in
connecting an 5-100 machine to the
hostile outside world. Using a simple
opto-isolator (also known as an optocoupler), it is possible to use the
parallel port in Figure 1 to control up
to eight separate low-voltage devices.
Depending on the opto-isolator used,
higher voltage devices could also be
controlled.
Optocoupler circuits like this are
often used to connect one computer to
another without having any wires connected between them. Because there is
no electrical connection between the
two machines, each is safe from electrical malfunctions in the other. With
opto-isolators, the only connection between the controller and the controlled
is a beam of light. (For more info see
Micro C issue #32, page 30.)
The circuit in Figure 2 works fine for
machine to machine connections and
for controlling low power DC devices.
However, sometimes we need to
switch high-voltage AC.
We could use a mechanical relay,
but they're subject to failure. Plus,
sparks across the relay's points cause
problems for the equipment under
control and make these relays dangerous in explosive atmospheres. (Like
family life with teenagers.)
A solid-state relay is a better solution. Like an optocoupler, a solid-state
relay isolates the control circuit from
the controlled circuit by using a beam
of light to turn on a phototransistor.
Even better, a solid-state relay is designed to switch both DC and AC,
and, depending on the unit, can
switch up to several thousand watts.
Editor's note: Solid state relays are
particularly noted for turning things on
and off "softly." That is, there is a short
time period when the power is coming on
or going off. Solid state devices also draw
very little power and they have no points
to pit. However, they can be expensive,
their voltage and current ratings are not
unlimited, and they can be destroyed by
the same power line spikes which take out
computer supplies. In these situations,
mechanical relays still make sense.
In Figure 3 we use a solid-state relay
to switch 110 VAC (in this case a lamp
or motor).
The computer could also control the
speed of many. motors by turning the
power on and off very quickly and
juggling the ratio of "on" time versus
"off" time.
Controlled Input
The parallel port shown in Figure 1
also has eight INPUT lines, and there
are just as many applications for inputs as there are for outputs. Obviously, simple switches could be connected
to these lines to force a "1" or a "0"
(continued next page)
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
79
I
/
S-700 BUS
where each channel output changed to
"1," the computer can determine the
position of each of the joystick con.
trols.
Since the counter value corresponds
with the voltage at the variable tap of
each potentiometer, the LM339 IC in
this circuit is actually being used as a
simple Analog to Digital Converter
(ADC). If we replace one of the potentiometers in Figure 4 with a photocell,
we've made a simple light sensor.
Similarly, we could use a thermistor to
make a temperature sensor, or a strain
gauge to measure weight or stress.
The interface possibilities· are endless.
(continued from page 79)
onto each of them, as desired. Optocouplers could be used to provide
additional isolation and allow another
machine to control these lines.
An interesting joystick circuit submitted by a reader (it also appears in
the book Interfacing to S-100IIEEE-696
Microcomputers) uses one output bit
and two input bits to provide a simple
two-channel position sensor, as shown
in Figure 4.
The computer sends a "1" to the
circuit's input to start capacitor C
charging. Then it'starts counting and
waits for the output of the channel
(either A or B) to go to a logical "1."
By remembering the counter value
LETTERS
(continued from page 5)
MicroSphere reports that the serial drivers (MODE .. .) don't work in 3.2. I like to
use serial printers.
Doesn't look like I've had a whole ·lot of
luck putting large [loppies on any of the
office's clones.
Backwater Operating System?
I recently came across issue #29 of
Micro Cornucopia (alas, too late to
make plans for the SOG - maybe
next year) and was pleased to discover
the community of fellow computer
enthusiasts you serve and represent.
I would like to address your comment that OS-9 is " a backwater operating system."
I would guess that there are well
over half a million OS-9 based systems
in current use, with a very high
growth rate in the 16 and 32-bit versions - OS9-68K or OSK. Lack of
software is hardly an issue because all
standard CP/M software can run as a
concurrent task on 2-80 coprocessor
boards, under OS-9.
OS-9 is the second most popular
operating system in Japan, behind MSDOS. OSK has also been chosen as
the standard for the next generation of
European educational computing, running on hardware from such companies as Olivetti, Phillips, and Thompson. Phillips and Sony have chosen
OSK (to be called CD-RTOS - Compact Disk Real Time Operating Sys-
80
•••
tem) for the new Compact Disk/Interactive technology. OSK is now
available for the IBM PC and clones,
and the Apple lIe on coprocessor
boards. It is available for the Atari STs
and will soon be out for the Amiga
and Macintosh.
The reasons behind· the rapid adoption of OSK also make it extremely
attractive to hobbyists. It is easily
customized to specific hardware and
software applications.
N. Bruce Nelson
2133 W. 1st Place
Mesa, AZ 85201
Editor's Note:
Thanks Bruce, I certainly didn't realize
the kind of following OS-9K had. However, your letter does raise a few questions.
If the. operating system is so popular,
why is it so expensive? I receive their price
list fairly regularly and it looks like I'd
spend about $1,000 for the operating
system and two compilers. I'd get that and
nearly 10 megs of utilities for $500 by
purchasing UNIX version 5.
Also, I thought MSX was the most
popular operating system in Japan. At
least that's what the MSX people told me.
How To Kill Your Machine
Here's a handy-dandy tip to remind
my fellow hardware tinkerers of an
important basic: any time you put two
power supplies together on one ma-:chine, make sure you hook the supplies' grounds together. Not connect-
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
ing the grounds was a dynamite way
to blow up a MicroSphere RAM disk
and a Kaypro II at the same time.
Fortunately, the folks at MicroSphere helped me locate a bargainpriced replacement machine. But it
would be nice to put a transplant in
the dead machine. So what can I do
with a Kaypro that has a fried board?
The obvious answer is to buy a new
Kaypro board from Erac, but are there
other exciting alternatives? Little
Board? Xerox 820? Can a PC-type
board be used with the Kaypro keyboard?
Charles H. Kuttner, M.D.
213 Water Ave., NW, Suite 300
Albany, OR 97321
Editor's Note: .
Get a new board from Erac. Take a look
inside the Kaypro· 16 to see what you'd be
getting into going the PC route. The Little
Board is a neat product but it needs a
terminal, not just a monitor. The Xerox
820 needs a parallel keyboard and the· ports
don't come out in the right spots.
Interfacing A Synthesizer
My stepson recently acquired a Yamaha DX7 Synthesizer, and I. am
interested in interfacing it with either
our MS-DOS clone or my older CP/M
machine. I'd like to know where to get
(or how to make?) the cheapest possible interface between the MIDI in/out
on the keyboard and the parallel(?)
port on the computers. Also, is there
anything in the public domain yet for
editing the information once I get it to
the computer?
I don't know much about music, just
a little about the physics of sound, and
not much more about computer hardware, but this MIDI business sounds
like too much fun to leave to rich,
computer-illiterate musicians. Any information you can give me or direct
me to would be most appreciated.
Thatcher Deane
8626-25th NE
Seattle, WA 98115
Editor's Note:
Excellent question Thatcher. I too have a
DX7 to which I'd like to add clone control.
Any Walter Midis out there with infonnation on using a clone as a controller/
sequencer?
Turbo Pascal Bug On BBI
Recently I spoke with Larry Fogg
about a problem I'd discovered with
my BBI. Since then I've torn most of
my hair out, so I decided I'd better
write it down and hope that some
Micro C reader can figure out what's
going on.
When compiling Turbo Pascal programs to disk (both .COM and .CHN),
Turbo writes all hex FFs to the directory entry where it should be putting
the file info. Everything else seems to
work perfectly, including programs
run from within Turbo which write
data to disk. I've tried making new
copies of Turbo from my master, compiling to the other drive, new RAM,
and even a new floppy controller, but
to no avail. C and BASIC programs
compile just fine.
Does anyone have any ideas? I'd
sure like to hear them.
Tom Casey
437 Margaret St. #75
Pittsburgh, NY 12901
Patching WordStar And NewWord
Mark J. Boyd's article (issue #32,
page 52) tells how he modified an
editor on a Kaypro to change the
cursor and keypad responses. This can
be done much more easily in WordStar or NewWord, and probably in
others as well, by installing the desired routines in MORPAT and calling
them from INISUB and UNISUB.
There are at least two simple routines
for this, one of which is used by
Kaypro. (See Figure 1.)
EA35 is the beginning of the cursor
table in my K10 (first line of my
routine in Figure 1). To find it in
another machine, use this MBASIC
program:
10 WBOOT .... PEEK(l) + 256 *
PEEK(2)
20 CURSORADDR$ - HEX$(WBOOT
+ 50)
30 PRINT CURSORADDR$
The reset routines are the same,
except OB, OA, 08, and OC are substituted for OS, 18, 13, and 04.
