Micro_Cornucopia_#44_Nov88 Micro Cornucopia #44 Nov88
Micro_Cornucopia_#44_Nov88 Micro_Cornucopia_%2344_Nov88
User Manual: Micro_Cornucopia_#44_Nov88
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November-December 1988
No.44
T H E
M
$3.95
C R0
T EC H N
Object-Oriented
Programming
Objects are the latest buzz word. For a long
time there was only Smalltalk, now there's a
whole troup of players including Actor,
Objective C and C++. So we start out this
issue with a four-piece trilogy on objects:
complete with theory, examples, and
projects. (Space is no object.)
A Taste of Smalltalk
page 8
An intense look at messages, objects, classes,
late binding, and all the other fancy terms
that have grown up around this fascinating
field.
Actor, an Object-Oriented
Language
Thinking Objectively
Building MicroCad
A Special Project
The Peripheral
Technology-PT68K-2
page 42
An inexpensive, build-it-yourself,
68000 system. A great way to learn both
hardware and software from the ground up.
Plus:
Hercules Graphics Printer Dump
Sharing At SOG
And Much, tv-1 uch, More
10
0
74470 19388
3
38
46
C A L
J
0 U R N A L
#1
PROGRAMMABLE
EDITOR
NEW VERSION 3.0
•
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Until now, if you wanted the best Undo, the best compiler support, regular expressions and column blocks you chose
BRIEF™. If you wanted unlimited keystroke macros, the best
configurability, "off the cuff" command language macros and
blazing speed, you chose VEDIT PLUS.®
Best Multi-Level Undo
Regular Expressions
Pop-Up ASCII Table
Pull-Down Menus
Compiler Support
Column Blocks
FREE EVALUATION COPY*
Call 1 ·800-45-VEDIT
Now the Choice is Easy
The all new VEDIT PLUS 3.0 gives you the best Undo of any
editor, the best compiler support, unequaled windows, true
regular expressions and extensive new features. We're leading the way with easy to use pull down menus, context sensitive
help, a pop-up ASCII table, new printing options and much
more. Incredibly, VEDIT PLUS 3.0 is now twice as fast as before and, at only 60K in size, it loads fast!
Completely Configurable
Change a few keys or redefine the entire keyboard, VEDIT
PLUS adjusts to your editing style in minutes. You can even
create new editing functions using simple keystroke macros or
fine tune existing ones. VEDIT PLUS is so configurable that it
easily emulates other editors and word processors (WordStar
and Word Perfect emulation included). Quickly access editing
functions with a single key or through the pull-down menus.
Try before You Buy
We challenge you to experience the dazzling performance and
exceptional features that make VEDIT PLUS the best choice.
Our evaluation disk includes the complete editor.* Learn
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instructions in one window while you experiment in another.
See for yourself why no other macro language comes close.
Call for your free evaluation copy today. See why VEDIT PLUS
has been the #1 choice of programmers, writers and engineers
since 1980.
Supports the IBM PC, XT, AT and PS/2 including DESQview,
Microsoft Windows, PC-MOS/386, Concurrent DOS and most
networks. Also available for MS-DOS, CP/M-86 and FlexOS.
(Yes! We support windows on CRT terminals.) $185.
VEDIT and CompuView are registered trademarks of CompuView Products, Inc. BRIEF is a
trademark of UnderWare, Inc. PC-MOS/386 is a trademark of The Software Link, Inc. CP/M-86
and FlexOS are trademarks of Digital Research. MS-DOS, OS/2 and XENIX are trademarks of
Microsoft. DESQview is a trademark of Quarterdeck Office Systems.
•Also available for Tl Professional, Tandy 2000, DEC Rainbow, WYSE 700, Amdek 1280
and Others.
*Free evaluation disk is fully functional and can even edit small files.
• Fully Network Compatible
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Features of VEDIT PLUS 3.0
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Simultaneously edit up to 37 files of unlimited size.
Variable sized windows; multiple windows per file.
Execute DOS commands and other programs.
Flexible "cut and paste" with 36 "scratch-pad" buffers.
Block operations by line, character or column.
Search with pattern matching or regular expressions.
Configuration-determine your own keyboard layout, create
your own editing functions, support any screen size.
• Select window colors, support 43 line EGA, 50 line VGA.
EASY TO USE
• Modern pull-down menu system. Pop-up ASCII table.
• Context sensitive on-line help is user changeable.
• Multi-level Undo (100 to 1000 levels). Undo keystroke by
keystroke or line by line.
• On-line integer calculator (also algebraic expressions).
• Keystroke macros speed editing, menu function "hot keys."
FOR PROGRAMMERS
• Automatic lndent/Undent for "C," PL/I, PASCAL.
• Match/check nested parentheses, e.g. "I" and" I" for "C."
• Flexible macro runs popular compilers and automatically
moves cursor to each error in your program. Easily
changed to support new compilers and assemblers.
FOR WRITERS
• Word wrap, paragraph formatting and justification.
• Convert to/from Wordstar and mainframe files.
• Flexible printing; fully adjustable margins and Tab stops.
MACRO PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE
• If-then-else, looping, testing, string compare, branching,
user prompts, keyboard input, 24 bit algebraic expressions.
• Flexible windowing-forms entry, select size, color, etc.
• Simplifies complex text processing, formatting, conversions.
• Extensive 400 page manual with hundreds of examples.
Reader Service Number 7
1955 Pauline Blvd., Ann Arbor, Ml 48103
(313)996-1299 • Telex701821 • Fax(313)996-1308
CompuView
CASES&
POWER SUPPLY
KEYBOARDS
5339 Professional XT-AT
w I 12 function key .. . . .. . .. .. .. . . .. . 69.00
5060 Keyboard AT Style .............. 49.00
KB 101 Keytronic .. .. . .. .. . . .. . .. .. .. .. . 6 7.00
Focus 101 Key, Tactile, Switchable,
control caps lock, Dust cover . . . . . 89.00
-Chosen #1 Find hy Micro C Staff101 Key Click Style .................... 59.00
-All keyboards switchable to XT or AT-
150 Watt Power Supply (XT) . . . . . . . 50.00
200 Watt Power Supply (AT) ....... 80.00
XT Slide Case .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . 34.00
XT Slide with Lock & LED . . . . . . . . . . 38.00
STD AT or 80386
w /Lock & LED...................... 65.00
Tower AT or 80386 w /Lock, LED
and Power Supply ................... 239.00
MONITORS
HARD DRIVES
& CONTROLLERS
CGA Color ............................. .249.00
AT 40 MB Miniscribe 3650 (61 msJ ... 375.00
AT 40 MB Miniscribe 3053 (ZS ms) ...489.00
AT 71 MB Miniscribe 6085 c2s ms> ... 695.00
AT (MFM) Hard Drive &
floppy controller (WD) ............ 130.00
AT RLL HD & FD controller ....... 189.00
XT20 MB Miniscribe 8425 (65 msl .... 2 79.00
with controller ....................... 340.00
XT30 MB Miniscribe 8438 (65 ms> .... 299.00
with controller ....................... 355.00
EGA/CGA (Auto Switch, .31 dot) .... 395.00
VGA/EGA/CGA Multi Sync c.31) ... 495.00
Amber 12" TTL .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 89.00
Green 12"' TTL.. .. .. .. .. . .. .. . .. .. . .. . .. 89.00
VGA Analog (Mitsubishi .28 dot) ..... 495.00
VIDEO CARDS
Color /Graphics/Parallel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52.00
Mono/Graphics/Parallel.............. 49.00
EGA, CGA, VGA (640x480) ....... 129.00
VGA Analog, STB Extra .............. 239.00
EXPANSION CARDS
Clock Card . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22.00
Dual Floppy Disk Controller . . . . . . . . 25.00
Game Port . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.00
XT Multi-Function, 1 ser/par/clk/
game/2 floppy ........................ 61.00
Parallel (Supports LPT 1, 2 or3) . . . . . . . 18.00
Dual Serial Port Card - 1 installed
switchable Com 1, 2, 3, or 4 ..... ; 22.00
Kit for 2nd Port .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . .. .. . 20.00
XT 640K RAM (0K installed)......... 35.00
XT 2 MB Intel EMS (0K installed) ... 99.00
XT I AT Multi l/O
Serial/Par /Game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41.00
Kit for Second Serial.. .......... , . .. 30.00
AT 2 MB Intel EMS (0K installed) ... 139.00
DTK 4 MB 32 bit memory card
w/o RAM ............................. 139.00
XT I AT Multi Drive Controller Supports 1.44, 720K, 1.2, 360K
drives on XT or AT .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . 54.00
MOTHERBOARDS
XT/Turbo 4.77 /8 mhz ................ 89.00
XT/Turbo 4.77 /lOmhz ............... 99.00
AT 6/10 mhz Choice of Award,
Phoenix or DTK Bios ............... 2 79.00
AT 6/12 mhz Choice of Award,
Phoenix or DTK Bios ............... 340.00
Baby AT 6/12 mhz AMI Bios ....... 299.00
80286 6116 mhz DTK Bios ............ $Call
80386 8/16 mhz/DTK Bios ....... 1195.00
80386 8120 mhz/DTK Bios ....... 1395.00
For XT I AT memory ..................... $Call
FLOPPY DISK DRIVES
Toshiba
Toshiba
Toshiba
Toshiba
360K ............................ 89.00
1.2 MB ......................... 110.00
3llz" Drive Kit 720K ......... 110.00
3llz" Drive 1.44mb ........... 145.00
- Tower Case Pictured -
KIT OPTIONS
MS DOS 3.21 w/GW Basic ............ 49.00
MS DOS 3.31 w /GW Basic ............ 95.00
*5339 Keyboard Sub ................... 24.00
*Color Options:
(Includes video card & monitor)
CGA Color ......................... 200.00
CGA/EGA Color ................... 380.00
CGA/EGANGA Color ............ 450.00
ASSEMBLY AND TESTING
XT Systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60.00
AT/80386 Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80.00
XT KIT WI 2 Floppy Drives.
Includes: 6401< RAM, Serial, parallel and game
ports, clock/calendar, AT-Style keyboard, cabinet,
power supply, mono graphics card and amber or
green monitor. Keyboard switchable turbo.
8 mhz with lock, LED, Reset
& Turboswitch . . . . . . . . . . . . . 825.00
lOmhz with lock, LED, Reset
& Turboswitch............. 895.00
XT KIT W /20MB Hard Drive.
lncludes: 6401< RAM, Serial, parallel and game
ports, clock/calendar, AT-Style keyboard, cabinet,
power supply, mono graphics card and amber or
green monitor. Keyboard switchable turbo.
8 mhz with lock, LED, Reset
& Turboswitch ........... 1095.00*
lOmhz with lock, LED, Reset
& Turboswitch ........... 1165.00*
*(For 30MB Miniscribe add $15.00)
80386KITIncludes: lMB RAM, 1360K floppy drive, 1-1.2
MB FD, 1 40MB HD, DTK bios, switchable
keyboard, monochrome monitor, monographics.
Serial/parallel ports, case, power supply, game
port, cloclc/calendar. Main board made in U.S.A.
SOFTWARE
MS DOS 3.21 w/GW Basic ......... 49.00
Flight Simulator 3.0.................... 39.95
ACCESSORIES
Generic Analog Joystick............... 25.00
Gravis Analog Joystick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49.95
V20-8mhz ................................ 14.00
1200 Baud Internal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79.00
2400 Baud Internal ..................... 119.00
EPROM Programmer ( 4 gang) ....... 175.00
Memory Chips ............ (call for prices)
MICE
Logitech 2 Button (serial)............. 59.00
Logitech 3 Button (serial or bus)... . 89.00
Logitech HiRez (bus) .................. 109.00
With mouse purchase only First Publisher .. . .. . . . .. . . .. . .. .. .. . . . 50.00
Generic CAD 3.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50.00
Paintshow ............................. 15.00
Prices are subject to change without notice.
Shipping CHARGES will be~
BUILDING YOUR
OWN CLONE V2.1
****FREE BOOKLET****
*90-day warranty /30-day money back
(subject to restrictions)
Free Instructions with Each System
8/16 mhz ....................... 2795.00
8120 mhz ....................... 2995.00
80286 - AT KIT
Includes: 6401< RAM, 1.2 MB FD, 1 360K floppy
drive and 40 MB Miniscribe 3650 HD, 6/lOmhz,
serial, parallel and game ports, clock/ calendar,
AT-style keyboard, cabinet, power supply, monographics card, amber or green monitor, keyboard
switchable turbo.
4-0 MB HD (MFM) ........... 1525.00
60 MB HD (RLL) ............ 1595.00
efilMicro!idv;reNC
-3jCOMPUTERSr· ·-·
P.O. Box 1221
Bend, Oregon 97709
(503) 388-1194
Hours: Monday-Friday
9:00-5:30
ES
Reader Service Number 2
MICROCORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec, 1988
1
All the speed and power of a
hardware-assisted debugger
at a software price
RUN CODEVIEW
IN~~LYSK!
-1~~~--..
Hardware-level break points
REAL~ TIME break points on memory locations, memory ranges,
execution, I/0 ports, hardware and software interrupts. More
powerful break points than ANY software-only debugger on the
market. Soft-ICE gives you the power of an in-circuit emulator on
your desk.
Break out of hung programs
With a keystroke - no external switch necessary.
interrupts disabled.
Even with
Code View is a great integrated debugger, but it
uses over 200K of conventional memory.
MagicCV uses advanced features of the 80386
microprocessor to load Code View and symbols in
extended memory. This allows MagicCV to run
CodeView using less than 8K of conventional
memory on your 80386 PC.
Don't let 640K be your limit!
If you are closing in on the 640K limit and would
like the power of Code View, MagicCV is for you.
Don't let the debugger hide the bug!
Breaks the 640K barrier
Soft-ICE uses ZERO bytes of memory in the first lMB of address
space. This is especially useful for those subtle bugs that change
when the starting address of your code changes. With Soft-ICE
your code executes at the same address whether the debugger is
loaded or not.
Works with your favorite debugger
Soft-ICE can be used as a stand-alone debugger or it can add its
powerful break points to the software debugger you already use.
You can continue to use your favorite debugger until you require
Soft-ICE. Simply pop up the Soft-ICE window to set powerful
real-time break points. When a break point is reached, your
debugger will be activated.
Solve tough systems problems too
Soft-ICE is ideal for debugging TSRs, interrupt handlers, self
booting programs, DOS loadable device drivers, non-DOS
operating systems, and debugging within DOS & BIOS. Soft-ICE
is also great for firmware development because Soft-ICE's break
points work in ROM.
Even if you're not closing in on the 640K limit,
running Code View with MagicCV makes your
debugging environment much closer to the end
user's program environment. You can use
Code View to locate subtle bugs that only occur
when there is plenty of free memory, or those
difficult bugs that only occur when your program
is running with a couple of TS Rs loaded.
How MagicCV works
MagicCV uses the 80386 to create a separate
virtual machine for Code View. MagicCV uses
between 4K & 8K of conventional memory as a
bridge between the DOS environment and
Code View.
MagicCV is easy to use
If you are a Code View user, you already know how
to use MagicCV too. Just type MCV instead of
CV; everything else is automatic.
How Soft-ICE Works
Soft-ICE uses the power of the 80386 to
surround your program in a virtual machine.