In WordStar 3.3 for my machine, the
routines are duplicated at 4600, where
the initial routine is accessed at beginning; INISUB is not needed, but UNISUB is necessary for exit because the
duplicate routines are overwritten during the run.
The keypad table immediately follows the cursor table, so these routines
are easily extended to modify it also. If
the entire keypad is to be changed, the
Kaypro routine will be shorter, but for
the cursor keys only, my version is
shorter.
Jack H. Wyatt
578 Garden St.
Sacramento, CA 95815
•••
AUTOMATE
YOUR PROJECT
AT A COST YOU CAN AFFORD
with the S8'00A .Ingl. bo.riiComput.r from IncRo
·TIL31
A ROM r •• ld.nt I.ngu.g. for 8031 proc ••• or.
F •• t.r th.n BASIC, a •• y to I •• rn .nd .llt.nd.
·1/0
DATA bu., mo.t .ddr ••• lin •• , iii) & WH,
3 Int.rrupt lin •• , .Ight 'bit' lin ••, .tc.
RS232, .hl.ldad c.bl. Includ.d.
Figure 1 - Initialization Routines For WordStar And NewWord
'DEBUG
Initialization routines:
hex
Kaypro's version:
LD
LD
ADD
EX
LD
table
LD
LDIR
RET
DB
HL,(Ol)
DE,32H
HL,DE
DE,HL
HL,table
Be,4
2A0100
112000
19
EB
21 ....
010400
EDBO
C9
Int.rrupt drlv.n, •••• mbly d.bugg.r.
DIr.ctly down lo.d H.ll coda.
-DOCUMENTATION
HARDWAR II .nd SOFTWARII .ll.mpl •••
TUTORIAL.
'POWER
Any DC .upply from 8 through 20 Volt ••
05,18,13,04
hex
My version:
LD
LD
INC
LD
INC
LD
INC
LD
RET
HL,OEA35H
(HL),05H
HL
(HL),18H
HL
. (In.) t 13H
HL
(HL),04H
2135EA
3605
23
3618
23
3613
23
3604
C9
$150
INCREMENTAL ROBOTICS
BOX580 SHIIRWOOD OR. 87140
PHONB (503) 825-7874
Th. S8'00A I• • ubJ.ct to FCC Rul ••
.nd .h.1I comply with th.m prior to d.llv.ry.
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
81
By Stephen Leon
200 Winston Drive
Cliffside Park, NJ 07010
Building A Faster Clone
Steve deals with his addiction to
speed (and wins). I'm waiting with
bated breath for the revelation: "Who
sold him the speed" in the next
episode of Public Domain.
Steve also gives us a peek inside his
little black book with his list of the
names and numbers of the cutest little
Amiga boards.
I
with his recommendation. For $1,500
(the price we once paid for a single
CompuPro memory board) we got an
80286 6-8MHz, no wait state machine
with one meg of: 120 ns RAM, a 360K
floppy, a 1.2M floppy, a disk controller, two serial ports, one parallel port,
keyboard, a Phoenix BIOS, etc. More
on the AT clone next time.
've never been one who thought
the slogan "speed kills" meant
anything more than a warning
against using drugs. But it's true!
Once you run a faster computer you'll
never go back to a slow one.
'In the last issue I mentioned building a Turbo clone. We finally got it
running and it made the old IBM PC
look like a Model T.
We've also been getting enough calls
on the BBS to justify adding a second
line. Quarterdeck's DESQview will
handle a two-line BBS with ease. But a
,4.77MHz PC is just too slow to support two lines.
The logical solution was to switch
the Turbo to the board. Then we went
back to using the PC and nearly died
of boredom while it chugged along on
4.77 cylinders. So we ordered a Turbo
AT clone.
Charlie Strom, the PC SYSOP on
GENIE, had bought two of them from
a company in California. Since Charlie
is good on hardware, we went along
PD Software As A Holiday Gift
This year has gone by quickly, and
the holidays are getting close. Last
year the bulletin boards were filled
with greeting card programs, and the
same will probably happen this year.
Since the recipient of a computer
greeting card has to have a computer,
may we suggest that a useful gift
would be a couple disks of public
domain software?
SIG/M is still distributing the two
sample Commodore 128 CP/M disks,
and if you send me two disks and 73
cents in stamps, I will send them back
to you. (Except for that one set that I
put in the trunk of my car and
somehow lost!) You can also order
directly from SIG/M volumes 998 and
999. These are sampler volumes; 999
contains CP/M 80 software and 998
has CP1M 86 programs.
Amiga Bulletin Boards
The new ACGNJ BBS, at (201)8868041, has lots of Amiga public domain
software as well as an Amiga conference. We can't ship that software to
Figure 7 - Amiga Bulletin Boards
AmigaL1ne!
AmigaBoard
BBS-PC
Amiga Board
Casa Hi Amiga
Hicro-SysteJla
Cyber Systell8
The Wind Dragon
The Duck Pond
Home Grown
82
Cal1fornia
California
California
Colorado
Florida
Florida
Hawaii
(714)
(213)
(415)
(303)
(904)
(305)
(808)
Tennessee
Utah
(901) 755-5330
(801) 277-3200
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
772-4097
478-9788
961-7250
693-4735
733-4515
737-1590
521-3306
you because we can't write an Amiga
disk - but if you have an Amiga you
may want to download some of the
material and give it to fellow Amiga
users. Speaking of the Amiga, we've
been getting Amiga material from
AMuse, the New York Amiga user's
group. They have a BBS at (212)2694879. Other good Amiga boards
around the country (according to Rudolf Musselmen of 'The Duck Pond
Board') are shown in Figure 1.
Reliance Mailing List For CP/M'
We previously mentioned that Bill
Meacham had sent us a copy of his
Reliance Mailing List. We didn't have
to ponder long about whether or not
to release this excellent mailing list
because it contained the big "no-no"
- a request for a contribution. Bill
made the decision easy; he dropped
us a note authorizing removal of the
request. It is now available on SIGIM
282.
'
SIG/M 283 contains Turbo Pascal 1/0
routines and math routines in BASIC.
Bill Meacham is the author of the
Pascal 110 routines, and the math
routines are from Mike Finerty in
Tucson. He has used Nevada BASIC
and S-BASIC, but his routines can be
adapted to work, under almost any
other version.
On the, subject of Turbo Pascal,
thanks to Clarence Rudd the ACGNJ
BBS has a good Turbo Pascal section
for both CP/M and MS-DOS. We may
yet release it in the SIG/M library, but
until we do, you might want to check
the board.
More ACGNJ Mailing List
Last issue we mentioned that SIG/M
284 and 285 were PC-DOS versions of
the ACGNJ mailing list. We also noted
that 285 included Harry Van Tassell's
BROWSE for Clipper. This mailing list
is one that we use on a daily basis in
my office. Subsequent to the release of
the volumes, someone suggested that
we save the expense of a word
processing program for the letters we
send out using these programs. As a
result, using the Clipper MEMO EDIT
command we built a word processor
into the program. You should be able
to modify the program with ease, but
if not, drop me a disk and I will send
you a copy. Helpful hint - Clipper
mishandles the SET MARGIN TO
command. You should already know
that your screen will be messed up if
you do not set your margin to 0 after
printing with margins.
To print letters, you have to type the
memo field. You can work around it
by using a single field database to
preformat the letter with the proper
margins. In any event, if you can't
solve it yourself, drop me a disk and
return postage.
One last word about Harry. He
popped in yesterday with a new version of the Clipper library. This time
he wrote BROWSE as a function.
Thus, all you need do is include a
command BROWSE ("filename") and
you have a full blown browse.
I complained that his last version did
not allow you to add records. The new
version does just that. He also has a
QUERY which resembles the dBASE
ASSIST format. This is also due to go
into the library. Unfortunately, the
Clipper library contains proprietary
material, so we can't distribute it in
the SIG/M library. Hopefully, Nantucket should be able to add these
features to their product. We look
forward to the next update.
TurboDOS Utilities From Sigi
Sigi Kluger is both a contributor to
this magazine (see his "Unblinking the
PC Cursor" in issue 31) and a prolific
contributor to the public domain. We
released a volume of his CP/M utilities
(SIG/M 226) with 56 files on it. He has
now sent us two disks of TurboDOS
utilities which are available as volumes
286 and 287.