This gives you complete control of the DOS
environment, while Soft-ICE runs safely in
protected mode. Soft-ICE uses 80386
protected mode features, such as paging, I/0
privilege level, and break point registers, to
provide real-time hardware-level break points.
"Sott-\CE is a product any MS-DOS
developer serious enough to own a
386 machine should have.''
Dr. Dobb' s Journal -May 1988
2
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
MagicCV
Soft-ICE
$199
$386
Magic CV
Buy Both and Save $86!
with Soft-ICE
CALL TODAY
Using Soft-ICE with CodeView gives you the features
necessary for professional
level systems debugging.
MagicCV and Soft-ICE can
work in concert with CodeView to provide the most
powerful debugging
platform you will find
anywhere.
(603) 888 - 2386
or FAX (603) 888 - 2465
30 day money-back guarantee
Visa, Master Card and AmEx accepted
P.O. BOX 7607 •NASHUA, NH 03060-7607
T H E
M I CR 0
TECHNICAL
J 0 U R N A L
M_ICRO CORNUCOPIA
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1988 - ISSUE NO. 44
FEATURES
8
COLUMNS
C'ing Clearly
Scott was going to take a first pass at Borland' s C
ebugger. There's no C debugger. So, Scott's updating his
C list and talking about SOC.
Jan Steinman and Barbara Yates
A Taste of Smalltalk
Smalltalk is the grandaddy of the
object oriented languages and this is
a very in-depth look at this very innovative language.
18
54
86 World
Laine's disk again showed up at the last possible moment,
complete with camel prints. But our boy is OK, asleep on
a Turkish bus bound for somewhere.
62
Shareware
Thinking Objectively
65
Culture Comer
OK you science fiction freaks, here's your article. (The rest
of you aren't going to believe it.) Doug and Arthur figured
it was too much trouble to turn a computer into an expert
so they just taught it how to learn all by itself using objects.
(Surprise.)
66
On Your Own
76
Units and Measures
90
Tech Tips
Zack Urlocker
Actor, An Object-Oriented Language
Actor is the new language on this block. It gives you a
Smalltalk style environment but it runs under windows so
even windows become simple objects. Zack shows you how
to build a project manager.
26
32
Doug Gaffin and Arthur Gaffin
Bruce Eckel
Building MicroCAD
Bruce takes on C++ with a vengence. Here he uses objects
to build a tiny CAD program. Another great Eckel project.
38
Larry Fogg
Hercules Graphics Printer Dump
Larry thought this cinchy little project, dumping graphics
from screen to printer, would take an afternoon. He was
right. (If you don't count the two weeks he spent making it
work.)
42
Jack W. Crenshaw, Ph.D.
CP/M CORNER
80
CP/M Notes
84
Kaypro
86
Tidbits
96
Last Page
The Peripheral Technology, PT68K-2
Looking for yet another PC? How about one with the heart
of a 68000 and the soul of a hacker? This inexpensive kit is
a great excuse to warm up the soldering iron and fire up
the assembler.
46
Barbara M. Hall
Sharing at SOG
When I saw this in Oregon
Computer News I knew I had to
reprint it. Barbara really catches
the flavor of SOC.
Cover illustration by Rob Sanford
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec, 1988
3
By David
THE
MICRO
TECHNICAL
J. Thompson
JOURNAL
MICRO CORNUCOPIA
Editor and Publisher
David J. Thompson
AROUND
THE BEND
Associate Editors
Gary Entsminger
Cary Gatton
Technical Department
Larry Fogg
Director of Advertising
& Distribution
Jackie Ringsage
Accounting
Sandy Thompson
Order Department
Tammy Westfall
Graphic Design
Carol Steffy
MICRO CORNUCOPIA (ISSN 0747-587X) is
published bi-monthly for $18 per year by Micro
Cornucopia, Inc. 155 NW Hawthorne, Bend, OR
97701. Second-class postage paid at Bend, OR and
additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send
address changes to MICRO CORNUCOPIA, PO
Box 223, Bend, OR 97709.
SUBSCRIPTION RA TES:
1 yr.
2 yr.
3 yr.
1 yr.
1 yr.
1 yr.
(6 issues)
(12 issues)
(18 issues)
Canada & Mexico
Other foreign (surface)
Foreign (airmail)
$18.00
$34.00
$48.00
$26.00
$36.00
$50.00
Make all orders payable in U.S. funds on a U.S.
bank, please.
Sunday 5 a.m., Newburg
I awoke with a start - the tent around me and the
earth beneath me were shaking. The roar of a giant piston engine was overwhelming and getting louder. Just
as I was certain I would be hacked to shreds, the noise
dropped in pitch and receded rapidly. The tent and I
were left shaking.
Wide awake, I unzipped the door and tentatively
peeked through. It was a cool, grey pre-dawn with
clouds draped heavily over the tops of the wooded hills.
I could see the spray plane disappearing through a
divide in the trees, wings almost brushing branches, its
unmuffled 450 horses still echoing.
Finally: it's quiet.
There are a few quiet coughs from other tents, I'm
not the only one awake. Ah, the life of a flying
vagabond.
This is it, antique airplanes driven by (mostly) antique pilots. We' re sleeping under our wings as we
barnstorm Oregon, stopping at everything from informal grass strips to county airparks. (The county airparks feature such luxuries as paved runways and
chemical johns.)
Yesterday, the first day of the week-long flyaround, I
was part of a formation flying at 1,000 feet, watching
cars, watching people, carefully watching the three
CHANGE OF ADDRESS: Please send your old
label and new address.
MICRO CORNUCOPIA
P.O. Box 223
Bend, Oregon 97709
CUSTOMER SERVICE: For orders and
subscription problems call (503) 382-8048, 9 a.m.
to 5 p.m., Pacific time, Monday-Friday.
TECHNICAL HELP: call (503) 382-8048, 9 a.m. to
noon Pacific time, Monday-Friday.
RBBS - 24 hrs. 300-1200-2400 baud
8Bits, No Parity, 1 Stop Bit
503-382-7643
Copyright 1988 by Micro Cornucopia, Inc.
All rights reserved
Stinson & tent at Newburg, tour's first overnight stop.
ISSN 0747-587X
Continued on page 69
4 MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
New Thrsion 2.2
You
deliver it
It's coming. An era of more powerful PCs. Easier
to use PCs. With graphics and character-based
programs working side by side. Talking to each
other. Multitasking. Wmdowing. Menuing.
Mousing. Letting your customers get their work
done easier and faster.
Comp_atible with DOS 4.0
Uses less memor:y, _
runs f~ter,. and adds
commumcatwns support
fore
blisher, or designing a building in AutoCAD.
l9911~
DFSQview even allows them to transfer text,
numbers, and fields of infonnation between
programs.
Fulfill the 386 promise.
For 80836 PC users, DFSQview
becomes a 386 control program when
used in conjunction with Quarterdeck's
Expanded Memory Manager
(QEMM)-386--giving faster
multitasking as well as virtual
windowing support.
And when you use DFSQview on
an IBM PS /2™ Model 50 or 60 with
QEMM-50/ 60 and the IBM Memory
Expansion Option, DFSQview gives
multitasking beyond 640K
Sell it all now.
DFSQview™ is the operating environment that gives D03 the capabilities of 03/2~M And it lets your
customers, with their trusty 8008, 8006,
80286, or 80386 PCs, leap to the
productivity of the next generation.
For not much money. And without
throwing out their favorite software.
Add DFSQview to your
customers' PCs and it quickly finds
their programs and lists them on
menus. So they can just point to the
program, using keyboard or mouse,
to start it up. DFSQview knows where
that program lives. And what command
Multitasking beyond 640K.
loads it.
When your customers want to use
For programmers, DESQview's
For those who
several programs together, they don't have
API, with its strengths in interhave trouble
task communications and multito leave their current program. Just open
tasking, brings a quick and easy
remembering D03
the
next program. View programs in
way to adapt to the future. With
commands, it adds
windows or full screen. Open more
the API's mailboxes and shared
programs, programmers are
menus to IX13. It
programs than they have memory for.
able to design programs running
even lets them sort
And multitask them. In 640K Or if they
on IX)5 with capabilities like
files and mark
thoseof OS/2
own a special EMS 4.0 or EEMS memory
specific files to be
board, or a 386 PC, DFSQview lets them
copied, backed-up, or deleted- all without
break through the D03 640K barrier and
having to leave the program they're in.
multitask. For instance, they can start 1-2-3
Best of all, DFSQview accomplishes all
calculating and tell Paradox to print mailing
this with a substantial speed advantage over labels while they' re writing a report in Word
any alternative environment.
Perfect, or laying out a newsletter in Ventura
Experts are voting for
DESQview. And over a
million users, too.
If all of this sounds like promises
you've been hearing for future systems, then
you can understand why so many VARs and
system integrators have chosen DFSQview.
w
• And why PC Magazine gave
i ' i '
DFSQview its Editor's Choice
.'
!
!
•' Award for ''The Best Alternative to
1~!~!ffitm1~ 03/2," why readers of Info World
EDITOR'S twice voted DFSQview ''Product of
CHOICE
NO't ». 1987
the Year" why, by popular vote
~Eg 1986
at Comdex Fall for two years
AND 1987 •
D'CC().,;
PRODUCT
ma row, ~vJ.ewwas
o F T H E voted ''Best PC Environment''
Y E A R in PC Tech Journal's Systems
Builder Contest.
DFSQview lets you sell it all now.
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
-- I
I
I
I
L....I
r-1
I
DF.SQVIEW SYSTEM REQUIREMEN1S:
IBM Personal Computer and 100% compatibles (with 8086, 8088, 80286, or 80386 processors) with monochrome or color display; IBM Personal System/2• Memory: 640K recommended; for
DF.SQview itself 0-145K • Expanded Memory (Optional): expanded memory boards compatible with the Intel AboveBoan:i; enhanced expanded memory boards compatible with the AST
RAMpage; EMS 4.0 expanded memory boards• Disk: two diskette drives or one diskette drive and a hard disk•Graphics Card (Optional): Hercules, IBM Color /Graphics (CGA). IBM Enhanced
Graphics (EGA), IBM Personal System/2 Advanced Graphics (VGA)• Mouse (Optional): Mouse Systems, Microsoft and compatibles• Modem for Auto-Dialer (Optional): Hayes or compatible•
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Reader Service Number 109
MICROCORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec, 1988
5
Letters
SOGThanks
Although this is rather late for a
thank you letter, I want you to know
that as a computer nerd, idiot, tag-along, or whatever appropriate noun
would apply, I really enjoyed SOG VII.
First there was the beautiful drive up
from Southern California, including
Burney Falls, Mt. Shasta, and Crater
Lake. Then, the happy surprise of discovering the beauties of Bend. And
finally, gaining an appreciation for the
wonderful job your crew did in organizing that remarkable get-together.
The Central Oregon Community College provided a beautiful setting for the
sessions (even to including an exhibit to
grace the art gallery). I was overwhelmed by Debee's demonstration surely her story should be published.
Such an inspiration her accomplishments are!
This is the second letter that I've ever
attempted on Pat's computer. It's a halting, timid effort but I'll keep trying.
Many thanks for an experience I will
not forget.
Claire Lewis
8335 Camino Sur
Cucamonga, CA 91730
Editor's note: You're very welcome,
Claire. Hope to see you here next year.
Big Al Speaks
I think that I'll remember SOG VII as
the "missing" SOG. There were so
many things missing this time that I feel
it's appropriate.
The sense of excitement that I've felt
(and heard others speak of) was missing. It seemed to be a very nondescript
gathering. Missing was the understanding of what SOG meant: I overheard a number of attendees ask and
wonder what it stood for. (Semi Official
Get-Together.)
Absent was the staff vs. readers vol-
6
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
leyball game. We all played but the
majority of the staff didn't. An SRO hall
was waiting for the missing speaker
from Intel. Missing was the extra rank
of vendor tables in the large hall. Sorely
absent were the two plus hours Allyn
Franklin needs and deserves for his
drive discussion.
Another area of shortfall was the
dearth of simple, beginner-oriented
topics. If it were my first ever SOG, I
might think twice about returning, since
the topics were of such an expert level.
One last "missing" was the absent
moderator for the software forum. It
really needed a non-speaker to keep the
show and the flow going.
On the plus side, the Bar-B-Q and the
lunches were pulled off exceptionally
well, another tip of the hat to the COCC
staffers. The Micro C forum was also exceptional. I think that it should become
a standard topic. I overheard one comment about the forum however, and
that was, "Why aren't the gals up there,
too?"
Speaking of "the gals," thank you
Laura, for all that you did to bring
about the SOG. I hope to see you next
year! Another thank you to Debee and
"Duchess" (I hope I got that right) for
showing us that a handicap is really in
the eye of the beholder. The rest of the
speakers were up to standard SOG excellence, and a hearty thank you to each
and every one.
I'd like to offer up a couple of topics
for the next SOG to consider. Bruce
Eckel should do an RS232C lecture.
Someone should do a bit on Viruses and
Vaccines, perhaps the fellow who wrote
Vaccine. A talk by a SYSOP on dealing
with Trojan Horse routines and other
nasty uploaded bombs. Some talks on
systems other than the MS-DOS group.
How about another talk by someone
from an outfit that makes computers
that make a real difference in people's
lives, such as ZYGO from last year.
One last suggestion: since over half
of the topics had standing room only
even before the lecture began, maybe
having three speakers at the same time
might help. I understand that there really aren't any larger facilities available,
so dividing the listeners up a bit more
might give some more room. (Of course
the down side is that the speakers love
to see a packed room.)
Thanks to all of the staffers and crew
that put on the SOG. You all did just
fantastic. I'll be back for the next one.
Al (Spike the Ball) Szymanski
8991 Edcliff Ct. SE
Aumsville, OR 97325-9549
Editor's note: Comments noted. The staff
was a bit reticent about playing volleyball
after seeing you on the opposite side of the
net. We're going to be taking Karate-ball
lessons this winter, so look out next year.
We already get complaints because there
are two talks at a time, three would be about
as popular as poison oak at a nudist camp.
You're right about Debee and Christy
(and Debee's seeing eye dog). Every SOG
has its surprise and they were the surprise
this year. A delightful surprise. See the
editorial for more on these two.
Allyn Franklin is a problem. I'm not
sure whether it's the subject (drive repair)
or the person. Probably both. I remember
giving Allyn the last afternoon spot last
year, that way he could go an extra hour if
necessary. I think he finished up the following day. Everyone was still there. We may
have to give him the final spot in the show
so he can just wrap around to the next year.
As for getting the gals into the Micro C
forum, good idea. In fact, they insisted we
(La.rry, Gary, Bruce and I) couldn't have
speaker T-Shirts because four of us were
sharing the stage. If they were participating
too, I think we'd see a major rule change
(they wouldn't miss a chance to get TShirts)
Continued on page 78
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Reader Service Number 93
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44,Nov-Dec 1988
7
A Taste Of Smalltalk:
Object-Oriented Programming From The
Bottom Up
One of the things that surprised me as I
read through this and the other objectoriented articles in this issue, was the
similarities among languages. The ideas of
objects, classes, and messages are definitely
key. It's where things are bound (fancy term
for when space is allocated) that seems to
change from interpreter (Smalltalk) to compiler (C++). Check out all these pieces, I
think you'll really get a sense of these unique
languages.
n the early 70s, the Xerox Palo Alto
Research Center in California began
developing a new programming language - Smalltalk. Several versions
later, in 1981, they released Smalltalk80. In August '81, BYTE devoted an entire issue to Smalltalk-80, introducing
the micro computer world to objectoriented programming.