For those of you who run TurboDOS, this is a major release. The first
volume has 62 items in an .LBR file.
The second has 40. (Items include both
object and source files.)
Included on these disks are SWEEP
for TurboDOS, a RAM disk emulator,
a V20 and V30 8080 emulator, a command line editor, a remote access
package, a function key package, and
a wildcard expansion module.
New PC/BLUE Releases
PC/BLUE 232 contains the well-received PC-Outline version 1.06. Volume 233 is the MCBS General Ledger
version 3.2. The PC-Magazine Benchmark Tests (release 3) are on volume
234. This disk also has some good
EGA tests.
Volume 235 contains Finance Manager II from Hooper International. A
good macro assembler is on 236, and a
somewhat confused automobile accounts receivable program is on 237.
Statistical process control for manufacturing is the subject of Volume 238.
PC/BLUE 239 is for Mandelbrot fans.
The CalTech Utilities
And The AT&T 6300
Volume 240 contains the CalTech
Utilities. These include: resident cut
and paste, printer commands for IBM
graphics printers, pop-up tables, dual
monitor utilities, graphics characters, a
command to exit a program caught in
a loop, a bad sector fix, a hex file
editor, directory utilities, an ANSLSYS
replacement, an ECHO replacement,
and more.
Volume 241 contains "Managing
Money with Your IBM PC" by Amihai
Glazer and "The Stock Trader" from
DSF Associates. A disk file· manager
and a program start-up menu shell are
also on the disk.
Volume 242 is required reading for
AT&T 6300 owners. It contains technical notes on the 6300, clock/calendar
utilities for that machine, and a pro-
gram to set 80 x 50 video.
QModem 2.2 is on 243 and a teacher's gradebook program is on 244.
Dennis Baer has written a "Structured
Programming Language," which is on
245. Kermit version 2.29 is on 246. Bill
Meacham's Turbo Pascal I/O routines
are on 247 as is a spelling checker, a
programmable RPN calculator, and a
version of Othello. The Micro Development Software BASIC utilities, an
advanced LOTUS tutorial, and Symphony Command language are on 248.
Winding up the list is a two-volume
update to RBBS (14.1c) on 249 and
250. This is not a significant update
from the last release, but if you are
running a BBS you certainly should
update.
How To Order
All of the recent SIG/M and PC/
BLUE releases are available on the
ACGNJ BBS at (201)886-1658. No preregistration is required to download or
upload. SIG/M volumes are stored as
SIGxxx. LBR. PC/BLUE volumes are
PCxxx.ARC. (Except for SIG/M 284
and 285 which are .ARC files as they
are in PC-DOS.) Or you can order
disks from SIG/M and PC/BLUE.
SIG/M Volumes are available from
SIG/M, Box 97, Iselin, NJ 08830.
PCIBLUE Volumes are available from
the New York Amateur Computer
Club, Box 100, Church Street Station,
New York, NY 10008.
•••
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
83
Unblinking The Kaypro 16 Cursor
A reader (who asked to remain
anonymous) has "unblinked" his Kaypro 16 cursor by pulling out pin 12 of
U3 (the blink output).
The Kaypros shipped with the fullsize multi-video card, have their· blink
on pin 9 of U32. Pulling out this pin
stops the blink Unfortunately, there is
no exposed blink .signal on the new
half-card multi-video boards Kaypro is
now shipping.
After this mod, the cursor can be set
for blink or not blink by programming
the 6845 video controller. See Micro C
issue #31, page 22.
Restoring Adventure
To restore a game in the MS-DOS
version of Adventure (found on Micro
Cornucopia's disk MS-3), invoke the
game by typing:
ADVENT -R
Adventure will then ask you for the
name of the saved file.
To get into the debug mode of
Adventure, invoke it by typing
ADVENT -D -D -D
LAYSIA on the bottom. The FDC 9216
data separator chips (U88) seem to be
fine. After replacing the 1793 chips,
the two older Kaypros run very solidly.
Frank Gadek
RD #1, Box 221-1
East Mill Hill Road
East Greenville, PA 18041
Using BACKUP & RESTORE
BACKUP and RESTORE are the
much-maligned data-saving and recovery programs that come with MSDOS. Their well-publicized problems
have led to a hoard of commercial
replacements. However, I've had good
luck with them, since I figured out the
undocumented problem.
The trick to making BACKUP and
RESTORE work properly is to make
sure the directory structure is the same
during restore as it was during backup.
In other words, if you use BACKUP
to copy your whole winnie onto floppies, you'd better write down the
names and relationships of all the
directories. That way, if you ever have
to restore the files to the original
Mesh Feigenbaum
Parker Hannifin Corp.
17325 Euclid Ave.
Cleveland, OH 44112
Trouble With Floppy Disk Controllers
Within a few days after upgrading
four Kaypros to 5MHz I started having
disk access problems with two of
them. It turned out that the 1793 disk
controllers had failed (on the two
oldest machines - serial #s around
30,000).
The 1793 that died on Kaypro #1 was
marked WDC"79 FD1793B-02 8312 16
on top, and AE2111B-0017612418308
MALAYSIA on the bottom. The 1793
that died on Kaypro #2 was marked
WDC"79 FD1793PL-02 8327 16 on top,
and CA2111PL-0002 14698618326 MA-
84
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
winnie (or onto a new winnie) you can
first recreate the exact directory structure.
If you are just backing-up one directory, then you only need that one
directory (with the same path) when
you restore.
The version of MS-DOS doesn't
seem to be important (for instance,
you can restore 2.11 files onto 3.1
without problem), but incompatible
directories will cause recovery errors
that are unrecoverable.
Don Thompson
MicroSphere
PO Box 1221
Bend, Oregon 97709
PD-32 Corrections
Figure 1 contains a pair of corrections for "PD-32: The Hardware."
(See page 10 in issue #32.)
George Scolaro
22 Clotilde Street
Mount Lawley
Western Australia, 6050
Phone: 011619 2719342
•••
. . - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - T H E CULTURE
C
o
By Wayne Stoffel
"Trademarks"
526 Wilson Road
Annapolis, MD 21401
R
N
E
Across
1 Big or single
6 Computer instructions
10 Hgt.
13 Unplanned
14 Should be one for every
close call
15 Modern music maker
17 It may not be questioned
18 (tm) bigamy?
20 Delete, to Kildall
21 The seven
23 Computer link to 24 Down
24 Welt
25 Cipher protocol (abbrev.)
27 (tm) star?
30 Stiff bristle
31 Chest part
34 South American animal
35 Computer
36 After after or before over
37 Globes
38 Keaton
39 Small group
40 MS format
41 OS moves
42 What one does with havoc
43 Direction
44 Complement
45 (tm) origin?
46 Console light
47 Lose yourself in the game
48 African capitol
52 Middle East capitol
53 Full deck in Rome
56 (tm) math wiz?
59 Desktop items
61 Language
62 Computer design
63 Language
64 K-O connector
65 Arquebus support
66 Copenhagen currency
Down
1 Asked
2 Aroma
3 Water plant
4 Periphery
2
3
4
R
~
13
17
20
34
31
40
43
~6
61
64
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
16
19
22
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
(tm) cheapen also?
(tm) everybody welcome?
Work
Wipe out, for short
Follows cons and int
Shells, for short
Bring from memory
Carry
(tm) jewel?
Early PC
Attention
800
School VIPs
To be in Toulon
(tm) tree beginning?
Sophia
Look up there
The numbers, for short
Harder to find
Early computer
Chap
35
38
39
41
42
45
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
57
58
60
Let it out
Finishing word
If - then ...
Coordinate
PC pioneer
Oil initials
CM twice
Cleo's problem
Select out
(tm) call at #10?
Control
&& in C
Terrapin terrain
Informed about
Capri
File test
Tune
Unobstructed, for short
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
85
By Gary Entsminger
1912 Haussler Dr
Davis, Ca 95616
Super Books And PC-WRITE
Gary looks at a supercomputer book
(OK, OK, the book isn't really that
fast), the 68030,and a new version of
PC-WRITE.
W
hile researching my "Supercomputer" article (in this is.
sue), I happened on Richard
Jenkins' book Supercomputers of Today
And Tomorrow, and couldn't resist the
provocative Cray-2 on the cover.
Jenkins' book and the Cray-2 are
recent developments (just been published & still being tested), and I was
surprised to find a book about computers, especially high-speed computers, so up-to-date.
Its account of current and curious
hardware - von Neumann (or serial)
processing, parallel processing, galliuin arsenide semiconductors; finegrain architectures, array processors,
reduction machines, optical computers, wafers, Josephson Junctions, and
so on - is fascinating.
Jenkins sketches a history of highspeed computing in light, informative
detail, throwing in tidbits like "ENIAC made its initial test run in
November 1945, and the researchers
immediately discovered two problems
that have bedeviled computer designers ever since: heat dissipation and
device failure. The heat thrown off by
ENIAC's 17,468 tubes sent the temperature in the room soaring to 120
degrees and the tubes to premature
deaths."
He assumes you don't know about
the strange creatures he's describing,
and he brings you up, without wearing out his welcome. For example "In their efforts to develop parallel
computers, researchers have opened a
technological Pandora's box. Dozens
of different designs have flooded the
research journals and just sorting them
out is a job for a parallel supercomputer.
"For though there is essentially only
one way to arrange the elements of a
von Neumann computer, the possibilities inherent in· parallelism are virtually unlimited. They hinge on three
elements: the number of processors,
POOR MAN'S NETWORK
Now you can implement networking on your own CPIM computers and share resources
whenever you want. Each user can access files and printers on the other computer
directly, without expensive hardware or switches, and without a communications program. Share floppies, RAM-disk, hard disks, and printers between two users. Works with
most standard CPIM programs, like Wordstar, PIP, dBase II, etc.
Poor Man's Network works best with bidirectional parallel ports, or standard serial ports at
9600 baud or greater. Present version supports two computers only, and requires CPjM
2.2 on each computer. Uses only 6K of memory. Does not require a hard disk; runs on
8080, 8085, Z-80, HD-64180.
Poor Man's Network comes ready to run on BigBoard I and II, Xerox 820, NorthStar
Horizon, NorthStar Advantage, Televideo TPC I, Kaypro (not 2000), Apple II (Super
Serial required), S-100 with Compupro Interfacer 4. Can be installed on other computers
by altering one of the assembler overlay files provided. Each disk contains drivers for all
the specified computers.
Best of all
1
is the price: only
•
$69
Specify disk format: 8" SSSD, NorthStar, Kaypro, or Apple CP/M. Phone orders accepted; sorry,
no COOs or Purchase Orders. Payment may be by certified cheque, money order, Visa, or
Mastercard. Personal cheques from outside Canada require up to 6 weeks to clear. Canadian
orders please pay in Canadian dollars; others in US dollars. Price includes diskette, manual and
postage. Ontario residents please add provincial sales tax.
Note: If you use another operating system, such as CP/M 3 or PC-DOS, send us your name and
capacitors
Diodes
ECL
Eproms
Fuses
LED'S
Linears
Memory Chips
Pots
Regulators
Resistors
Sips
Sockets
Switches
Transistors
7400
74LS
and more
PHl.lPSo) DRIVES
5 1/4' DSDD
96 TPI- 300 RPM
$50.00 2/$90.00
Z80-B 6MHz
$4.50
10 or more$3.00
12" CRT MONITOR
w/power supply (no case)
$20,00
5 1/4" DSDO DISKS
SCOTCH DC300A DATA CARTRIDGES
(USED) ...••..••.•..... ·•• $5.00
.60
LINE CORDS
10A 125V 1250W
$3.00
address, but no money. and we will notify you when it is available for your system.
E21 CDMPUTER PRDDUCTS
ANDERSON TECHNo-PRODUas INC.
947 Richmond Road, Dept C
Ottawa, Ontario K2B 6R1, Canada
Telephone 613-722-0690 for more information or to order.
CP/M is a trademark of Digital Research; Z-BO is a trademark of Zilog; Wordstar is a trademark of MicroPro; dBase
II is a trademark of Ashton-Tate. Poor Man's Network is a trademark 01 Doug Anderson Techno-Products Inc.
86
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
2273 American Ave. #8 - Hayward, CA 94545
[415J 7B6-9203
T£R!":~:
S~ !II!'S
i'r~·paymf"nt,
. tax.
otherw~se
coo, Visa and Ma::;.~e[card. California
C:de:s are F0B Heyward, CA. Shipm~nts b~' UPS
re&idl!'nts add
ground unless
requesttod.
Pricps ar.e availability are subject to change
wjt:.CH..t :-.ctice.
:al1 or "":fte for currer.t product and price listing.
the size of each processor's memory, if
any, and the way in which processors
and memory are connected."
I liked this book, and you might, if
you want to read a breezy yet intelligent introduction to high-speed computing.
$14.95, in paper from TAB BOOKS
Newsbits
Motorola and Motorola Japan have
announced the MC68030, a high performance version of the 68020. Motorola claims it "packs the power" of
300,000 transistors on a single semiconductor, will double the speed of
the 68020, allow parallel data-bus input, and be available for sampling by
next summer.
The 68030 will find its way into the
Macintosh Plus (or Plus Plus, or
whatever they'll call it) and the Motorola-Intel and Apple-mM feuds will
heat up all over again.
If I were a bettor, and I'm not, I still
wouldn't bet on the winner.
Also in Japan, mM (I don't know
what IBM America said) has announced an integrated system based
on its token ring network. (In short traffic in rings generally flows in only
one direction. So each ring station
receives messages from one of its
neighbors and passes it on through
the " circle" .)
The network's software ("Network!
PC") will allow mM and non-mM
hardware to run on the same system.
PC-WRITE
By now, almost everyone who computes on micros for a living has heard
a little about the Shareware word
processor - PC-WRITE, Bob Wallace,
or. Quicksoft.
This trio is, as far as I know, the
best success· story in the Share-software domain, and worth rementioning.
Wallace began working for Microsoft
when it was a young company of only
12 employees. From 1979 to 1983 he
wrote the compiler, front end, and
much of the runtime for MS-Pascal.
But when Microsoft grew to 300+
employees, he moved on and started
Quicksoft.
PC-WRITE, Quicksoft's first product,
is a slick, quick, and very complete
word processing system which Wallace
has released into the public domain.
You use it, and if you like, you send
Bob $75, and he registers you and
sends a manual and free updates.
It's a deal if I've ever heard one, and
I hope folks continue to support it. For
public domain PC-WRITE, unlike
many other shareware products, isn't
a demo or come-on; it's a fully functional program. Only the printed manual's been held back to protect Quicksoft's investment.
We've had PC-WRITE on a Micro C
disk (#13) for almost a year now, but
until recently I hadn't taken the time
to use it, since I'm usually pleased
enough with my standbys - VEDIT,
EXPRESS, and WORDSTAR.
But this month I wanted to use
Turbo Lightning's Thesaurus while I
was editing, which meant VEDIT was
out (it uses a graphic block cursor
which LIGHTNING doesn't recognize), so I tried PC-WRITE.
I've opened and closed,. edited, compiled, and printed about 200K of text
files for this issue, and I'm tickled
with the results. An excellent program
worth the $75, if you register and get
the manual.
I used version 2.6, which includes
excellent on-line help menus, multiple
file and split-screen editing, extensive
formatting, printing, file merging,
searching, replacing, block and file
moving, and loads of miscellanea like:
word counting, WORDSTAR file conversion, and laser printer fonts. There
are more, easier-to-get-at functions on
. PC-WRITE than on any other editor
I've seen at anywhere near the price.
It's fast (faster than VEDIT and
WORDSTAR, as fast as EXPRESS) and
easy to learn (even without the rnan-
ual). If you're looking for a powerful
word processor at a not-so staggering
price, try PC-WRITE, from Quicksoft
219 First N. #224
Seattle, WA 98109
(206)282-0452
(If you want to sample first, without
the manual, version 2.6 is available
from Micro C for 8 bucks.)
And may all your indices, footnotes,
endnotes, and margins be perfect ones
and zeros.
And that's enough tidbits for this
issue, I'm out of here.
•••
OVERSTOCK & DEMOS
COMPUTERS
(including software)
KAYPRO
KAYPRO
KAYPRO
KAYPRO
$200
2
2X & 4 300
695
10
16
1295
Printers
89·199
dBASE Software 39
(with tutorials)
PROJECT DATA
SYSTEMS, INC.
1050 Northgale Dr. #200
San Rafael, CA 94903
(415) 492-1840
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
87
256K Upgrade
For The Big Board II
lowe a lot to Andy Bakkers. He
shows up at every SOG (the whole
staff looks forward to his arrival), and
he always brings goodies from Europe.
This modification by Frank Baak,
written up by Andy, is one of those
goodies.
H
istory repeats itself. We did it
in the past - changed the 16K
chips on the Big Board I to
64K chips. So there had to come a
time when someone would take the
Big Board II and replace the 641< chips
with 256K chips. The person who did
it was Frank Baak of the Netherlands.