There are now several versfons of
Smalltalk; we list them (and other sources) at the end of this article.
I
What's In A Smalltalk?
When you buy a Smalltalk, you get:
8 MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
By Jan Steinman and Barbara Yates
Tektronix, Inc.
P.O. Box 500, Mail Sta. 50-470
Beaverton, OR 97077
(1) A virtual image file which contains the source code for a group of core
classes.
(2) A starter set of programming
tools.
(3) An interpreter.
You can also add on packages of additional classes. Classes are the voices of
Smalltalk.
Smalltalk is both a programming language and a programming environment, consisting of, at least: an editor, a
debugger, and an interface to a file system. Ask any Smalltalk programmer
what's special about Smalltalk, and he'll
invariably mention how much fun it is.
Fundamental Talk
Basically, we program in Smalltalk
by sending "messages" to "objects,"
which are "instances" of "classes."
Some classes represent fundamental
objects such as integers, characters, and
reals (or floating point numbers). The
names of classes are always capitalized.
So the corresponding classes for these
basic types are Integer, Character, and
Float.
Other classes represent more abstract
objects. For example, Process and
Stream. There's also a rich set of classes
of Collections: for instance, Array,
String, and Dictionary.
Your Smalltalk system is effectively
its classes - from Cursor, to InputSensor, to Compiler, to View. You send
messages to instances of classes, and
things happen.
There's some confusion (isn't there
always?) about classes because there's
no standard class library. The same
class may go by a different name in a
And
different
implementation.
Smalltalk implementations may contain
fewer than one hundred or as many as
several hundred classes.
Later we'll go a little deeper into
classes and clear up some of the
mystery.
I
n Smalltalk,
there's no program
per se. At least in
the beginning, think
in terms of
modifying the
behavior of existing
classes, rather than
creating new data
structures and
operations.
Messages
Messages are represented symbolically by selectors. Different types of
message selectors correspond to the
number of objects involved in the message.
A unary message has one object, the
object receiving the message. A binary
message has two objects - the receiver
and one argument.
Keyword messages are sent to the
receiver with one or more arguments.
Each part of a keyword selector ends
with a colon. For example, when an object can't reply to a message, it sends itself the message doesNotUnderstand:
Precedence
Smalltalk uses precedence rules to
resolve ambiguities -
•
•
•
•
•
1. expressions in parentheses,
2. unary messages,
3. binary messages,
4. keyword messages,
5. equal precedence messages are
sent left-to-right,
• 6. variable assignment happens
last. The symbols ":=" or "<-"
(left-arrow)
are
assignment
operators on different systems.
So in the Smalltalk statement stream := ReadStrearn on:
(Array with: 'Joe' ,'Blow') first.
the parenthetical expression must be
manipulated first.
Within it is a binary message. So the
concatenation selector "," is sent to the
String 'Joe' along with the String argument 'Blow', resulting in the new String
'JoeBlow'.
This new String is then sent as an argument of the keyword message with:
to the class Array, which responds with
a new Array object containing the
String 'JoeBlow'.
The unary selector "first" is then
sent to the newly created Array, returning the first (and only) object in the
Array, which is the String, 'Joe Blow'.
This String is then sent as an argument to the on: message to the class
ReadStream. ReadStream responds with
a new ReadStream object, which is assigned to the variable "stream".
Creating Classes & Behaviors
When we create a class, we
(programmers) decide what kinds of
data are needed to describe the instances of that class. The private data of instances is stored in instance variables.
All instances of a class can share
data, as well. Shared data is stored in
class variables.
The programmer decides the behavior of a class, and chooses the selecMICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
9
tor names of messages to send to the
class (or to instances of the class) in
order to start the behavior.
Methods are the procedures (or functions) of Smalltalk which execute when
a message is delivered. In Smalltalk-SO,
methods are grouped into categories according to their function.
Programs & Objects
In traditional, structured languages,
you write programs by defining data
structures and the operations you want
to perform on that data.
In Smalltalk, there's no program per
se. At least in the beginning, think in
terms of modifying the behavior of existing classes, rather than creating new
data structures and operations.
An object is a private, persistent state
that behaves in a particular manner
through a publicly accessible interface.
The arrangement of the state of one
object is unknown to other objects. In
other words, you program by focusing
on the way an object behaves (or
manipulates data).
Messages Determine Behavior
The behavior of an object is determined by the messages an object can
reply to. You can simulate message
passing in many languages, but
Smalltalk is the only popular language
where message passing is the only
means of communication among objects.
It's important to note that a message
selector exists apart from an object. So
the particular object a message is sent to
is very likely indeterminable at the time
the method is written.
Editor's note: For instance, in C++,
memory for an object has to be allocated at
compile time, whereas the size of a smalltalk
object changes while the program is running.
This polymorphism is the biggest
reason there are no Smalltalk compilers
in common use, and why those which
do exist (in research labs) place restrictions on message passing. It's also cited
by backers of late-binding languages
(like Smalltalk) as the key that turns a
language truly object-oriented. In this
sense, neither C++ nor Ada are truly
object-oriented.
A Smalltalk message, like printString, can be sent to any object (regardless of class), and the object will
respond by identifying itself with a
String of some sort.
Modems talk to each other this way.
And if you unintentionally reach a
10
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
Figure 1 - Smalltalk Run-time Error Notifier.
again
undo
copy
cut
paste
-•H•I-
print it
inspect it
accept
cancel
file out
Message not understood: next
string( Object)>> does NotUnderstand:
UndefinedObject> >Dolt
Compiler»evaluate:i ;oceed ylng:iffail:
Workspacecontroller P •
dercontroller)»dolt
Pop Up Menu>> startu~ correct ~s :action Receiver:
modem, when you're trying to reach a
fellow human being, the modem will let
you know that it doesn't understand by
hanging up!
In Smalltalk, when an object can't
reply to a message, it hangs up, sending
itself the doesNotUnderstand: message,
which we can intercept for error
recovery.
For example, sending the message
"next" to the string 'Hello, world'
brings up a notifier window. (See
Figure 1.)
Inheritance
How does an object know about
messages like printString and doesNotUnderstand:? Through inheritance, a
key element of any object-oriented language.
The Smalltalk interpreter directly
supports hierarchical inheritance.
Like everything else in Smalltalk,
classes are objects. You create a new
class by sending a class creation message to some other class. Your class becomes a subclass of that other class, inheriting all its behavior.
At the root of the class hierarchy is
the class Object, which understands the
messages common to all objects, such as
printString and doesNotUnderstand:.
And Where Do Objects Come From?
Most real-world objects have fairly
long lifetimes. With the exception of
radioactive Polonium-214 (which has a
half-life of 164 microseconds), or chocolate ice cream (which in our house, has
a full life about as long), real objects
tend to stick around. Not so with
Smalltalk objects.
They may be created hundreds or
thousands of times each second. When
they' re no longer needed, they become
garbage. Fortunately, a garbage collector knows when garbage is garbage and
reclaims the memory.
In a world of routine object creation
and destruction, garbage collection is
sorely needed.
So you (the programmer) create objects deliberately. And the Smalltalk system creates objects behind your back, as
it answers messages.
While the usual activity of Smalltalk
programming is defining and refining
the behavior of a class of objects, the
usual activity of executing Smalltalk
code is creating objects and sending
them messages. It's not unusual for a
large Smalltalk application to generate
hundreds of thousands of objects.
For example, you might do a "print
it" on the statement "newString :=
'Hello,', 'world!"'. (See Figure 2.)
This sends the String 'Hello,' the concatenation message "," with the String
argument 'world!'. It replies (in the best
of Smalltalk worlds) with the brand
new String object 'Hello, world!', which
is stored in the temporary variable newString.
Then, the workspace window closes,
and the new String object is collected as
garbage.
The One-Line Database
Let's create some more useful objects. (See Figure 3.)
Execute
Figure 2 - Create a New Object by Sending a New Message
before
inspect i
accept
cancel
file out
1----•...________a-ft_e_r_______.
"I'm very impressed with the compiler, editor, and debugger. I've tried
quite a few different compilers for the
PC and have given up on all of the
others in favor of yours . .. I've gotten
to the point where I download C code
from a DEC I.AX/VMS system just to
be able to compile it with the picky
flag set at 9. It finds lots of things
VMS totally ignores ... "
JS, Oak Ridge, TN
Figure 3 - The One-line Database in Action.
again
Smalltalk
undo
at: #PhoneNumbers
put: Dictionary new.
Phone Numbers
at: #Joe
put: '503/555-1234 ' .. print it.
inspect 1
Phone Numbers
accept
at: #Fred
cancel
put: '503/555-0987'. file out
Fred
Joe
Phone Numbers inspect.
inspect
Joe
----references
copy key
remove
Enter expression to copy
then accept or CR
cut
#Jill
pas~e
),,
do It
print i
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Reader Service Number 9
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
11
dow on its private state. This is so useful during debugging that the standard
Smalltalk debugger includes an Inspector for the object whose method is being
debugged.
Executing ''PhoneNumbers inspect''
will pop up an Inspector that allows
you to add, remove, and modify entries
in your database. So -
Smalltalk
at: #PhoneNumbers
put: Dictionary new.
by highlighting the text and choosing
"do it" from the menu.
This is Smalltalk for - create a new
global variable named PhoneNumbers
and place a newly created Dictionary
object in it.
Now you can begin adding objects to
your new Dictionary.
To retrieve an object from the PhoneNumbers Dictionary, "print it" using
the following statement :
PhoneNumbers at: #Joe.
What's Going On Here?
We're creating objects by sending
messages to other objects. The names
#Joe and #Fred are actually objects of
class Symbol (similar to String), whose
instances are unique in the system.
Once you've created #Joe, any mention of #Joe, is a reference to the existing Symbol, #Joe.
When you send the message at:put:
to the new Dictionary object PhoneNumbers with two arguments, it creates
Late-binding of
message passing
lets all users of an
object benefit from
modifications.
(Smalltalk at: #PhoneNumbers put:
Dictionary new) inspect.
a new Association object that stores the
first Symbol argument together with the
second String argument. These keyvalue pairs are very useful for symbolically representing data.
Although we' re using a Symbol as
the key and a String as the value in this
example, any object can become associated with any other object.
All objects are equipped to answer
common messages (in addition to printString and doesNotUnderstand:). One
particularly valuable one is "inspect,"
which forces an object to open a win-
creates a simple database manager,
complete with user interface! Not bad
for a line of code!
An Environment Of Reusable Parts
The key to Smalltalk productivity is
that components are reusable.
The Class Inspector is a good example. Programming often requires examining or modifying an object's
private state and this is the task of Inspector. (Without modification it's also
a debugger.)
"So," you might counter, "my
Speedo QuickWindows Mark III Library
from Ne' erdowell Software lets me do
that in C."
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Reader Service Number 111
12
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
SmaD&..11./V286
Perhaps, but does it let you easily
modify and extend the library so that
already existing applications can use the
changes? Probably not, unless your C is
late-binding. Late-binding of message
passing lets all users of an object benefit
from modifications
To get an idea of how powerful this
is, I'll briefly describe the abilities of the
major classes in Smalltalk.
Magnitude's Classes
Numeric classes are all subclasses of
Magnitude. Magnitude does very little,
it's really an abstraction for all classes of
objects that know how to compare
themselves with each other. Abstract superclasses, like Magnitude, are common
in Smalltalk.
Below Magnitude in the hierarchy
are the classes that deal with quantities,
like Date, Time, Character, and Number. Date and Time contain methods for
printing and comparing dates and
times, as well as special methods for obtaining partial information, such as day
of the week.
The class methods "Date today" and
"Time now" return a new object representing the date (or time) a message
was sent.
Class Character contains methods for
converting a character to or from ASCll,
or for determining if it's an alphanumeric, vowel, or whatever. (This
class has been successfully modified to
support Oriental character sets, with
more than 256 characters.)
Class Association, mentioned earlier,
might seem out of place as a subclass of
Magnitude. But associations connect or
associate a symbolic name with an object. And such symbolic names need
order. So two Associations need to
know how to compare themselves.
Think of Associations as entries in
the index of a book, where keywords
serve as references to page numbers.
Numbers
Class Number is an abstract superclass for objects which know about
arithmetic. You would never create an
instance of Number (since it's an
abstract class), but through inheritance,
Number provides the arithmetic ability
you would associate with a number.
Number has subclasses that do most
of the work. Float provides floatingpoint capability, and Fraction represents
a ratio between two Numbers. Fractions
may seem quaintly archaic. They are,
until you have to deal with non-integer
quantities that don't lend themselves to
floating point.
For example, using Fractions, you
can add one penny to the sum of the
National Debt. Attempting to do the
same using floating point math would
result in no change, which is convenient
to politicians, but hardly accurate. In
particular, Fraction provides a good superclass for creating a fixed-point class.
The Number subclass Integer is
another abstract class, which serves as a
superclass for LargePositiveinteger,
LargeNegativeinteger,
and
SmallInteger.
For most purposes, it's safe to treat
all these the same (with the understanding that larger integers take more
memory and execution time).
Most modern systems allow SmallIntegers between -230 and 230 -1, although some older versions of Smalltalk
limit Smalllntegers to the range of -2 14
to 214-1
Numeric Conversions
One of the nicer
things
about
Smalltalk is the way conversions between the numeric classes are handled.
With the help of the large integer clasSmalltalk
supports
infinite
ses,
precision, and conversions always attempt to maintain the greatest possible
accuracy.
For this reason, executing the simple
expression "1 /3" returns the Fraction
1/3, which is usually not what you
want. Also, if you don't need infinite
precision, you'll get better performance
by converting intermediate results to
Float.
Smalltalk is popular in numerical
and business computing, despite its
(only partially deserved) reputation for
being slow.
Collection's Classes
The next major group of classes are
Collection and its subclasses. All Collection subclasses represent objects made
up of groups of other objects. Their behavior includes methods for detecting
the inclusion or count of a particular object, adding, removing, converting Collections, and enumerating.
Enumeration is very handy. Instead
of writing clumsy, hard-to-maintain dowhile or for loops, you simply say "execute this block of code for each object
in the Collection." It doesn't matter
which Collection, or what's in it.
Enumeration methods include do:,
which simply executes the Block for
each object in the Collection; collect:,
which does the same, but saves the
result of each execution in a new Collection of the same class as the original; inject:into:, which can accumulate a running value obtained from executing the
Block; and select: and reject:, which
return a Collection of the same class as
the original that contains only those objects for which the Block returned true
or false, respectively.
We won't cover all the Collection
subclasses, but instead stick to the high
points.
Traditional Arrays
If you're more comfortable with the
traditional languages, one class in this
group will be familiar: Array. Arrays
have a fixed size, and their component
objects are accessed by an Integer (as in
other languages) beginning with the
index 1. It would be easy to implement
an Array subclass VariableOriginArray,
which would allow arbitrary Integers
for the starting and ending index, or
WrappingArray, which would map illegal indices to legal array positions.
14
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
Array subclasses include ByteArray
and String, whose elements are eight-bit
quantities. ByteArrays are useful for interfacing to hardware or accessing binary data files.