The Circuitry
The schematic of the required selection logic is given in Figure 1. Because
it's copied from Jim Ferguson's 256K
RAM card, the software is the same as
for the 256K RAM card. This software
is implemented in the integrated
BIOS. The RAM select decoder has
been replaced by a multiplexer that
switches simultaneously with the RASI
CAS multiplexer on the Big Board II.
Figure. 2 shows the schematic diagram for the refresh counter extension.
You should use this if your RAM
requires 256 refresh cycles. So far I
have seen only 256K RAM chips with
256 refresh cycles. This circuit adds
one bit to the 7-bit refresh counter of
the Z80 and requires two additional
TIL chips.
de Gervelink 12
7591 DT Dendkamp
The Netherlands
The Operation
The total circuit consists of seven
TTL chips plus eight RAM chips
(41256). First you have to cut a number of traces. The traces are given
below. I have indicated the pin closest
to which you have to cut the trace.
U68 pin 13
U68 pin 10
U68 pin 14 (for the 256 refresh cycle
change)
Pin 1 of every RAM chip has to be
isolated.
If your RAM is soldered in, just cut
the trace going to pin 1 and then
replace the 64K chips with sockets.
Connect all the pin 1s together underneath the board.
If your RAM is socketed, just remove the 64K parts and when you
install the 256K RAM be sure to leave
the pin 1s out of the sockets. Then
connect all the pin 1s together.
Finally, connect the pin 1 line to pin
4 of D1.
The numbering of the ICs is as
follows: the letters A,B,C,D are along
the long side of the breadboard area,
and the figures 1 and 2 along the short
side.
r
Parts List
The following parts are required for
this modification:
2 x 74LS30
1 x 74LS74
1 x 74LS139
2 x 74LS157
1 x 74LS670
4 x 16-pin socket 3 x 14-pin socket
8 x 41256
wire wrap wire
88
By Andy Bakkers
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
\,..
Solder the wire wrap sockets of the
ICs only with the power and ground
pins to the board. Note that power
and ground are available on the holes
at the edge of the circuit board.
The power and ground pins are:
for A1,B1,C1,D1 : pin 8 grnd, pin 16
+5V
for A2, B2, C2 : pin 7 grnd, pin 14 + 5V
Connect the power and ground with
a good quality wire to the power and
ground pins.
Next you can make the other connections. Note that the signals marked
with an * (asterisk) are NOT on the
pin side of the cut trace, and connect
to the other side of the cut.
After the modification the circuit
works exactly the same as the 256K
RAM card, so the integrated BIOS
software will allow you to have a 192K
RAM disk, or you can implement CPI
M 3.0 and use the RAM area for the
buffers.
Frank Baak
Maasdal35
2904 CN Capelle aId Ijssel
The Netherlands.
•••
Figure 1 - 256K Select Logic
U6B pin 1
>RAS/CAS
I
*U6B pin 13 ~">=B;.::;;A:..:.t=.5_ _ _ _ _--.
*U68 pi n 1g)
U66 pin 2
Uf)6 pin 3
~>=B.:..:A~14~_ _ _...
15
4
;>=B=.Dz:-0_--=-tS~ 00RA RBQ~ .-:'z:-0_ _ _ _ _-+__...::B:.::;A:.:.'.;;:,4_'~
... U6B
~ BOt
t 01 C1 Ql 9
BA15' ., U68
U66 pin 4 ;. B02
2 02
U66 pin S ;- BD3
3 03
74
6L7~
Q2..,:7_ _ _-:2~A~
14 WA0
Q3 6
U66 pin 7 ;.. BDS
13 WA1
OE 1 ' 1
1~
t
SEL
3 B~
U66 pin 6 ::: BD4
pin
pin 13
Y0 4
_.... PIN 1
RAMS
01
L -_ _...:W~R~
12
_
74LS1S7
EN
1
U49 pin 3 ~
U49 pin 6 ;
2
U49 pin 10~
3
4
U49 pin 13 ;.
C2
5
U4B pin 3 ~
6
U4B pin 6 ;
74LS3g)
11
U48 pin 10:::'
12
U48 pin 13:::'
B1
74LS139
1
U47 pin 3 .,
U47 pin 6 :::.
U47 pin 1~;
3
U67 pin 13;
4
U6B pin 3 ,
5
6
U68 pin 6 ;.
C1 pin 4
,....2..
B
2
EN
82
• 1
~
74LS3~
11
~
12
C1 pin 5 ;
U3B pin 12:::' BWR
*
INDICATES THE CONNECTION TO THE DISCONNECTED TRACE
Figure 2 - Refresh Circuit For 256 Refresh Cycles
*U68 pin 14,
BA7
2
+5V
+5V
1.
2 0
A2
1,3
U68 pIn
. 4 r,.
...... RFSH
3
QL
14
*
BA7':::. U68 pin14
74LSt57
~D
A2
Q
9
11
+5V
1
(~)
3 B0
SEL
74 LS74
(i)
PR
Y0 4
CLR
74LS74
/
A1
l'
CLR
U68 pin 11 ) BA6
A0
Q~
1
PR
T'0
EN
r
INDICATES :THE CONNECTION TO THE DISCONNECTED TRACE
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
89
-
MONITORS-
-
15" WELLS GARDENER ........... $20.00
HARD DISK DRIVES -
3.5" MMI10 MB ................. $229.95
-24 VDC
-3 LINE TTL INPUT
-GREEN PHOSPHOR
-OPEN FRAME
-10 MB HALF HEIGHT
-ST 2121412 COMPATIBLE
-SHOCK MOUNTED IN 5%" FRAME
-1 YEAR WARRANTY
-GREAT FOR PORTABLE!
9" AUDIOTRONICS ............... $20.00
-3 LINE TTL INPUT
SEAGATE ST 225 ................ $349.95
-OPEN FRAMe
5" ZENITH. . . . . . .. . ............. $23.60
-3 LINE TTL INPUT
. -GREEN PHOSPHOR
-OPEN FRAME
-20 M BYTE
-Yz HEIGHT
-1 YEAR WARRANTY
ST 225
5" MOTOROLA ................... $23.60
-3 LINE TTL INPUT
-BLACK & WHITE
-OPEN FRAME
+ CONTROLLER .......... $459.95
-WITH CABLES
-READY TO INSTALL
MMI10 MB
+ CONTROLLER ...... $329.95
-WITH CABLES
-READY TO INSTALL
SYNC·SEPARATOR KIT
. USE WITH ANY 3 LINE TIL MONITOR
ALLOWS YOU TO RUN 3 LINE MONITOR
FROM A COMPOSITE VIDEO SOURCE!
$12.95
14" LUXOR RGB ......... $299.95
-IBM COMPATIBLE
-RGB INPUTS
-16 COLORS
-RESOLUTION: 640 x 262
CABLE & POWER CORD INCLUDEDI
HIGHER CAPACITY DRIVES AVAILABLE
CALLII
-
SHUGART 8" DISKETTES-
-SA150
- HARD DISK CONTROLLERS - -DOUBLE SIDED
-NEW
OMTI5510 PC/XT CONTROLLER ... $139.95 -BOX OF 10 .......................... $12.50
-SHORT SLOT, LOW POWER CARD
- FLOPPY DISK DRIVES -COMES WITH CONFIGURABLE BIOS AND
SOFTWARE TO HANDLE ANY 5Y." HARD
DISK
-COMES WITH CABLES
51A " TEC FB503. . . . . . . .
LUXOR MONITOR + IBM COMPAT.
WESTERN DIGITAL .............. $119.95 -DOUBLE SIDED 48TPI
COLOR GRAPHICS CARD ........ $369.95 -FOR IBM PC/XT
-IBM PC/XT COMPATIBLE
-WITH CABLES
HAZELTINE 1500
TERMINAL
USED,TESTED GOOD
95
589
TELEVIDEO TS 816140
$995
TS 816/40 W/40M EXP .............. 1,500
TS 816/20 ......................... $600
HALTED SPECIALTIES offers
unique supermarket style shopping for your
electronic needs. We stock thousands of
parts, from the newest IC's to some of the
first transistors. We also have computer ac·
cessories, test equipment, tools, R&D sup·
plies and much more. Please call or visit one
of our retail stores.
. . . . .. $99.00
-QUIET!