Strings are Arrays of Characters and
contain all the methods needed for
manipulating text, including comparing,
substring testing, searching and replacing, converting, abbreviation, encoding,
and displaying.
Although there are many methods in
String, strings are by their nature ubiquitous, and the power of Smalltalk is
quickly and easily put to use by the
beginner by adding useful behavior to
Strings.
Ordered
Collections absolve
the programmer of
all responsibility for
bounds checking.
By increasing the
size of an array
(etc.) it can accept
more objects.
Is There Order?
The Collection subclass OrderedCollection significantly alters the way a
C, Pascal, or Fortran programmer must
think. OrderedCollections absolve the
programmer of all responsibility for
bounds checking, by increasing the size
of an array (etc.) so it can accept more
objects. This is a difficult thing for
hybrid object-oriented languages, like
C++, Modula-2, or Ada, to accomplish,
since they typically don't have garbage
collection.
Added behavior includes methods
for adding, removing, and accessing objects at the beginning or end of the Collection, or before or after a particular
item in the Collection. We have all had
the experience of writing and rewriting
functions to do these sorts of things in C
or Pascal!
OrderedCollection has an extremely
useful subclass called SortedCollection,
which maintains a collating sequence in
its component objects, even through additions and removals. Any comparison
algorithm can be supplied to the SortedCollection. Or you can use default algorithm "greater-than-or-equal-to." Generally, the type of objects you store in a
SortedCollection will know how to compare themselves to each other, so there's
little need to provide special comparison algorithms.
Since SortedCollections are maintained in sorted order, they're hard on
performance. But you can easily change
their behavior to sort only when asked
for their entire contents.
Sets
The last major group of Collections is
the Set hierarchy. Unlike most other
Collections, Sets (and subclasses) are accessed by a hash probe, rather than by
index, and occupation of the Set by its
component objects is sparse.
This is the classical space-speed
tradeoff - adding objects can be much
faster when lots of space is available.
Because access is by hash, objects can't
be duplicated and their order in the Set
isn't maintained. But access is much
faster than if a search had to be performed, as in other Collections.
A Dictionary (e.g., a database
management system) is a Set of Associations.
You can store any type of object: including multiple-field objects or even
other Dictionaries. Dictionary is one of
the most useful Collections, and is a
good one for beginners to subclass.
The system uses Dictionaries to associate message names with the code of
a method, to store global variables, and
to manage system resources. Figure 4
shows a few of the features of Collections at work.
We begin by declaring three temporary variables, point, increment, and
collection, and assigning to them a new
Point object, the Smallinteger 20, and a
new Array object containing four
Strings.
Next, we ask the Array to convert itself to a SortedCollection, using the
default collating sequence. The resulting
SortedCollection is sent the enumeration
message do:, with the Block of code
within the square brackets as an argument.
The Block is repeated for each object
in "collection," and each time it's
repeated, the Block variable "wordu
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takes on the value of the next object in
"collection." So, each object in
"collection" is displayed on the screen
at the location "point," and "point" is
incremented by "increment."
Miscellaneous Classes
Before we move up to the classes
that do windows and graphics, we need
to mention a few housekeeping classes.
Stream and its subclasses are invaluable
for sequential access to a Collection.
Streams
While all Collections understand
enumeration behavior, sometimes it's
useful to be able to interrupt, skip forward or backward, or terminate the
enumeration of a Collection.
Streams maintain a position in their
Collection and are useful for modeling
sequential things like files or terminals.
Stream, itself, is an abstract class and
only provides instance creation. It tests
to see if you're at the end of the Collection, does basic enumeration, and
provides accessing methods for its subclasses.
ReadStrearn gives you access to a
Collection. The "next" message, for instance, returns the next object in the
Collection, and the "next:" message
takes an Integer argument and returns
the specified number of sequential objects in the Collection.
WriteStream adds write access using
the selectors nextPut: and nextPutAll:.
ReadWriteStream and FileStream understand both reading and writing messages, one on a Collection, and the other
on a file.
Boolean is an abstract superclass,
with foe subclasses True and False.
These objects understand boolean logic.
They are the objects that conditional
branching and looping messages are
sent to.
UndefinedObject has a single instance, known as nil. nil is used to initialize objects. If you get an error
notifier that mentions UndefinedObject,
chances are you forgot to initialize a
variable. And so a message was sent to
nil.
Blocks
BlockContext (or Context on some
systems) is simply a way of moving
code around the system. Conditional
branching and looping, enumeration,
error recovery, and many other functions are created from Blocks. For example, SortedCollections contains a
Block of code that compares two component objects in the SortedCollection to
determine their order.
Blocks are very useful, but they can
also waste a lot of memory and execution time. Blocks can take arguments,
which change their state (e.g., during
enumeration). The number of arguments specified when the block is
created and number sent during execution must be the same.
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Graphics
A whole group of classes represent
graphic objects. Point, mentioned earlier, represents a position in an area.
Rectangle contains two Points marking
opposite corners. Form contains a bitmap, making up the graphic image.
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MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
15
BitBlt manipulates Forms, and is
how graphics get displayed. Don't use
BitBlt as a model for your own classes
- it's better used as an example of how
Smalltalk code can be non-objectoriented!
User Interface Classes
The most important user interface
class is ParagraphEditor on Smalltalk-SO
systems and TextEditor on Smalltalk/V
systems. It handles text editing and
entry for the whole system.
SelectioninListCon troller (Lis tSelector on Smalltalk/V) provides a simple
way to choose an item out of a list. Unlike pop-up or pull-down menus, these
lists are scrollable. You'll see these
throughout the system as "subviews,"
or windows within other windows.
The Inspector class (mentioned earlier) is one of the most versatile performers in the user interface group. It
allows you to examine and modify the
private state of an object. It combines a
SelectioninListView, to allow selecting a
variable from a list of all variables of the
object, with a ParagraphEditor, used to
view or modify the selected variable's
contents. Its subclass DictionaryImpector allows selection of the inspected object by key.
FileList lets you examine files and
directories, and typically includes a list
of files or directories and a window for
editing a selected file.
The important aspect of having the
source code to all the classes that make
up the environment is that you can customize it, even the user interface, to suit
yourself.
Don't like the way a menu is set up
or want more items on it? Change it!
Want to change the way the window
panes look? Do it! Want to make the interface to the file system work differently? Go ahead!
Decision Points For Potential Users
Primarily, Smalltalk is a language
and environment for rapid program
development. In other words, it's ideal
for hackers. Some studies show that
Smalltalk programmers are about five
times more productive than Pascal or C
programmers, and up to 25 times more
productive than folks working in assembly.
On the flip side, Smalltalk applications aren't easy to separate from the
environment, and this makes delivering
applications difficult. The Smalltalk environment is large, and has a (partially
deserved) reputation for being slow.
16
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
Smalltalk is also attacked for being
wordy, but usually by those who think
you need to write a lot of code. Code
reusability,
combined
with
copy I cut/paste editing, means that an
experienced Smalltalk programmer
generally spends less time typing than a
C programmer.
"Make it work, then make it fast," is
something we all need to repeat to ourselves from time to time. Smalltalk
makes it work like no other, and when
it comes time to make it fast, there is
help. All popular versions of Smalltalk
include some means for access to assembly code, and Tektronix and
Digitalk Smalltalk include full access to
all system calls.
If you decide to buy a Smalltalk implementation and work for someone
with deep pockets, consider getting a
Smalltalk-SO
variant.
ParcPlace
Smalltalk-SO is available on many platforms, but at a kilobuck a pop, it's
probably not a personal purchase.
If your employer has "really deep"
pockets, buy a Tektronix bitmap
workstation. Smalltalk' s included. And
the Tektronix hard ware and Unix port
have been designed for Smalltalk, so it's
better integrated.
If you're running on a PC clone or a
Mac II, then Smalltalk-V is your best
bet. It's inexpensive, well-supported,
and the Mac II and 802S6 versions are
very fast. The environment, while differing considerably from Smalltalk-SO,
shares a large group of Smalltalk-SO
classes. The version that runs on vanilla
SOSS PCs is cheap, but lacks the speed
and object space necessary for large applications.
Vendors
Digitalk, Inc., has sold more copies
of its version of Smalltalk, called
Smalltalk/V, than any other Smalltalk
on the market. It runs on a number of
platforms, and has been pared down
especially for PCs. The version we
bought came with 99 classes. It has very
clearly written,
nicely
formatted
documentation - some people would
pay for the manual alone what we paid
for the package, since you can't buy the
manual without the software.
Smalltalk/V requires an IBM-PC,
PC/XT, PC/ AT, or compatible and PCcosts $99.95.
DOS or MS-DOS Smalltalk/V2S6 operates with the DOS
operating system on AT class computers and requires a minimum of 1-1.5
MB of memory costs $199.95.
Digitalk's Macintosh Smalltalk/V runs
on the Mac II, the Mac SE, and the Mac
Plus; it will be available in the Fall costs $199.95. There are applications kits
available for color, communications,
and other goodies - they cost $49.95
each. For more info Digitalk, Inc.
9841 Airport Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90045
1-S00-922-S255
1-213-645-10S2
ParcPlace Systems sells Smalltalk-SO
for a number of platforms manufactured by Sun, Apollo, Hewlett-Packard
and others, plus Apple Macintosh II,
Plus, and SE workstations. See publications section for their address to write
for specific information. Prices are over
$1,000.
Tektronix was one of four companies
that contributed to the development of
Smalltalk-SO in the late 70s and early
SOs. Apple, Digital Equipment Corporation, Hewlett-Packard and Tektronix
were test sites for early versions of the
system Xerox was developing - they
each were expected to develop a full
implementation of a written specification of the interpreter.
Tektronix has been developing its
own implementation of the system since
then, extending it from a version that
Xerox PARC released in 19S3. They
have a very extensive class library, collection of tools, and reusable components. Tektronix Smalltalk is only
available on Tektronix workstations.
A Little Smalltalk is a version of
Smalltalk that runs under UNIX on lineoriented (conventional) terminals. The
interpreter is written in C. It's available
for distribution cost on 9-track tape in
"tar" format. This Smalltalk doesn't
support graphics (no windows, no
mouse), but it's an inexpensive way to
learn object-oriented programming. For
more infoSmalltalk Distribution
Department of Computer Science
Oregon State University
Corvallis, OR 97331
Periodicals
BYTE magazine, August 19Sl issue.
Entire issue devoted to Smalltalk-SO. A
collection of articles that provide an interesting and authoritative introduction
to Smalltalk.
HOOPLA! (Hooray for Object-Oriented
Programming Languages!) is published
quarterly by Object-Oriented Programming
for
Smalltalk
Application
Developers Association (OOPSTAD).
Annual individual membership in the
U.S. is $25.
published by ParcPlace Systems (PPS),
Xerox Corporation. It focuses on new
PPS products and services and applications written in this vendor's Smalltalk80.
HOOPLA!
P.O. Box 1565
Everett, WA 98206-1565, USA
electronic bulletin board, 300/1200
baud: 1-206-252-9048
ParcPlace Systems
2400 Geng Road
Palo Alto, CA 94303
1-415-859-1000 (in CA)
1-800-822-7880
Journal of Object-Oriented Programming (JOOP) is published bimonthly.
U.S. annual individual subscription is
$49.
theActiveView is a quarterly newsletter available free of charge to Tektronix
Smalltalk customers. It focuses on features of Tektronix' implementation of
Smalltalk-80, programming tips column
applicable to Smalltalks from all vendors, updates on documentation and
training classes offered by Tektronix.
Send a postcard with your name, company name, address and phone number
to:
JOOP
P.O. Box 968
Fort Washington, PA 19034
1-800-345-8112
SCOOP is a newsletter published by
Digitalk, Inc., for their Smalltalk/V customers who've sent in their signed warranty card. It contains new product and
upgrade
information,
bug
fixes,
programming tips, and other news.
The
Smalltalk-BO Newsletter
is
Books
Budd, Timothy. A Little Smalltalk.
Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1987.
Goldberg, Adele and Robson, David.
Smalltalk-BO: The Language and Its Implementation. Reading, MA: AddisonWesley, 1983.
Goldberg, Adele. Smalltalk-BO: The Interactive
Programming
Environment.
Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1984.
Pinson, Lewis J. and Wiener, Richard
S. An Introduction to Object-Oriented
Programming and Smalltalk. Reading,
MA: Addison-Wesley, 1988.
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MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
17
Actor, An Object-Oriented Language
Taming Microsoft Windozvs
I'll try (real hard) to avoid the puns this
time and simply set the stage. Actor is an
object-oriented language written to run
under windows.
When I first heard about Actor, I assumed it was a simple windows creator. I
was wrong, very wrong. So I leave it to you
to decide if Actor means curtains for the
more classical performers.
lthough object-oriented programming has existed for years on expensive dedicated computers, it's
only recently reached PC users.
In this article I'll introduce you to object-oriented programming via a useful
(real world) example - a critical path
project
manager.
This
example
demonstrates several of the virtues of
OOP (object-oriented programming),
such as encapsulation and inheritance,
and programming in the Microsoft Windows environment using my favorite language - Actor.
The application was easier to develop
(and understand) using an objectoriented approach. I spent about two and
a half man-weeks conceptualizing and
programming, or about two-thirds of the
time I would have spent using C, even
though I have more experience with C.
In particular, I was able to reuse more
code than I would have in C, and building the user interface was easier.
The project manager is similar to commercially available products such as
SuperProject or MacProject, but on a
smaller scale. It allows you to define a
project as a group of related tasks and
then compute the critical path of the
project, its total cost, and so on.
The critical path is the sequence of activities that must be completed in a
scheduled time to meet a project deadline. Some activities done in parallel may
not be on the critical path, and thus have
additional "slack time."
A
18
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
Editor's note: a standalone version of
Zack's application that runs under Microsoft
Windows, including complete source code, is
available for downloading from the Micro
Cornucopia RBBS, on the issue #44 disk, or
directly from the author.
What Is OOP?
Unlike traditional languages where
data is separate from the operations you
perform on it, object-oriented languages
connect data and functionality into
modules known as objects.
Each object has a set of attributes
(data) and operations. Objects can be
"things" found in traditional languages
such as arrays, strings, numbers, characters, files, etc. Actor includes a rich set of
predefined objects such as stacks, queues,
sets, dictionaries, windows, dialog boxes,
etc.
Object-oriented Design
When designing an application in a
procedural language such as C or Pascal,
you'd probably begin by designing the
data structures and then determining the
functions you need. In object-oriented
languages the data and functionality are
combined in objects, so you don't consider programs in terms of routines that
manipulate passive data. Instead, you
think of a collection of active objects that
operate on themselves.
So you need to determine which objects will make up the system, and the
easiest way to do this is to develop a
logical model of the system you're trying
to create.
In cases where there is no clear logical
model, you can determine the objects
based on the user interface. For example,
the objects you'd use for a spreadsheet
would include the spreadsheet window
and the cells.
The Project Manager
An approach you can take in the
project manager is to set up a project ob-
ject which is a network of nodes. Each
node is an activity: either a task or a
milestone. Tasks are activities which consume time and resources. Milestones are
used to mark the completion of tasks.
For example, developing software is a
task that will take time and money. Or
you might have a milestone to indicate
that the specs are written for a product
and that it's time to begin programming
and writing the user manual. The milestone itself doesn't take any time or have
any cost; it just marks the completion of a
phase in the project.
Since our application will run under
Microsoft Windows, you also need to
create a project window object that can
draw a diagram of the network, handle
menu commands, and so on.
If possible, you want to preserve the
functional divisions in the logical model.
For example, the project object shouldn't
be concerned with details of how the
total cost of a task is calculated; let the
task worry about it! The only thing the
project needs to know is how to update
the total if the cost of a task changes.
Good object-oriented design encourages the creation of abstract data objects that clearly define public protocol
and hide implementation details. Although this approach isn't required by
Actor, I strongly encourage it since it can
minimize maintenance headaches.
The object-oriented design approach
requires more work up front, but
generally pays off in the long run by
providing better encapsulation than the
traditional procedural approach.
Figure 1 lists some of the objects I'll
use for the project manager.
Messages & Methods
An object is capable of responding to
messages that are sent to it by other objects, by itself, or by the system. For example, you can print an object by sending it a print message. The code in Figure
2 illustrates some message sends.
By Zack Urlocker
The Whitewater Group
906 University Place
Evanston, Illinois 60201
312-491-2370
Figure 1 - Objects in the Project Manager Application.
Network
Node
a generic network of nodes with a start and end
a generic node capable of connecting itself
Project
Activity
Milestone
Task
PERTTask
a network that knows the critical path method
a node with an earlyStart and lateFinish
an activity that uses no time or resources
an activity that has time, resources and cost
a Task where the time is estimated by PERT
Resource
used by a task; has a name and cost
ProjWindow
Gantt Window
a window that can display a network diagram
a window that can display a Gantt chart
/***/
Figure 2 - Examples of Message Sends.
print(A);
draw(rect, hDC);
cost := calcCost(P);
reSize(aWindow, wp, lp);
/*all objects know how to print*/
/*draw a rect in the display*/
/*whatever Pis, get its cost*/
/*the system tells us to resize*/
/***/
Figure 3 - A Sample Method Definition.
/* This method defines the calcCost message for the Task
class. Self refers to the task that receives the message.
Time, resources and cost are instance variables defined
for the Tasks.
The cost is the fixedCost plus the variable cost of each
resource used by the task. If the cost changes, send a
message to the network to update its cost. */
Def calcCost(self I oldCost)
{
oldCost := cost;
cost := fixedCost;
/* store our old cost as a temp */
/* starting value for the cost */
do(resources,
/* loop through the resources */
{using(res)
/* res is the loop variable */
cost .- cost + getFixedCost(res)
+ getTime(self) * getVariableCost(res);
});
if cost <> oldCost then
updateCost(network, cost - oldCost);
endif;
"cost;
I* return the new cost */
/***/
Message sends are similar to function
calls in procedural languages, with some
important differences (1) The first parameter is the receiver
of the message; the other parameters are
arguments.
(2) The message makes no assumptions about the "type" of the receiver or
the arguments; they're simply objects.
This provides a great deal of flexibility
since you can have different objects
respond to the same message in their
own way. This is known as polymorphism (or literally, "many behaviors").
For example, you might have a calcCost message that can be sent to either a
project or a task and, using calcCost' s algorithm, will calculate the cost of the
project or task
The implementation of a message for
a class of object is called a method, and it
corresponds to a function definition in a
procedural language. Figure 3 shows a
sample method definition for calcCost for
the Task class.
Actor source code looks a lot like Pascal or C. Most programmers find this
makes it easy to learn. The method
definition begins with the Def keyword
followed by the name of the method, the
receiver (always referred to as self), any
arguments, and after a vertical bar, any
local variables.
The do message is defined for all collection classes and lets us loop through
the resources array referring to each element of the array in tum. If, later, you
decide that the resources should be
handled as a lookup table or a set, calcCost will still work correctly since all of
these collections understand a do message.
Actor is an interactive environment.
You write methods with an editor called
a browser, compile them, and test them,
as easy as one-two-three.
Classes Of Objects
Every object belongs to a class. A class
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
19
is like a data type in procedural languages, but much more powerful. Classes define the data that make up objects
and the messages that objects understand.
For example, a stack class (actually
called OrderedCollection) includes instance variables firstElement and lastElement and responds to messages such
as push and pop.
Instance variables are attributes of an
object and are like fields in a record
structure in C or Pascal. You can create
new classes and define methods using
the browser.
Rather than access the private instance
variables of a class directly using the dot
notation (e.g., stack.firstElement) you can
encapsulate the data by using messages
only. That way you reduce the dependencies on the implementation.
For example, if you need to get the
time required for an activity x, you
should send a getTime(x) message rather
than refer directly to the instance variable
x.time.
It doesn't matter if x is a Milestone, a
Task, a PERTTask or even a Project, as
long as it knows how to respond to a getTime message. This can make the critical
path recalculation algorithm easier to
write since you eliminate special cases for
Milestones; you just define its getTime
method to return zero. This results in significant savings in code.
Inheritance
What really makes classes powerful is
the use of inheritance. You can create
descendant classes that build on the
functionality already found in the system.
For example, the OrderedCollection
class mentioned earlier descends from
the Array class. Similarly, you can create
descendants of classes like Window and
Dialog to build the user interface to this
application without having to know the
more than 400 Microsoft Windows function calls. Descendant classes automatically include much of the generic windowing behavior that users expect in a
Windows application.
Inheritance lets us reuse code when
something is "a little different" from an
object that already exists. For example, I
defined the classes Network and Node to
provide generic network connection
capabilities. You can create a new network, connect some nodes to it, disconnect nodes and so on.
This may not be very exciting, but it
lets us factor out part of the application,
test it, and then forget about it. Since
20
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
Figure 4 - The Connect Method.
Public protocol :
connect(Nl, N2);
/* e.g. Nl -> N2 */
Private implementation:
/*Connect self->aNode by updating self's outputs and
aNode's inputs. Also, aNode should know it's network
and the position should be set. */
Def connect(self, aNode)
{ addinputs(aNode, self);
addOutputs(self, aNode);
setNetwork(aNode, network);
setPosn(aNode, self);
/*To connect node nl->n2, nl's outputs must contain n2. */
Def addOutputs(self, aNode)
{ add(outputs, aNode);
}
/*To connect nl->n2, n2's inputs must contain nl. */
Def addinputs(self, aNode)
{ add(inputs, aNode);
}
/***/
there's nothing inherently network or
node-like in the system already, these
classes descend directly from class Object.
Rather than keep track of the connections in the network, the nodes themselves maintain a set of input nodes and
output nodes as instance variables inputs
and outputs. The network, then, just
maintains the start and end nodes. The
network is actually implemented as a
doubly-linked list, but this is "private"
information and is encapsulated with
connect and disconnect methods.
You can implement the connect
method (see Figure 4) as addOutputs and
addinputs messages since both the nodes
must know about the connection that is
made. These two steps could easily have
been done in the connect method, but by
having each node manage its own instance variables, you can deal with networks made up of other networks.
The setPosn method is another example of private protocol. I use this
method to update the onscreen position
of the node and I wrote the disconnect
method in a similar fashion.
Interactive Tools
Once you've defined the network and
node classes, you can create a network
and examine it to make sure it's as you
expect. Actor encourages an interactive
programming style and has a rich set of
tools to make it easy to test and debug
code one piece at a time.
If any runtime errors show up, a
source code debugger will pop up
automatically. You can fix the code on
the fly and resume execution.
Any time you want to examine an object, you can call up an inspector and see
the values of the instance variables. You
can also inspect the instance variables of
an object from within another inspector
and trace through an entire network easily.
Actor also has a code profiler that you
can use to determine which methods will
give you the most optimization. You can
then selectively use early binding techniques to speed up critical code by
eliminating the message send overhead.
With the proper use of early binding in
critical areas, you can improve performance by 25 to 30%.
The Project Manager Classes
Once you're sure the generic Network
and Node classes are working properly,
you can define the Project, Activity, and
other classes listed in Figure 2.
The Project class will descend directly
from the Network class and include additional functionality related to the application. For example, you need to be
able to recalculate the critical path of the
project.
The Activity class is a formal class
that will group behavior common between its descendants Milestone and
Task. You won't ever create Activities
themselves (except for testing), instead
they'll always be either a Milestone or a
Task.
Alternatively, you could have had
Task descend from Milestone, but you'd
ICTIONARY
A Dictionary is a collection of data pairs, much like an English language dictionary is a collection of term/definition pairs. The "term" entry is the key and the "definition" entry is the value of the pair, or association.
A Dictionary functions like a single-key database. This is how you create an object of class Dictionary with room
for two key/value pairs:
Workerl
.-
new(Dictionary,
2);
Next fill the dictionary with strings as keys like "Name" and "Age" and the corresponding values, the string
"Sam Jones" and the integer 22. You are free to mix data types.
Workerl["Name"]
Workerl["Age"]
"Sam
22;
Jones";
Like a database, an Actor dictionary grows when you add to it more entries than you originally specified. Below,
the dictionary grows from 2 to 4 as you add two more entries, or pairs:
Workerl["Department"]
Workerl ["Reviews"] . -
#(85
#Engineering;
73 98 94 100);
Mixing data types allows great flexibility. You can even incorporate the above dictionary, Workerl, as a value in
an entry of another dictionary, as in Employees below:
Employees
.new (Dictionary,
Employees ["Sam"]
.- Workerl;
10) ;
Access the data in a dictionary by specifying the appropriate keys. The following statement returns the
array #(85 73 98 100):
AWorkersReview
Employees ["Sam"] ["Reviews"];
You can also retrieve data from dictionaries by enumerating over the dictionary and extracting particular
entries. Here is how to create a separate "database" of employees working in the Engineering department:
Engineers
.- extract(Employees,
{using(employee)
employee["Department"]
#Engineering});
Another feature allows you to create a new database incorporating only a subset of the original's data. You do it
. by enumerating over a dictionary and collecting particular data about every entry:
MailingList
collect(Employees,
{using(employee)
employee["Address"] });
Dictionary objects are available in Actor as ready-made units of functionality. They can be modified or specialized for any application. However, as programmers, you are never involved in a dictionary's physical implementation or memory management.
Technical Specifications
•Runs with Microsoft Windows l .x, 2.0 and 386.
•Pure, single-inheritance object-oriented language,
incrementally compiled.
•Dynamic linking to C, Pascal, Assembler, or Fortran
libraries. Pass data in C structures.
•Pascal and C-like syntax.
•Programming tools: Browser, Inspector, Debugger,
File Editor.
•Full access to MS-Windows systems calls, multitasking, and DDE.
•Fast device-independent graphics: lines, shapes,
icons, cursors, bitmaps, metafiles, Turtle graphics,
sample control language using YACC.
• 150 classes, 1500 functions, fully extensible.
• Window styles: tiled, overlapping, popup, child, edit,
dialogs. Controls: list boxes, scroll bars, buttons,
check boxes.
• Data structures: stacks, arrays, queues, lists,
dictionaries, sets, sorting, hashing, intervals.
•AI support: frames, symbols, dictionaries, lists,
symbolic programming, functional arguments.
Parsing and lexical analysis YACC compatible.
• String manipulation: substring, concat, append,
insert, remove, search.
• 643-page manual includes tutorial and reference.
•No license fees. Generates stand-alone applications.
•Fastest interactive OOL available.
Prices
Actor $495 • Academic $99 • Academic site license
$99 •Manuals for site license $35 • New! Language
Extension I $99 •Shipping $5 US, $25 lnt'l
Tech Support: Level 1 (20 phone calls) $100 • Level 2
(Developer's package) $250
Training Courses: 201 Intro. to Actor and OOP (2
days) $395 • 202 Actor Developer's Workshop (3 days)
$795 • 203 Both 201 and 202 (1 week) $995
Reader Service Number 116
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
21
then inherit inappropriate behavior (certainly not good!).
Similarly, you could define a class
called PERTiask that descends from
Task that uses the Project Evaluation and
Review Technique (PERT) for estimating
time. The only methods you'd have to
write would be those related to calculating time; everything else would be inherited.
By using inheritance you reduce the
amount of code you need to write and
the amount of testing. Once a method is
written for the Activity class, you know it
will work for any descendant classes.
Figure 5 shows a class tree of the classes
in the application. Note that all classes
descend from the Object class.
Figure 5 - The Class Tree Diagram.
Object
Windows
Object
Network
Window
Project
ProjWindow
Resource
Milestone
Task
PERTTask
The Recak Algorithm
The user can set automatic recalculation to recalculate the critical path any
time a change is made; or alternatively
he or she can turn off automatic recalculation, make several changes, and then
recalculate the entire network.
The critical path recalc algorithm must
make two passes: a forward pass, recalcl,
used to compute the earlyStart times of
activities; a backward pass, recalc2, computes the lateFinish time and the slack.
When an activity's time changes, it sends
a recalcl message forward to all of its
outputs, who send it to their outputs,
and so on.
Like today's popular spreadsheets, the
project manager uses a minimal recalc algorithm so that only parts of the project
that actually change are recalculated.
The recalcl message is only passed on
if the earlyStart or time changes, otherwise the outputs don't need to be recalculated.
Figure 6 shows the critical path recalculation algorithm.
Windows Objects
Of course, it'd be nice to have
pulldown menus and graphic displays of
the results. Since Actor is a Microsoft
Windows development environment,
these are easy.
Microsoft Windows is already somewhat object-oriented. When the user
clicks on the mouse or presses a key, MSWindows will send a message to the appropriate window. Because of the objectoriented
approach,
programming
Microsoft Windows is much easier in
Actor than in a procedural language like
C. Actor has predefined classes for windows, dialog boxes, scroll bars, etc.
You'll define a new window class,
called ProjWindow, which inherits the
22
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
Figure 6 -The Critical Path Recalculation Algorithm.
Network class methods:
/* Recalculate the entire network. Invalidate all nodes
so that a full recalc will be forced. Then do both the
forward and backwards recalc passes. The forward pass
must be completed before doing the backwards pass. */
Def recalc(self)
{ invalidate(start, new(Set,10)); /*clear all nodes*/
cost := 0;
/* recalc cost */
recalcl(start, true, true);
/*force entire recalc */
recalc2(self);
/*backwards pass*/
/* Do the backwards pass only starting from the end node.
The end node is always critical. */
Def recalc2(self)
{ recalc2(end);
end.critical := true;
Activity class methods:
/* Recalculate the network from this node onwards.
This requires forcing a forward recalcl and a
backwards recalc2 from the end of the net. */
Def recalc(self)
{ recalcl(self,true,nil);
/*force forward recalcl */
recalc2(network);
/*do backwards recalc2 */
/*Recalculate an activity's earlyStart. If the user has
set an earlyStart, use it instead of recalculating.
Send a message to the node's outputs to recalculate only
if a forced recalc is required, or if earlyStart changes.
formula:
ES= max(ES(i) + time(i)) for all inputs i
arguments:
timeChanged: force a recalcl if the time has changed
costRequired: force a calcCost(self) if true
*I
Def recalcl(self, timeChanged, costRequired loldEarlyStart)
{ if (costRequired)
calcCost(self);
endif;
oldEarlyStart := earlyStart;
/* temporary */
if (userEarlyStart)
earlyStart := userEarlyStart;
/* user over ride */
continued on page 24
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'-················································--···-----·MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
23
Finally Affordable Intelligence.
"default" behavior needed in Windows
applications. Note that ProjWindow and
Project are unrelated in the class tree.