WE STOCK A
FULL LINE
OF IBM
COMPATIBLE
PRODUCTS
PLEASE
CALL FOR
LATEST
PRICES
SHUGART SAa01R ............... $179.00
-SINGLE SIDED, DOUBLED DENSITY
-600 KB FORMATTED CAPACITY
-NEW, NOT RECONDITIONED!
J FORMAT SOFTWARE PACKAGE .. $43.95
ALLOWS USE OF 96TPI DRIVE ON
IBM PC/XT 720 KB CAPACITY
-
POWER SUPPLIES -
VARIABLE 0·10 VOLTS DC ........ $375.00
-0·200 AMPS
-VOLTAGE AND CURRENT METERS
-SINGLE PHASE AC INPUT
-MADE BY SCR
EPROM PROGRAMMER
FOR IBM PC
$109.00
-INTERNAL CARD WITH EXTERNAL ZIF POD
-PROGRAMS 2716 UP TO 27512
-SOFTWARE INCLUDED
HALTED SPECIALTIES co., INC.
827 E. EVELYN AVE., SUNNYVALE, CA 94086
MAIL ORDERS CALL: (408) 732·1573
3 CONVENIENT LOCATIONS
.
•
HSC Electronic Supply of Santa ROla
6819 S. Santa Rosa Ave.
Cotati, CA
(707) 792·2357
HSC Electronic Supply
5549 Hemlock Street
Sacramento, CA
(916) 338·2545
Store HOU~: .
Mon.·Frl. 8.00·7.00
Saturday 9:00.5:00
WE SHIP
C.O.D.
TERMS: Minimum order $10.00. California residents add 7% sales tax. Prepaid orders sent freight C.O.D. or call for charges, shipping will be added to credit card and C.O.D.
orders. Prepaid orders over $100.00 use money order or certified check. Please do not send cash. Some Items limited to stock on hand. Prices subject to change.
AROUND THE BEND
(continued from page 2)
I finally admitted defeat, closed up the 2000, wrestled it
back into its bag, and slid it under· the seat. The
stewardesses went back to hawking their wares and the
passengers once more nodded into their copies of
Mainliner. All the passengers, that is, except the turkey
who hovered just over my left shoulder.
He still wasn't sure that a computer wouldn't help
him.
Sneaky
I don't know if any of you know the story of Post-It
notes (those little yellow sticky-back pads that breed in
offices). Well, the 3M team that designed the pad (and
the adhesive) sent samples around to the secretaries in all
the other 3M divisions. Within weeks the research group
couldn't produce enough pads to keep up with internal
orders.
Then the group issued an ultimatum: if 3M wouldn't
fund production of the pads, they weren't going to
supply any more. If they hadn't funded production there
would have been mutiny in the ranks.
Anyway, when I heard the story I kind of chuckled.
It's interesting to see someone make a good idea
indispensable.
'
Meanwhile, that was happening to me.
I've always liked Borland products; they're good and
they're cheap. They send fun things to the editorial
department· and we do our best to find time to review
them.
In this case, the first copy of Reflex disappeared before
us editorial types got our hands on it. Then an update
arrived and disappeared. But I was too busy to worry
very much about missing database packages (Turbo
Prolog was getting prime time.)
I still wouldn't have noticed Reflex if Sandy hadn't
mentioned that she really liked it. (And she is one of
these database eclectics.) Then I started noticing that the
office's computer cowards were spending significant
portions of their days smiling at monitors. (Were they
playing Adventure? Nope. Reflex.)
I made this discovery the day after an auto dealer
called to ask how he could put together a mailing list. If
he had waited a day I would have recommended Reflex.
(They just have to have your answer right away, those
car salesmen.) As it was, I recommended he contact a
programmer.
Now, of course, I'm curious about Reflex. All those
computer beginners are creating databases, reports,
graphs... everything. In minutes. By themselves. And
they love it.
But the Reflex manuals are almost impossible to nab for
more than a few minutes at a time and if Borland wanted
its Reflex back, there'd be mutiny in the ranks.
Things That Don't Work
Generally we do our best to make sure things work
before we put them in the magazine. (There have been
times when we've run science fiction as science fact, but
we've tried to make those the exception.)
In the April 87 issue we'd like to do the opposite. We'd
like to include things that don't, didn't, or couldn't
work: ideas, systems, software, companies, training
packages, anything. Real failures and pseudo failures.
For Example
Remember the text editor that let you enter the first
three characters of a word and then it filled in the rest of
the word? (If it guessed wrong you could go back and
correct it.) They called me one day to give me a chance to
get on the bandwagon. They had incredible stats on how
much faster a typist could go using their package (their
typist, using their text). I wonder if they're still in
business.
Remember all the mods you could do to an IBM
Selectric typewriter to interface it with a computer? You
could either build solenoids into the unit or mount
solenoids over the keys. Either way, the typewriter
would print slowly (and unevenly) for about two weeks
and then die. (Several members of the Beaverton CP/M
Users Group were better stocked with Selectric parts than
the IBM service center.)
Remember Osborne's IBM clone? It was famous for
being the only clone priced higher than an IBM.
Remember JRT Pascal v. 3.0? (Famous for its many
release dates.) The Zorba? Remember when PC magazines were trying to predict whether MS-DOS or CP/M
(continued next page)
RP/M2 ™ creates
Z80®
CP/M©2.2 compatible
IBM PC
Now available for Decmation's Blue Thunder softcard, PC
RP/M2 is an operating system. Either standalone or with
DOS present, PC RP/M2 provides the solid base of a genuine
operating system reliably distinct from the facade created by
an MSDOS interface. All 2.2 system and CBlOS calls are
supported, with 56.5k TPA, file date and time stamping, fast
virtual disk, iobyte redirection, terminal emulation, color
console display, auto relog, COM path, addressable SAVE,
single key phrase recall. SETDISK redefines a drive to any of
over 80 CP/M formats. DOSDISK invokes built-in access to
DOS drives. System disk with manual $129. Blue ThunderTM
softcard $149. Shipping $5 ($10 non US) ::E •.
!icro _
lVlet"hods, Inc •
•
118 5W First 5t. - Box G
Warrenton, OR 97146
(503)861-1765
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
91
AROUND THE BEND
(continued from page 91)
86 would be the winner? How about the Grid Compass
,
portable? ($8150 each.) .
If you have inside information on any of the above, or
have been asked to attempt some off-the-wall things by
some off-the-wallpeople, write to us, call us, or use the
Micro C RBBS (503-382-7643, 24 hrs, 300-1200-2400).
Leave a note, message, or file. Or, failing that (hey, we
take failure seriously), drop me a note.
If you have an idea for a whole article, definitely let us
know (somehow).
Don't think that this is going to be a frivolous issue.
It's not. Some of the best people are still trying to come
up with a replacement for the round wheel. (You have to
learn to roll with it.)
PD-32 Support
You can contact Dan Efron on the PD-32 conference
(Micro C RBBS 503-382-7643, 24 hrs, 300-1200-2400). See
this issue for "PD-32: Messages From The Board." He
will also provide support via his Arpa-net address:
defron@violet.berkeley.edu.
Prolog
I used to worry that Gary was working too hard.
Mornings would find him a bit on the haggard side, and
by afternoon he'd be home, working alone. Out of those
long afternoons and evenings came a couple of really
good articles on Prolog.
He'd gotten into the language in little over a month
(reading mostly the Tu.rbo Prolog manual), and he h~d
begun acting a bit like a guru. (It's a lot more fun being a
guru than living with one.) Anyway, Gary made the
mistake of leaving one 6f the Turbo Prolog manuals here
when he headed south.
'
.
I picked it up.
Hey, it's a tutorial. Not a bad one either. Very
readable, even in bed, the bathroom, and at the dinner
table :..... leading to interesting conversations:
"What do you mean I ignore the kids?"
"What kids?"
You don't have to be anywhere near a computer to
learn Prolog. (And you don't have to write expert
systems to know you've been .missing something at
home.)
Now Borland has a new.version (a few fixes and a lot
of new features), and they are updating all current
owners free. But Gary'll probably get the update.
Shucks.
PD-68000
Joe Bartell called the other day to say that there's been
a lot of interest in the 68000 system. He's been looking
for a very cheap, very powerful, easy to build 68000
system on which' to place his very cheap operating
system. That's what we're missing for a full-blown 68000
issue.
It could be a' stand-alone system or a plug in card. If
you have any ideas, contact Joe at Hawthorne Technolo-
92
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
gy 503-254-2005~ aoe also has a technical bookstore in the
other half of the building, so if· you're looking for
technic~ info ... ) Neat, eclectic (that means books and
computers) guy.