ProjWindow does not descend from
Project since it's not project-like. Rather, a
ProjWindow simply contains a project
object as an instance variable.
By having two distinct classes, you
clearly separate the user interface issues
from the recalculating of the critical path
handled by the project and its activities.
This makes it easy to have different types
of windows display projects in different
ways.
ProjWindow can display a network
diagram of the activities while a GanttWindow will display a time line graph
known as a Gantt chart. In both cases,
the windows will send messages to the
project to select particular activities, edit
them, recalculate the critical path and so
on.
Conclusion
Object-oriented programming encourages the creation of abstract data objects with a well-defined public protocol
and a private implementation. The result
is a program that's easier to develop and
maintain.
The project manager is a good
demonstration of object-oriented principles put into action. And with its
graphics, fast recalculation, file load and
save capabilities, it's downright useful.
•••
Continued from page 22
TINY EINSTEIN
else
earlyStart := O;
/* find largest ES */
do(inputs,
{using(input)
earlyStart := max(earlyStart,
getEarlyStart(input) + getTime(input));
The Expert System Shell
• Create your own expert
systems in minutes.
}) ;
endif;
• With pulldown menus
and windows
/* Recalculate outputs if earlyStart changed OR if time
changed. Don't force it to beyond the next level. */
• Context-sensitive online help
• Free example expert systems
if timeChanged or (earlyStart <> oldEarlyStart)
do (outputs,
{using(output) recalcl(output, nil, costRequired);
• Tutorial
endif;
}) ;
• Interactive full-screen
text editor
/*Recalculate an activity's lateFinish then its slack and
determine if its critical.
If the user has set a lateFinish, use it instead of
recalculating. LateFinish recalc goes backwards from a
node to its inputs. Always propogate recalc2 since a
change to the time of a node will not change lateFinish,
but it can change slack and critical, which are only
known on the backwards pass.
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formula:
LF
= min(LF(i)
- time(i)) for all outputs i
*I
Def
recalc2(self)
{
if userLateFinish
lateFinish := userLateFinish;
/* user override */
else
lateFinish := MAXINT;
/* find smallest LF */
do(outputs,
{using(output)
lateFinish := min(lateFinish,
getLateFinish(output) - getTime(output));
});
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endif;
Reader Service Number 72
calcSlack(self);
calcCritical(self);
Designed & implemented by
Gary Entsminger & Larry Fogg
/* Continue sending the recalc2 message. */
do (inputs,
{using(input)
recalc2(input);
});
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24 MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
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Reader Service Number 88
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988 25
Thinking Objectively
A Biological Approach To Designing Neural Networks
Computers are dumb. Right? They only
do what you tell them. Right? Even expert
systems boil down to a list of rules, and
that's about as fancy as computers can get.
Right?
Wrong. (You knew I'd say that.)
If Doug and Arthur are correct, we'll
just teach computers how to learn and then
turn them loose. In no time at all, they'll be
the experts. All by themselves. Mankind can
go back to manual labor.
ur minds have the (as vet)
machine-unsimulatable ability to
make sense out of noise. We can
distinguish individual (and often subtle)
meaning out of a cacophony of sounds.
Imagine a symphony. You not only
hear the orchestra (as a whole), but also
distinguish many of the individual instruments. You can even hear people
whispering in the audience or the siren
of an emergency vehicle outside.
You differentiate among sounds although they occur simultaneously, have
overlapping frequencies, and are input
through only two analog channels your ears. In your mind, different sounds
represent different "objects."
The ability to recognize objects is essential for high-level intelligence and
must precede, to some degree, any highlevel association of meaning.
If a squirrel, for example, repeatedly
sees a cat and learns that the cat is
dangerous, it first recognizes the cat as a
separate object in the real world. Then it
associates the object, cat, with danger.
The recognition step is essential.
Without it the squirrel would have no
quick way of associating danger danger would be entwined with an infinite number of real world stimuli. The
learning of objects is fundamental to intelligent organisms. And it's of equal importance in the design of intelligent
machines. Despite this, we don't have a
O
26 MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
good understanding of the idea of object.
For the past three years, we've been
building systems that use conventional
and electronic technology to explore (in
depth) the idea of the object. The results
are encouraging.
We believe that a better understanding of what the object is will
remove a longstanding roadblock in the
transition from fixed design methods
(e.g., expert systems) to the development
of truly automatic learning technologies.
In this article we'll present some of
the fundamental concepts involved with
object recognition and some general approaches to implementation.
Who Teaches?
Many traditional neural networks can
learn to recognize stimuli - but these
networks must be told what they're
learning. We do this by telling the network to learn when the desired stimuli
are present. In other words, we teach the
network.
We decide what the network will
learn by placing chosen stimuli (objects)
in nonconflicting scenes, and directing
the network to respond when it recognizes a particular set of stimuli. Is this
how animals learn?
We don't think so. Although you
might argue that animals learn about
danger from their parents or from their
genes, it seems more likely that the
world, itself, contains the clues needed
by animals to group information. So far,
neural nets have not tried to automatically extract this information.
Seen It Before; See It Again
Most of us make the erroneous assumption that neural tissue "takes in"
data, puts it somewhere, remembers
where to retrieve it, and reproduces the
data intact. Conventional computers
operate this way, but neural tissue
doesn't. It neither stores input data nor
needs to!
How can tissue remember (recognize)
objects if it hasn't stored data?
Good question. When remembered
stimuli appear at the input of neural tissue, the tissue responds, that is, it determines whether it knows (has experienced) the stimulus.
In other words, if the tissue has experienced a stimulus or group of stimuli
before, it can experience it again. See
Figure 1.
Animal Leaming
There are many animals, some very
complex, that appear to learn little (or
nothing) in their short lifetimes. The
highly stereotyped responses of many insects fall into this category. How do these
animals acquire their useful behaviors?
When we realize that life, in general,
is a learning system, we realize that the
design of these insects (their genetic
makeup) was learned through repeated
testing and gradual improvement. The
result is similar to a well-tested expert
system that's been given the necessary
complexity to be successful.
But many animals (like people) seem
to learn throughout their lifetimes. They
absorb knowledge of an extremely complex real world and automatically adjust
to deal with it. It's known that we have
over 10,000,000,000,000 neural synapses
and only about 100,000 genes, or
developmental instructions, to encode
these connections.
It's obvious that these are far too few
genes to supply enough information for
the design of such high-level order. The
genes, nevertheless, provide the necessary framework to get learning under
way, although most of the complexity of
life is acquired (learned) thereafter
through experience.
As the designers of artificial intelligence systems, we might consider a
similar approach. A fixed design would
work in many simpler cases, but we'd
have trouble deliberately designing-in the
By Doug Gaffin & Arthur Gaffin
Dept' of Zoology
Oregon State U.
Corvallis, OR 97331
complexity of a high-level intelligent system. A modified form of mammalian intelligence may actually be the best approach. If we design and build the
framework, the rest of the system can be
self-learned.
The Forces Of Weak Association
Within real world experiences, there
are relationships between events that
provide hooks for learning. We call these
relationships "the forces of weak association."
The term weak is used because these
relationships are useful only in a statisti-
cal sense - they don't provide immediate absolute associations. These observations are simple and very important. They give intelligent animals the
ability to gradually develop a correct and
complex model (not a copy) of nature.
The forces of weak association are (1) If a stimulus is similar to another
stimulus, not necessarily occurring at the
same time, then the associated events in
nature are likely to be related.
(2) If two or more stimuli are
repeatedly encountered proximate with
each other, in terms of time and/or
space, the events are likely to be related.
Figure 1 - Simple Leaming
LEARNING:
CJ) ~ :c>----~o J
)
NO
RESPONSE
••
•
LEARNING:
RESPONSE
FOR CUBE
RECOGNITION:
RESPONSE
FOR CUBE
0
~
RECOGNITION:
p---------..0 J
)
NO
RESPONSE
N euro Dynamics
1514 Canna Court
Mt. View, CA 94043
(3) The more proximate the observation, the more important the relationship.
(4) The more frequent the observation,
the more important the relationship.
(5) Most events in nature are continuous. For example: If an object is
detected at one moment, it is likely to
remain present for an extended period.
The All-Important Object
Let's look at the concept of an object
in more detail. Suppose we show Rob,
our robot, a coffee cup that's resting on a
table. We want Rob to learn to recognize
coffee cups. To make this task more interesting, assume that the cup casts a
shadow.
If Rob is to learn what a coffee cup
looks like, he must learn where the cup
ends and the table begins. And he must
recognize that the shadow isn't part of
the table.
How do we recognize shadows, cups,
and tables? By learning their intrinsic
qualities during many experiences of
cup, table, shadow.
We see the cup in different locations
and circumstances on the table. We observe the stimuli that relate to the cup,
say the handle, to be more frequently
with the rest of the cup. And we observe
stimuli that more frequently relate to the
table, cup or no cup. The shadow is really no different; we observe it most frequently with the cup. Therefore, the
shadow eventually becomes part of the
cup object.
With this in mind, let's define an object An object occurs when certain patterns of stimuli repeat themselves, in a
manner that's similar, in terms of time
and/ or space, with a frequency of repetition that is, on the average, relatively
high.
Or, more simply An object occurs when two or more
stimuli are observed repeatedly together.
The real world is ordered (we order it!)
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
27
through a multitude of associations. Objects represent the embodiment of this
order - forming the basis of fundamental associations.
Objects Yield Hierarchies of Knowledge
Suppose we have a piece of neural tissue and we program it (give it the
ability) to learn and recognize frequent
combinations of stimuli. We also
program it to respond uniquely to each
of these learned patterns of stimuli.
This is a high frequency filter emerging responses correspond only
with frequently occurring events at the
input. Infrequent events aren't remembered and, therefore, aren't passed to the
output as responses.
Figure 2 - Hierarchies
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The events that are learned by this
piece of tissue are objects. The organism
takes the world for what it is and extracts
information from it to build its model.
An infant in its first days of visual experiences can't physically alter its visible
world, except for the direction and
quality of view. The initial flow of data is
largely one-way, from the real world to
the infant.
The most frequent of these patterns of
stimuli will be learned first and these will
consist of small relationships that repeat
themselves frequently - long edges,
comers, basic shading patterns, types of
blobs, etc.
The next level of learning will be in
terms of these low-level features. Since
the input stimuli of the next level are the
responses from the first level, the next
level sees its real world through the filters of the first level.
A third level may be added in the
same manner, and so on. With many
levels, very general and complex objects
can be learned and recognized. See
Figure 2.
Tricks Of Tissue
How can we design a simple, fast,
and self-adjusting mechanism that
automatically learns to sort out the most
frequent stimuli? Let's look at a piece of
tissue at one level in the hierarchy. How
can it remember to recognize only stimuli
that are frequently observed and therefore important?
Studies suggest that neural tissue
employs temporary memory in the
synapses (points of connection between
neurons). These synapses are eventually
converted to permanent memory if
repeatedly reinforced. Some studies also
suggest that neural growth may be affected by the level of activity the neuron.
Also, the growth of some neurons
seems to be affected by the activity of adjacent neural processes. It's therefore possible that neurons may be selectively
seeking other neurons with high levels of
firing activity with which to form connections (synapses).
Uninvolved neural processes can be
allowed to forget by remaining unconnected, being routed around (overwritten) and, in certain cases, atrophying.
Biological systems have developed other
tricks as well to selectively filter only the
most frequent of stimuli.
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28 MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
Trick 1: Crowding
By simply "crowding" the tissue, we
can create a competition for synapses.
Less frequent stimuli will be reinforced
less often and tend to become overpowered. See Figure 3.
Crowding gives neural tissue a
simple, automatic mechanism to reduce
the complexity of real world data - it
reduces the data to the most important
(frequent) events and responds only to
these. The next level can repeat the
process using the output of the previous
level, thereby automatically creating orderly hierarchies.
Trick 2: Inhibitory Synapses
Studies have shown that the connections (synapses) between neurons are inhibitory as well as stimulating by nature.
When neural activity of inhibitory
neurons reaches one of the places where
two neurons touch, the pre-synaptic
neuron inhibits activity in the postsynaptic neuron.
Since one neuron may contact as
many as 10,000 other neurons, we can
see that many neurons may be silenced
(or at least partly silenced). This
phenomenon can implement crowding
even when there are more than enough
synapses. It also causes active ideas in
that tissue to choose addresses (synapses)
that are as unique as possible for use as
memory. Animal tissue, therefore, has
implemented a clever, fault-tolerant addressing scheme that works even if some
of the tissue is damaged.
Now that we understand why we
need these inhibitory synapses, we can
select whichever techniques work. It's
important to note that we don't need to
use the massively parallel approach once
we understand what problem these tissue features are solving.
Figure 3 - Crowding
----C>
------iC>
----C>
----C>
----C>
CROWDING is useful for learning and recognizing only the more important patterns of stimuli.
Note that the pathwidth set of possible values of the input stimulus is greater than that of the response,
thereby forcing a net reduction of the incoming data.
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MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
29
Trick 3: Winners Tire
If you look at Necker's cube for 30
seconds (see Figure 4), it appears to flip
back-and-forth between two opposing interpretations (ideas). We can speculate
that the winning idea eventually fatigues
and, therefore, allows the second one to
win.
Eventually that one fatigues, and the
first idea wins again, and so on. Since the
first idea is still partially fatigued from
the first time, it will fatigue more quickly
this time. The flip rate eventually settles
at about two times per second which is
directly related to our neural fatigue
rates.
Fatigue is neural tissue's form of a do
loop - it provides a foolproof way of
trying many alternative ideas before
repeating the original one. It implements
a tissue-level checkoff list that automatically moves from one idea to another.
Given a multi-level hierarchy with
feedback at different levels, we can see
that a search through combinations of
ideas can be very complex and would
never exactly repeat itself. It's likely that
the subconscious mind uses some of
these mechanisms - it would help explain why it takes a long time for some
answers to pop into our mind.
Fatigue adds a self-adjusting quality
to the system and causes it to perform
better in a complex world. It also keeps
the system from getting stuck in infinite
feedback loops.
Since slowly changing stimuli tend to
fatigue the associated paths, rapidly
changing stimuli will have a competitive
advantage - therefore fatigue created a
bias towards changing stimuli. We can
call this "tissue-level curiosity," the tissue
actually gets bored with old information
and responds better to dynamic situations.
Trick 4: The Axon
The real world provides an abundance of data, in fact so much data that
the same exact set of stimuli or scene is
never observed (experienced) more than
once. We know that similar scenes are
observed repeatedly, but the data in
these similar scenes usually does not have
many pixels of information that are the
same. How, then, are these scenes
similar?
Let's consider a stimulus as a number
which represents a point in a special
highly multi-dimensioned space called,
for lack of a better term, white space.
This white space needs to be vast enough
to represent a rich repertoire of stimuli,
but not so vast that incoming stimuli can-
30 MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
Figure 4 - Necker's Cube
NECKER'S CUBE is an optical illusion that
illustrates your neural tissue in action. When
looked at for 30 seconds, the image will appear
to flip back and forth between two different
recognitions.
Figure 5 Rule
Two out of Three
@
DENDRITES
®-©--The neuron acts as a digital reduction
device. A simplified model could be a device
that fires an action potential through the axon
whenever at least 2 out of the 3 possible
dendrites are active.
Figure 6 - Conflicting Images.