Tech Help
We've been providing tech help on the phone ever
since we started Micro C. It's been fun and it's been a
hassle. It's fun when we can suggest a solution and the
recipient calls back to say it worked. It's frustrating when
there just doesn't seem to be an answer.
It'sctlso frustrating to haye to limit tech support to 9
a.m. to noon, but we have to do it.' Even with the limited
hours, Larry and I have to work evenings and weekends
to get the articles written, hardware mods checked,
software routines run, disks documented, catalogs written, and the RBBS.properly brought up.
Speaking of the RBBS, we have a new one. It's a clone
with 20 megs of winnie. If you see this issue's article on
bringing up the board you'll know what Larry has been
doing with his weekends. We have a tech help section on
that board and we check it 5 days a week. If you need
help, feel free to log on, a)oin the tech help conference,
and leave us a message.
When you call back in a day or two you'll get our
answer, if we have one, plus you might even get
someone else's answer. And if it's a particularly interesting problem, your question and the answers might even
show up in Micro C.
Of course if you have a dynamite answer, by all means,
log on. Who knows when someone will come up with a
question' for your answer.
'
Hard Times With Hard Drives
I'm working especially late tonight because I spent the
daylight part of today working on the clone that holds
the entire Micro C database.
; For no apparent reason the machine picked today to
refuse to boot ,off its internal winnie. Oh, the system's
been' grumbling for a while, but it's been nothing a reset
or two couldn't .handle as the machine was coming up.
Anyway, today it got right ornery. Half an hour worth
of resets didn't make an impression. It even refused to
boot off the floppy. Finally I removed the Western Digital
controller board" disconnected the 20-meg Seagate's
power connector, and tried booting from the floppy one
more time.
It worked.
Then, just on a lark, I reinstalled the controller board
and reconnected the 20-meg Seagate. Then, probably out
of spite, the system booted off the Seagate when I hit the
power.
So I double checked that I had everything backed up
onto an external, tape and winchester unit (an ancient but
very dependable Tallgrass system) and then reformatted
the internal Seagate.
1 didn't just do an operating system reformat; this was
a real hard core, low. level, controller card format which I followed by an FDISK partition and a FORMAT
C:/s. I wanted to rewrite all those sector headers that
don't get rewritten any other way.
Boy did the system boot quickly after that (I think I got
its attention)! I checked the winnie for bad sectors with
Norton's DISKTEST. No errors. Then copied back all the
data.
It turned out that John Jones (of Pascal fame) called
while I was in the middle of the reformat. He mentioned
that a number of his friends had been forced to do
hardware reformats of their wirinies after similar boot
problems.
That made me feel better, but I'll feel especially better
when the system boots properly tomorrow morning.
"They've got to try them. They are just like Prolog,
right on the front edge, they just need to be discovered.
What a powerful pair of programs."
Despite Gary's work, and his enthusiasm, understanding CONVERT is still no trivial pursuit - but it's easier.
And who knows, the task might well be worth it. After
all, one of the big areas of AI research is pattern
matching, and CONVERT was created to match and
translate patterns, any patterns.
Move over Nicholas, here comes Harold (and Gary).
FI'L Modula-2 Source
If you're wondering where you to get Fft Modula-2
(discussed in Issue #32's Kaypro Column), wonder no
longer. It's published by:
Workman and Associates
1925 East Mountain St
Pasadena CA 91104
Editor & Publisher
818-791-7979
The compiler is available for CPIM and MS-DOS and
the price is $49.95 for CP1M and I believe it's the same
for MS-DOS (complete with editor). See· John Jones'
Pascal column in Issue #34 for a close look at this
compiler.
REC & CONVERT
Harold Mcintosh is not particularly well known in the
U.S, certainly not as well known as Nicholas Wirth. But
McIntosh and Wirth share a great deal. Both are
, professors of computer science at foreign universities and
both have created their own languages.
There is a significant difference, however. We've all
heard about Pascal, but very few of us are familiar with
REC or CONVERT. Pascal was created as a teaching tool.
So, it's very easy to learn. REC is short for Regular
Expression Compiler. It was created as a tool for creating
other tools, such as translators, compilers, and assemblers. It's not so easy to learn.
When Harold called last Spring and asked if I wanted
to run an article on REC, he apologized with:
"REC hasn't really been very popular, I'm not sure
why."
"But I've got an MS-DOS version of it now and I'd be
tickled to have Micro C release it."
Well, I've always been fascinated by computer programs that mad~ magic. In my book, assemblers are
small magic, compilers are medium size magic. Compiler
compilers are very big magic. However, it sometimes
takes big magic to understand them. REC's problem is
that Harold McIntosh understands it very very well.
Gary Entsminger spent many, many hours (including
lots of 5 a.m. hours) editing the article, trying to make
sense out of a paper written for graduate CS students.
Then Gary wrote some sample programs for CONVERT.
When I talked to him ·last week he was ecstatic - in a
sleepy sort of way.
The Ultimate In
Software ....
Order
Your Micro C
T-Shirt Today!
Why not collar one of our user-friendly, twocolor shirts? This is top coverage that's available
in: 5, Ni, L, and XL.
Micro C T-Shirt ................ $6.95 ppd (US)
(specify size)
$8.50 (foreign)
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
93
Ian aDS
The following folks are reaching you for only 30 cents
per word. If you would like to reach the same audience,
send your words and 30 cents for each to Micro
Cornucopia.
"Getting Started With CBASIC" - Tutorial workbook for
beginners/intermediates in this powerful language. Fundamentals through file handling, user functions, etc. Gets
you started and takes you up to advanced features and
functions. Ends confusion, frustrations! $25/U.S. Fourcorners Press, 222 Washington St., Hanover, MA 02339.
Affordable Engineering Software for CP/M-BO, PC-DOS,
MS-DOS, and TRS-DOS. Free 52-page catalog. Low cost
pen plotter driver, transfer function analysis, scientific
calculator, communications design spreadsheet, graph
printing, circuit analysis, signal processing, mathematics,
root locus, active filter design, thermal analysis, and
report proofreader programs. BV Engineering, 2200 Business Way, Suite #207, Riverside, CA 92501. (714) 781-0252.
VISA and MasterCard accepted.
DataCOM Super Systems (tm) is your one-stop headquarters for all the latest public domain and shareware
programs. We support CP/M, CP/M +, CP/M86, MS-DOS,
PC-DOS, and TurboDOS users with over 100MB of online
files. DataCOM is a remote multi-user TurboDOS database with 2 incoming phone lines and Courier 2400
modems. We have an international reputation as the
Tampa Bay Kaypro Users Group and have been online
since July 1982. Call (813) 791-1454 by modem (300/1200/
2400 baud) and download an application or send $35 to:
DataCOM Systems, 2643 Cedarview Ct., Clearwater FL
33519. DataCOM also has over 120 disks of CP/M and
150+ disks of IBM software available by mail for $10 each.
Catalogs available if you send a disk in a reusable mailer
and include appropriate return postage. Specify Kaypro
SSDD, DSDD, or IBM DSDD format.
Version Control System - TUB (tm) stores ALL versions
of your source code in ONE compact library file, even
with hundreds of revisions. Updates (deltas) 5 - 7 times
faster than UNIX SCCS. Date and comments with each
version. Easy retrieval. LAN-shared libraries. Synchronized control of related source files. Free public domain
MAKE (with Lattice C source) by Landon Dyer. MS/PCDOS 2.x/3.x $99.95 + $3 s/h. VISA/MC. Burton Systems
Software, POB 4156, Cary NC 27511-4156. (919) 469-3068.
640K MotherBoard Upgrade 640K memory without using
an expansion slot! Allows easy insertion of 256K chips on
the system board. 100% compatible. 30 day $$ back
guarantee, 2 year limited warranty. COMPAQ Portable &
Plus - $29; $99 with memory. IBM XT, 3270 & Portable $39; $109 w.m. IBM PC - $50; $129 w.m. $4 s/h. Site
discount. Dealers welcome. Product of Innoventions, Inc.
Aristo, 16811 El Camino #213-5, Houston TX 77058, (713)
480-6288, 800/3ARISTO.
Science Software for the Commodore 64 and C-128 (in C64 mode). Includes hi-res color graphics and capability to
save to most popular printers. Programs for amateur
astronomy, earth satellites and aeronautics. $19.95 $34.95. Demo disk and catalog available for $5. Science
Software, 7952 W. Quarto Dr., Littleton CO 80123.
For Sale: 2 SA604 5MB Winnies $75 each, Western Digital
1000-05 Winchester controller $85, Shugart 1610-3 Winchester controller $75, JMR-1H5 IBM style external enclosure with power supply and cables $125, Winif Z80 host
adapter for 1610-3 (includes software) $35. Any 2 items
10% off. Phil Mattison, 1701 E. Todd, Tempe, AZ 85283
(602)897-0293.
TURBO CHEQUES! and TURBO BUDGET!: TURBO
Cheques! is the most powerful personal Checkbook
management program available for the IBM-PC. TURBO
Budget! provides Budget Management tracking capabilities. Both programs are professionally developed, easy to
use, support color, hard disks and contain· no copyprotection. 160 + page Users Manual. Written in fast
Turbo Pascal. FREE Demo disk available. For the IBM-PC/
XT/AT and true compatibles (Requires DOS 2.0 or higher,
2 DSIDD floppy disk drives, 128K RAM.) $49.95 for both
programs. CompuTech Box 7000-309 Redondo Beach, CA
90277. 213-377-7198
94
Explore Digital Signal Processing at a reasonable cost.
Our Model 10 board for the IBM PC/etc. has the speed
needed for a variety of real time applications. For
example, a 1024 point FFT takes 70 milliseconds. The
Model 10 is based on the Texas Instruments TMS32010
DSP chip. Included are a debugger, FFT and screen
display software, and more. AID and D/A option also
available. Prices start at $650. For more information or a
brochure, write/call Dalanco Spry, Suite 241, 2900 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington, DC 20008 (202) 232-7999
CP/M-80 Emulates PC-DOS! Innovative utilities let CP/M
reassign drives, autofind files (even overlays!), transform
user areas into "disk drives," create smart batch-jobs,
"window" the BDOS, format, text columns, and much
more. Inexpensive, copy-enabled, 30-day trial. LOGIC
ASSOCIATES, 1433 Thome, Chicago, IL 60660, (312) 2740531. Ask for free catalog, reviews.
•••
NEW LOWER 16 BIT PRICE
"
SPEED - POWER - VERSATILITY-. '~~
".~
Most EXPRESS users are converts from the GIANTS of WORD PROCESSING •.••••
•••••• and you couldn't pay them to go back••• HERE'S WHY
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
FULL ACCESS TO CP/M USERS AREAS (up to 32) with any editor commandl
NAMED DIRECTORIES supported on MSDOS VERSION I
MEMORY MAPPED VIDEO AVAILABLE FOR IBM PC and PC clones!
BUILT·IN CP/M LIKE COMMANDS (RENAME, COPY, ERASE, TYPE, DIR, LOG)!
POWERFUL KEYBOARD MACRO'S (as many as you want}1
FULLY RECONFIGURABLE COMMAND KEYS (emulate any other editor if you like}1
FAST, FAST, FAST SEARCH!
..
TERMINAL DATA BASE .. .INSTANTLY configure for over 50 predefined tennlnals!
FILES LARGER THAN MEMORY handled with easel
CONTROL and HIGH BIT CHARACTERS may be entered and edited I
DYNAMIC WORD WRAPIUNWRAP· FULL CURSOR CONTROL (and then some)
EASY to SET TAB STOPS· GLOBALlSELECTIVElLITER AUIGNQRE CASE REPLACE
FULL BLOCK INSTRUCTIONS including PRINT, SAVE,INCLUDE, MOVE, COPY, DELETE
VARIABLE SPEED (FASTI) BI·DIRECTIONAL AUTO SCROLL· GOTO PAGE N/ UNE N
COMPACT on disk and in RAM. (even the 16-bit versions are only 25k ~tes) I
NOT COPY PROTECTEDI
AFFORDABLE ... High performance at a fair price is our motto
EXPRESS 1.0 SAMPLER available FREE on your local Bulletin Board or for $10.00 from TCI
GENTLEMEN ... I'm ready to step up to EXPRESS ... please send:
_ _ copies EXPRESS 2.2 at $29.95 + $5.00 shipping and handling
_ _ copies EXPRESS 1.0 at $10.00 +$2.00 shipping and handling
My computer uses: PCDOS - MSDOS - CPM-86 - CCPM-86 - CPM-80 (Cirle One)
Disk format:
Kaypro 11- Kaypro 2X,4,1 0 - Osborne 1 SSDD - EPSON aX-10
(Circle One) Morrow MD2 - Morrow MD3 - MS-PCDOS STD 5- DSDD - XEROX 5- DSDD
IBM CPM-86 5- SSDD - Zenith Z90 - 8- SSSD - Apple 35 TRK CPM
Other 5- Computer
Sides
Den
Send Check or Money Order to: Name
--------------------------------Address
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __
Tel
1n33 205th Ave. NE
City _ _ _ _ _ _ _~State _ Zip
Woodinville, WA 98072
Washington residents must
Phone Day
Night - - - - - - - add 8.1% Sales Tax
MastercardNlSa - - - - - - - - - Exp
MASTER
CARD
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #33, Dec-Jan 1987
PHONE ORDERS 1·206·644·3133
TOMORROW'S
COMPUTING
VISA
INNOVATIONS
Advertisers Index
Peek
Issue 33
inside
your
mailbox
and
see ...
A-OK Computers ....................... 30
Advanced Concepts Engineering ........ .45
Anderson Techno-Products, Inc .......... 86
Andratech ............................. 77
Austin Codeworks .................... .41
Bakkers, Andy ......................... 31
Borland International ........... Back Cover
CalSOFf ............................... 5
Cascade Electronics ..................... 26
c.c. Software .......................... 65
Chrysikos, Larry ....................... 10
Computer Helper Industries .......... 54,55
Computing Technology ................. 59
CompuView ........................... 27
Data Desk .............. Inside Front Cover
Digital Research ..... , ................. .47
... what's new
at Micro c.
Echelon, Inc ............................ 77
EcoSoft ................................ 51
Emerald Microware ................. 33,41
ERAC Co ............................... 21
E2I Computer .......................... 86
Fletcher, Don .......................... 22
MS-DOS
Sample of disks in the Fall catalog
Halted Specialties ...................... 90
Hawthorne Technology ................. 68
Disks-5~"
Incremental Robotics .................... 81
Integrand .............................. 46
or 3Y2"
MS-24 Superior Games
Core Wars, SPACE WAR, Dungeons & Dragons, and (TRONLC
includes Source.)
MS-25 Ultra Utilities
U-ZAP, U-FORMAT, and U-FILE;
Map diskettes, unerase files, format
non-standard disks, interrogate sectors & much more!
MS-26 Expert System Genera-
tor & Tutorial
Introductory expert system builder
(ESIE), example expert systems,
and detailed tutorial.
MS-27 System Primer
KAYPRO CP/M
Disks-5~"
K-44 Pascal Runoff-Printer
Utilities
Print sideways, on both sides, or
design your own character font.
Source included.
K-45 Pascal Runoff-Utilities
File manipulation and encryption,
sorting routines, and much more
with source.
K-46 Pascal Runoff-Turbo J\rp
Utilities
-
needed to write and customize your
own irresistible games.
Also includes ready-Io-play Chess,
Bridge,and Go-Moku.:..-an anclent
; .reveals the· secrets and the strategies of Japanese game that can
game design. You're given soutce code, , reality for hours on,
a 200-pagemanual. and the insight
1 ~ ...•
_.
j • _
•
: . f,'lJL Turbo GameWorks
Product
TurboPascal3.0w/8087&BCD
\. _
Magazines
and functions into your programs.
-
1• -
(~i~~;~:,a:!ifb~~~:~l/;:so
>
•I
•
•
in CA call (800) 742-1133
Copies
,j • _
'! • _
j
•
To order by phone,
or for a dealer nearest you,
j•
,:! •
I
•
sua •
I
Source Exif Data:
File Type : PDF File Type Extension : pdf MIME Type : application/pdf PDF Version : 1.3 Linearized : No XMP Toolkit : Adobe XMP Core 4.2.1-c043 52.372728, 2009/01/18-15:56:37 Create Date : 2013:04:05 10:28:57-08:00 Modify Date : 2013:04:05 11:36:45-08:00 Metadata Date : 2013:04:05 11:36:45-08:00 Producer : Adobe Acrobat 9.52 Paper Capture Plug-in Format : application/pdf Document ID : uuid:610eb6f8-a561-4bc3-a512-067deb4e21e9 Instance ID : uuid:f2c984f5-46e1-4b7a-8c51-1d72b32a6832 Page Layout : SinglePage Page Mode : UseNone Page Count : 100EXIF Metadata provided by EXIF.tools