0
The drawing above should at first look like
a DUCK. The drawing can also look like a
RABBIT. Note that after the high-level idea of
rabbit is thought of, all of the low-level features
are immediately converted to those of a rabbit.
not readdress previously learned points.
The neuron is ingeniously designed to
provide an operational solution to this
problem. A neuron consists of the following computational components:
• input processes - dendrite(s)
• decision mechanism - soma
output processes - axon(s)
• inter-neuron connections - synapses
The neuron provides a very rich set of
computational ingredients:
• COMPLEX INPUT system - inputs through the dendrites which
provide a wide pathwidth of data.
• SUMMATION of the inputs as
received by the central neuron
body, the soma.
• DIGITAL DECISION system, in
the soma, which acts somewhat
like an analog to digital converter
- it acts as a democratic element
which fires only if enough inputs
(votes) are present.
• DIGITAL OUTPUT system which
fires and sends out an action
potential through the axon.
• COMMUNICATION system in
which the axon contacts many
other dendrite processes of other
neurons.
• MEMORY that is contained in the
connection strengths of the synapses (the inter-neuron contacts).
• LEARNING which is the process
by which the connection strengths
and the locations of the synapses
are formed.
• RECOGNITION when the system
is excited by inputs and fires a
digital output.
The neuron can receive many combinations of possible stimulus inputs
which represent a fairly large white
space. The output (axon), however, is binary (digital) - fire or no-fire.
Note that the neuron is functioning as
a data REDUCTION device. By making
decisions, the data is simplified and
reduced by the action of the neuron. This
process keeps the white-space of the data
at any point in the neural tissue within
operation bounds. See Figure 5.
Trick 5: Feedback
Some optical illusions show that the
same picture (stimuli) can provide alternate interpretations. See Figure 6.
Some important points are listed
below:
• Some illusions display alternate
interpretations where only one
can be visualized at a time - in
other words, they compete.
• Many of the supporting low-level
features are interpreted in concert
with the overall interpretation.
• When the overall interpretation
changes, these low-level features
change also.
What is the usefulness of this
mechanism?
• By the context of the overall interpretation, lower-level features can
be more easily recognized, especially if the stimuli is difficult to
interpret.
• If lower-level features were allowed to resolve totally on their
own, they would seldom conclude a useful high-level recognition.
• Fatigue, ordinarily a very useful
mechanism, would make matters
difficult - the low-level recognitions would flip back-and-forth
with little contribution to determining a valid high-level recognition. See Figure 7.
The subject of feedback extends far
beyond the purposes discussed here it's likely to be involved in nearly all
neural processes in one form or another.
The mechanism discussed here is fairly
simple and easy to implement. In fact,
we have implemented it in Turbo Pascal.
The complete source code (and userfriendly .EXE) is available on the Micro C
RBBS and from the authors.
Summary
Electronic technology is moving forward at an extremely rapid rate, providing unprecedented computational power
for the money. We now have more tools
than ever for building neural network
based systems. As expected, the level of
public and private interest in neural intelligence is increasing dramatically.
With our new understanding of
automatic learning, we are now ready to
remove major roadblocks to our
progress. By designing-in the ability to
learn complex objects within complex
hierarchies, we delegate most of the
learning to the system - thereby making
our job much easier.
•••
Figure 7 - Conflicting Images suggest Feedback
CROV«>ING SPACIALLY DEFINED:
CROWDING ON
HIGHER LEVEL:
WITH HIGH-LEVEL
FEEDBACK:
PRE-FEEDBACK:
CONFLICTING IMAGES suggest FEEDBACK: The set of black
••••••••••
dots shows two different images of circular patterns-but both cannot be seen at the same time. The model shown above suggests one
possible configuration of recognizers (neural tissue) that promotes
similar conflicting recognitions. Small combinations of dots form subsections (arcs) of the circles, but, due to high-level feedback, the arcs
are interpreted according to the context of the high-level idea (one
circle or the other.
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MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
31
Building MicroCad:
Design With C++
Okay, objectively, C++ might be interesting, but what can you do with it that you
can't do just as easily with C? Bruce's
MicroCad is a good example. It lets you
create and manipulate graphics (objects).
(This is the fourth in this issues trilogy of
object-oriented articles.)
efore I introduce my tiny graphics
program, MicroCad, I'd like to
describe object-oriented programming. Three key features make a language object-oriented (1) abstract data typing, data encapsulation, or data hiding.
(2) type derivation or inheritance.
(3) commonality, polymorphism or,
(in C ++) virtual functions.
The first feature says you can create
your own data types, with internal data
and external operations. For example,
you can create a complex number (a
type) which contains a real and an imaginary part.
The C++ compiler will know how to
deal with this new type's real and imaginary parts (which are effectively hidden),
just as it knows how to handle the hidden exponent, mantissa, and sign parts of
a floating-point number.
Your new complex type looks virtually no different to the compiler than a
built-in type like double.
The second feature, inheritance, says
you can derive a new data type from an
old one (called ''base"), instead of building new types from scratch every time.
The new data type is an old one with
some additions and/ or modifications.
The parts of the old data type that work,
you leave alone. Just change what you
need to.
Feature three says you can control a
derived data type through its base. This
is very powerful, but takes some getting
used to, since there's no equivalent in
conventional programming languages.
B
32 MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
I'll go into this more later.
Each of these user-defined (or
derived) data types is a class, the key feature which makes C++ more than just "a
better C."
I'd like to illustrate these features by
building a miniature CAD program
(MicroCad) which lets you draw,
manipulate, and delete shapes.
We'll create a generic base type called
CADSHAPE, and from it derive CIRCLE,
SQUARE and LINE.
Each derived type will know how to
do some things, such as draw and delete
itself. So you can create a list of
CADSHAPEs and then step through the
list telling each type (or shape) to draw
itself.
Zortech C++
Before I go into the details of MicroCad, I want to briefly mention the C++
system I'm using for this example.
Zortech currently markets my C++ of
choice. It's a $99 native-code compiler
written by Walter Bright (who created
Datalight C).
I became involved with this project
back in the beta-test stage, wrote the introductory C ++ chapters in the manual,
and now am a technical support consultant. (In other words, I'm taking money
from them so my opinions are tainted.)
The Zortech C ++ package includes a
C compiler, an integrated editing environment, a librarian, a nice make
facility, along with mouse, graphics and
standard C libraries.
You invoke the compiler with "ZTC
filename," and it figures out from the file
extension whether to use C++, C, or the
assembler.
MicroCad requires Zortech C++ because I'm using their mouse and
graphics libraries. Those of you who are
graphics and mouse pros, bear with me
- I've never messed with these things
before, so I may do things which seem
appallingly stupid.
But C++ actually saves me here, since
all the low-level stuff is encapsulated you can fix my flubs without changing
the structure of the program.
00 & C++
Before getting into the core of the
code, I want to say a few things about
object-oriented programming in general,
and C++ in particular.
A pure way to think about objectoriented programming (or 00) is that it
consists of simply "sending messages to
objects." This is the Smalltalk view: you
tell an object what to do, and it knows or
figures out how.
In C ++, the objects are structures and
the messages are member functions.
You declare each C ++ class (userdefined type) in its own header file (with
an extension of ".hpp"). A class declaration consists of data elements and declarations of so-called member functions
which can be invoked on instances (objects) of the class.
Small functions may be declared inline in the header file (more about that
later).
Unless all the member functions are
declared in-line, a class usually has a file
of code (with an extension of ".cpp")
where all the member functions are
defined. This file is compiled into an object module (not to be confused with "objects," which are instances of a class ugh, what a syntactic mess).
C++ programming at the top level
consists of simply including all the
header files for the classes you want to
use, declaring instances of those classes
(objects) just like you would declare integers or floating-point numbers, calling
member functions for the objects, and
linking in the object modules. I've illustrated this in Figure 1. The main()
routine simply manipulates objects.
A Classy Lingo
The main feature which makes C++
By Bruce Eckel
Eisys Consulting
1009 N. 36th Street
Seattle, WA 98103
Figure 1 -Main MicroCad Code
Copyright 1988 Bruce Eckel
Permission required to distribute source
II
II
II
I*
store via "new" and add it
to the list:
list.insert(new circle(x,y}};
break;
case SQUARE:
list.insert(new square(x,y}};
break;
case LINE:
list.insert(new line(x,y));
break;
case MOVE:
mouse.cross cursor();
mouse.wait_left_Pressed(&x,&y);
II you can declare a variable at
II the point of use:
cadshape * mv; list.nearest(x,y);
II (I think nearest() needs work).
II object pointers use arrows
II for de-referencing members:
mv->erase(); II pick it up
mouse.wait left released(&x,&y};
mouse.translate-coords(&x,&y);
mv->move(x,y); 71 put it down
mouse.default cursor();
break;
case DELETE:
mouse.cross cursor();
mouse.wait_left_Pressed(&x,&y);
mouse.translate coords(&x,&y);
cadshape *rm =-list.nearest(x,y);
:rm->erase O;
list.remove(rm);
II free the memory created w/ new:
delete rm;
mouse.default cursor();
break;
case EXIT:
quit++;
break;
default:
break;
file: microcad.cpp
The main driver program for the CAD system.
This includes all the other types I've defined,
declares some instances, and makes them dance
around. *I
#include
#include
#include
#include
II flash graphics declarations:
#include
II (All items starting with "fg" are from
II the flash graphics library)
#include
#include
"msmenu.hpp"
II Figure 2
#include
"circle.hpp"
II Figure 5
#include
"square.hpp"
II Figure 7
#include
"line .hpp"
11 Figure 9
#include
"shapelst.hpp" II Figure 11
II associate unique integers with the following:
enum { CIRCLE, SQUARE, LINE, MOVE, DELETE, EXIT};
={
struct menu s my menu[}
" circle"-;CIRCLE,
" square",
SQUARE,
" line",
LINE,
,, move 0 ,
MOVE,
DELETE,
" delete",
" exit",
li:X!T T
HO
-1
I* end marker
f
*I
};
main() {
unsigned x, y;
int quit= 0;
II flag
int result;
shapelist list;
if (fg init all () == FG NULL) {
fputs ("Unable to open-graphics device. \n",
stderr);
exit (l);
}
fg_term();
II
back to text mode
II
create an msmenu and attach our menu:
msmenu mouse(my_menu);
l***I
while (!quit) {
II look for right button press:
if (msm getstatus(&x,&y) & 2) {
II get a menu selection:
result= mouse.get selection(x,y);
II change from mouse to fg coords:
mouse.translate_coords(&x,&y};
switch(result) {
case CIRCLE:
II create an object on the free
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
33
Figure 2-Square Shape Declaration
Copyright 1988 Bruce Eckel
Permission required to distribute source
II file: square.hpp
#ifndef SQUARE_HPP
#define SQUARE HPP
#include
#include "cadshape.hpp"
class square : public cadshape
fg box t small_box;
pul:>li"c: void draw();
square(unsigned x, unsigned y)
x center = x; y center = y;
draw();
-
() {
void erase();
~square() { erase();
};
#endif SQUARE_HPP
l***I
Figure 3 - cadshape Declaration
Copyright 1988 Bruce Eckel
Permission required to distribute source
II
I*
file: cadshape.hpp
A polymorphic base class for all. shapes.
Almost all functions are virtual, so they
can be redefined in derived classes. Then
we can make a list of shapes and draw()
each shape in the list without knowing
exactly what it is. *I
#ifndef CADSHAPE HPP
#define CADSHAPE-HPP
class cadshape {protected:
unsigned x_center, y_center;
public:
II virtual functions must have SOME
II definition in the base class, even
II if it's just empty:
virtual Ncadshape() {}
virtual void draw{} {}
virtual void erase() {}
void
move(unsigned new_x, unsigned new_y ) {
x_center = new_x;
y center = new_y;
draw(); JI call proper virtual function
unsigned long
range( unsigned xr, unsigned yr } {
II a measure of distance between a
II selected point and this object's center
unsigned long xx =
xr > x_center ?
xr - x center : x center - xr;
II (teinary if-th;n-else}
unsigned long yy
yr > y_center ?
yr - y_center : y_center - yr;
xx*= xx;
=
yy "'"" yy;
II delta x squared+ delta y squared:
return xx + yy;
};
#endif CADSHAPE_HPP
I***/
34 MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
more than just "a better C" is the class.
Defining a class means making a new
data type which the compiler treats as if
it were a built-in type (enforcing the
proper syntax rules).
Each class contains hidden information (usually data, but may include functions, which are only available to member functions of the class), and public information (usually member functions,
but may include data).
This separation between public and
private elements is called "data hiding"
and is controlled by the "public"
keyword. The public member functions
define the interface to the class.
Figure 2 is a small declaration for one
of the shapes manipulated by the CAD
system. In it you can see some private
data (a structure from the Zortech flash
graphics package) and some public
member functions.
Classes may be inherited from other
classes simply by mentioning the name
of the base class. In Figure 2, "class
square : public cadshape" means square
is inherited from cadshape, so it
automatically contains all of cadshape' s
data structure and member functions.
The "public" keyword means that the
end user will have access to all of
cadshape's public parts (otherwise only
square could use them).
In the ".cpp" code files, you'll see
member function names with the class
name followed by the "::" scope-resolution operator. This tells the compiler that
it isn't an ordinary function; it's a member function for the class.
Generally, each class contains a constructor (a function with the same name
as the class) and a destructor (the class
name with a tilde). The constructor is
automatically called by the compiler to
perform initialization when an object is
declared, and the destructor is automatically called to clean things up when the
object goes out of scope.
Virtually Anything ...
There are two reasons to use inheritance. The most obvious is that you
don't want to reinvent the wheel - you
just want to use most of the features in a
class that someone else has already written and tested. This is the reusable code
concept.
The second reason for inheritance is to
implement polymorphism, which is why
I've used it here. Figure 3 shows a declaration for the cadshape class, a base class
for all the shapes used in the MicroCad
program.
Notice that almost all the functions
are defined using the virtual keyword.
Any function can be defined in a base
class and redefined in an inherited class.
An object of an inherited class can be
treated as an object of the base class - if
you use a pointer to an inherited class
object for calling a function in the base
class, everything works fine, except you
can only call the base class function this
way.
A virtual function, on the other hand,
allows you to call the proper function for
an inherited class via a pointer of the
base class type.
The MicroCad program has a virtual
function called draw in the cadshape
base class. Cadshape is inherited into
circle, square and line, each of which has
a different way of drawing itself.
What we want to do is manipulate a
list of shapes and thus not have to worry
about how to draw them, erase them, etc.
Virtual functions allow this - they call
the correct draw() function at run-time
regardless of whether the shape is a
circle, square, line or some new type of
shape you've just added.
Virtual Function Operation
Normal C++ member function calls
are resolved by the compiler, which
knows the specific member function at
compile time and simply makes a call to
the absolute address of that function. In
this case, the size of the object is simply
the size of the structure to hold all the
data elements you've defined.
If, however, you declare any member
function(s) to be virtual, an extra pointer
is secretly added to the structure by the
compiler (to see this, try taking the sizeof
an object with and without virtual functions). The pointer is the address of a
table of function pointers - all the addresses of the virtual functions.
When we use virtual functions, the
address of the virtual function table is
bound to the object AT RUN TIME. Calls
to member functions are resolved by dereferencing the virtual function table, also
at run time (although proper function
call syntax is still enforced by the compiler). This way, you can manipulate
pointers to a polymorphic base class; the
correct member functions are always
called.
To use virtual functions, you must
pass pointers rather than the objects
themselves. You cannot say that an object
of a derived class is actually a base class
object, but you can say that a derived
class pointer is a base class pointer.
This is because a derived object is
usually larger than the base class it was
MICRO CO~l\J"UCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
35
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derived from (you usually add data elements when a class is inherited). You
cannot simply treat it as a base class object since the wrong size would be
passed around. Pointers to objects are all
the same size, so they can be passed
around anonymously.
The C syntax of fetching member elements given a structure (structure.data_element) and given a structure
pointer
(structure_pointer->data_element) extends to member functions (object.function() and object_pointer->function()). It sometimes helps if you remember that an object is just a structure.
In Figure 1, you can see examples of
the use of virtual functions in the MOVE
and DELETE cases.
Inline
I've used a fair amount of inline code
in the examples; this helps reduce the
space required to print the program in
the magazine. Inline code is placed in the
compiler's symbol table, however (except
when a function contains flow control in this case the compiler secretly makes it
a non-inline function).
If the compiler runs out of memory,
try changing inline functions to ordinary
(e.g., static) functions.
Inline code has its advantages, allowing you to (1) access private members of
a class, and (2) perform a repetitive
group of statements with a more meaningful function name, both without the
overhead of a function call.
But you should be aware that an inline function is distinctly different from a
normal function definition. No code is
generated when the in-line function is
defined; the code is inserted directly
whenever you call the function.
Parameters aren't pushed and there's
no assembly-language "call," which
saves time. But the code is duplicated
every place the inline function is called.
That means your program can take up a
lot more space if you write big inlines
and call them a lot.
Dynamic Memory Allocation
Ordinarily, the size of an object and
the number of objects needed are known
at compile time. Sometimes, however,
you don't know how big something is
(i.e., a matrix) or how many of something
you need (i.e., shapes in a cad system)
until run time.
When the compiler knows how big or
how many, it can automatically place objects on the stack. If size or number can't
be known until run time, you have to
figure it out in the program and allocate
36
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
Figure 4 - The shapelist Class
Copyright 1988 Bruce Eckel
Permission required to distribute source
II file: shapelst.hpp
I* Two classes to manaqe a list of cadshapes.
A shapelist contains a list of (what else)
shapelist_elements, which simply hold
a cadshape and a link to the next
element. The usual linked list stuff:
you can insert, step through, etc. */
#ifnde£ SHAPELST HPP
#define SHAPELST-HPP
#include "cadshape.hpp"
II tell the compiler the class exists:
class shapelist;
class shapelist element {
cadshape * shp;
shapelist element * next;
public:
II allow shapelist access to the
II private elements of this class:
friend shapelist;
shapelist_element(cadshape * s,
shapelist element * hd) {
shp = s7
next = hd;
} ;
class shapelist {
shapelist element * head, * current;
public:
shapelist{) { current = head =
new shapelist element(
(cadshape-*) O, (shapelist_element
} II end of list marked by null pointers
void insert(cadshape * s) {
shapelist element * p =
new shapelist eiement(s, head};
head "" p;
-
*) 0);
void reset() { current= head; }
cadshape *next();
void remove(cadshape * s);
II hunt th.rough the list and find the
II nearest element to x,y:
cadshape * nearest(unsigned x, unsigned y);
};
#endif SHAPELST_HPP
I***/
space on the "free store." This is called
"dynamic memory allocation," and is accomplished in plain C via library functions (malloc(), free() and variations on
those names).
In C++, dynamic memory allocation
was too important to be left to a library
function, so it was incorporated into the
core of the language via the keywords
"new" and "delete" (to free the space allocated with "new"). The "new"
keyword is used in Figure 1 in cases
CIRCLE, SQUARE and LINE. The
"delete" keyword is used in case
DELETE.
Linked Lists
The MicroCad program (Figure 1) just
manages a linked list of cadshapes. This
linked list is yet another class called
shapelist, which manipulates cadshape
holder objects called shapelist_elements
(see Figure 4). There are shapelist member functions to insert a new shape,
remove a shape, step through the list,
and hunt for the shape nearest a pair of
coordinates.
Left As An Exercise ...
I've created the framework for the
program. Here are some features you
might want to add:
• Create an object to hold coordinates. This (instead of the x,y
pair I use) can be passed between
member functions to convert from
•
•
•
•
•
mouse to flash graphics coordinates and back.
Stretchable objects, with dashed
lines to indicate size.
Dashed outlines when an object is
being moved.
Create a super-shape which holds
any number of other shapes allowing the user to create new
composite shapes. Storage and
retrieval of these shape libraries.
A method to translate a shape
outline into some independent
graphics representation, which
can be sent through filters to
generate output for PostScript,
Epson, etc.
The mouse menu should be
created as a simple graphics block
and painted onto the screen (instead of drawing it character by
character, as I've done here). This
would be much faster.
Building MicroCad
The Micro C RBBS contains the complete MicroCad program (all the code
shown here, several other listings, and a
makefile). Once you have Zortech C ++
installed, simply un-archive the code in
its own directory and type "make."
Next Time
In the next issue I'll be looking at real
CAD systems for designing and laying
out printed circuit boards.
Editor's Note: Bruce often refers to articles in previous issues. You can get a book
of all his hardware articles, Computer Interfacing with Pascal & C, plus a disk including the source code and numerous other examples, by sending a check for $30 (plus
8.1 % Washington State sales tax) to: Eisys,
1009 N. 36th Street, Seattle, WA 98103.
Bruce is also putting together a library of
public domain C++ source code. The disks
are available directly from Bruce at the above
address.
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Reader Service Number 15
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
37
Hercules Graphics Printer Dump
There sure isn't much privacy at Micro
C. Where else could someone assign a
programming project and have it announced to the world. (Of course it is in C.
"Hello World")
h, SOG. I had high hopes for this
one. You see, after spending a
year with more article ideas than I
could shake a stick at, I'd come up with
a blank. Nothing. At least nothing I
could beat into a useful piece. But certainly SOG would change that. What
better place to harvest a few topics for
the coming year?
Unfortunately, while vastly stimulating and amusing, SOG left me feeling
brain-dead. Still no ideas. No problem
though- Unca Dave came to the rescue.
A
Printer Setup
Want to print characters? No problem.
You throw text to the printer like meat to
a dog. The printer chews away for a
while and out come the characters on
paper. (The dog's output is slightly different, although it does resemble some of
the printer output I've generated.)
Graphics output doesn't present much
more of a challenge.
First off, we need to initialize the
printer. pm_setup (see Figure 1) sends
out an ESC '@'. This sets the printer to
most of its power-on defaults. The carriage return sets up the print head for the
first line of output. Otherwise printing
could easily start in the middle of a line.
The last line of pm_setup sets line
feeds to 8/72". These printers have nine
pins in the print head. It
use just eight pins since
only accept a byte at a
prints a 1 /72" dot, so 8
8/72".
makes sense to
the printer can
time. Each pin
pins means ...
Grabbing A Screen
The next job involves reading video
memory. I'm not going to rehash the
confusion of video addressing on the
Herc card. Take a look at "A Hercules
Primer" in Micro C issue #39 for the
details of how get_line works. Notice the
unary one's compliment operator(-). We
need to invert the image since "on"
video pixels show up light, but "on"
printer elements are dark.
Printing the screen sideways on paper
has two advantages: The image fits, and
Figure 1 - Hercules Graphics Screen Dump Functions
Necessity Is The Mother ...
Lately, Dave's been dragging his behind in a little lower than usual. It's those
late night, early morning bouts with The
Program. (Has something to do with
airplanes. I suppose that's why it crashes
so much.) So I was more than happy to
help out when he said he needed a way
to dump a Hercules graphics screen to
printer. Now, I'm normally a staunch advocate of the quick and dirty school of
programming. But, for Dave, I decided to
compromise my morals this time and just
be quick.
I had three printers to play with:
Gemini-lOX,
Citizen
120-D,
and
Panasonic KX P1595. Parallel printers of
the clone world live in something approaching harmony. Escape sequences
used for programming show an amazing
amount of compatibility. Armed with
that knowledge, I developed the code on
my trusty 10-X, fully expecting it to run
with all three printers.
It almost worked out that way.
38
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
void prn out (unsigned char X)
-
{
= O;
/* specify first parallel printer */
_AH= 0;
I* service 0 - byte out */
/* printer interrupt */
_ox
_AL
= X;
geni.nterrupt (Ox17);
I* prn_out */
void prn_setup ()
{
prn out (27);
prn-out (27);
prn-out (13);
prn-out (27);
/*-pm_setup
prn out (109); prn_out (0);/*standard mode, Pan*/
pm-out ('@');
/*reset printer*/
/* carriage return */
pm out ('A'); prn_out ($);
/*set 8/72 LF */
*/ -
void get li.ne (int li.ne_num, unsigned char buffer (348]}
{
int col;
-
for (col=O; co1<348; col++)
buffer [col] = -peekb (OxbOOO, Ox2000 * (col % 4) +
90 * (col I 4) + line_num); /*get video byte*/
I* get_line */
void setup gr li.ne {int width)
{
- -
prn_out (27);
prn_out (75);
prn out (width% 256);
prn:out (width I 256);
/* setup_gr_line */
I* set 60 dpi */
I* these 2 lines set# graphics ... *I
/* ... chars to be sent*/
By Larry Fogg
Micro C Staff
the coding is simpler. So get_line reads
eight columns of the screen to create
eight lines on the printer. The terminology gets a little strange here since video
rows are printer columns. Think of turning your monitor over on its right side.
Now it's easy to see that we should start
printing with the bottom row of the first
column on the screen.
Editor's note: But don't leave your
monitor on its side, that would make the
printed image come out upside down.
Printing Graphics
It's time to fire off the line of graphics.
setup_gr_line programs the printer to accept a number of graphic characters
equal to the parameter, width. We can
only give the printer a byte at a time,
Parallel printers of
the clone world live in
something approaching harmony. Interestingly, escape
sequences used for
programming are
surprisingly similar.
Continued from previous page
void print blank (int width)
-
{
inti;
setup_¢:.-Hne (width):
for (i:;:(); iut (O);
/*print bl.anks and hold print head position*/
/* pdnt--blank */
voi(i pl;'intline (unsigned char buffer {348])
-
{
int i;
print_blank (60) :
setup gr line (348);
for (i=3"i7; i>=O; i--)
prn out (buffer {i});
prn c;;;;'t (10);
} /*_.print_Une *I
/* print line in buffer, backwards */
I* line feed */
void dump screen ()
-
{
inti;
char line_buf [348};
/*holds a column of video bytes */
prn setup ();
£or-(i,,,,.O; i<90; i++)
/*ready the printer*/
/* print each of the 90 video columns */
{
~et_line (i, line_buf);
print_line (line_buf);
}
/* dump_screen */
which means it'll take two parameters to
program more than 256 characters. That
explains the modulo and integer division
in setup_gr_line. Think of these two
parameters as a two-digit, base 256 number.
Once we're done programming and
we start sending the actual graphics data,
each of the 8-bit characters fires the eight
pins in a combination determined by the
character's binary value. Each set bit fires
a pin, with the most significant bit controlling the top pin. For example,
111 lOOOOb activates the top four pins.
Once print_line has printed the contents of buffer (going backwards, remember we want to start printing with the
bottom of each video column), it ends
with a line feed. Up until now, the
printer was just filling its buffer, not
printing. The linefeed triggers the actual
printing.
I added the print_blank function in
order to center the printer output. It
simply prints some number of blank
characters with no linefeed. The next
graphics line starts filling the buffer
where the blanks end, and blanks and
graphics print as a single line.
One line done, it remains to do the
rest. Since each '1ine" actually contains
eight video columns and the Herc has
720 columns, that means we have a total
of 720/8, or 90 lines to print.
dump_screen does 'em.
So We're Done, Right?
Pretty straightforward stuff. I put it all
together and it worked. Sort of. Once in a
while a line feed missed the boat. The
following line printed off the right margin. Nasty business.
After much cursing and wailing, I
reached the conclusion that one of the
graphics characters was not printing. So
the line feed at the end of that graphics
line was seen as the last graphics character. No more line feed, and two graphics
lines would fill the buffer before we
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988 39
printed a line.
I printed a line of each character and,
lo and behold, it was AZ (lah). What
gives? The printer doesn't care what byte
it receives. No one's doing any filtering.
Or are they?
Time to look at prn_out. It just sends a
byte to the printer. In its first, semi-successful incarnation, it looked like this #define PRN_OUT(X) putc(X,stdprn)
putc just didn't like AZ. I don't know
what happened. C is a stream oriented
language and AZ can be used to substitute for garbled characters in a transmission. But it shouldn't have reduced the
total number of graphics characters sent.
Whatever the reason, putc would not
reliably send AZ to the printer. Using the
printer interrupt and Turbo C's handy
register variables for pm_out solved the
problem.
By the way, if it hadn't been for the
fractal I used testing the screen dump
code, I probably never would have found
this bug. With something as wild as a
plot of the Mandelbrot set, you're almost
guaranteed to print each of the 256 possible graphics characters. And some of
you thought fractals were useless.
Shame!
We're Really Done, Right?
Wrong. I sent my newly debugged
program home with Dave. It ran perfectly on his Citizen. I hauled it back to try
on Cary's Panasonic - and watched it
auger into the antistatic rug in flames.
It wouldn't let me control the size of
the linefeeds. And, while line feeding too
far creates an interesting zebra-like
screen dump, it wasn't quite what I had
in mind. Editor's note: does make fractals
look better. Finally, in desperation, I called
Panasonic's technical help line.
I do a fair amount of technical sup-
40
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
port over the phone so it's always fun to
be on the other end. After three days of
busy signals I finally got a real live
Panasonic technoperson. I described my
problem and he asked if I'd set the mode
DIP switches correctly.
I
sent my newly
debugged program
home with Dave. It
ran perfectly on his
Citizen. I hauled it
back to try on Cary's
Panasonic - and
watched it auger into
the antistatic rug in
flames.
Great. I waited three days for some
clown to tell me nothing. Of course I
checked the DIP settings. But I was nice
anyway. And, just to humor him, I
rechecked the DIP switches. You guessed
it, he was right. Never, ever, doubt the
word of your tech support person. They
always tell the truth and they're never
wrong.
Editor's cautionary note: check for the red
S on the cape before assuming anything. You
can do it from your phone booth.
The Panasonic reads its DIPs on
power up, but you can reprogram the
mode at any time. Hence the first line of
pm_setup. It bumps the Panasonic into
the right mode (standard, or Epson compatible), and has no effect on the other
two printers.
Other Modes
I chose the low resolution mode for
two reasons. First, it's commonly available. Most all of the mainstream printers
support it. And you want your programs
to run on as many systems as possible.
Second, for a simple screen dump,
we've already matched the resolution of
the Hercules screen. There's no need to
get into the higher resolution printer
modes. One of these modes deserves
mention, though.
The Panasonic and the Citizen support a 72 dots per inch (dpi) mode,
which gives you a one to one aspect ratio
on the printer. That doesn't mean the
print out will more closely resemble the
screen. (The standard density, 60 dpi
mode is a wee bit squashed. 72 dpi
would be flatter still.) It does mean that
you can send a square to the printer with
100 dots per side, and it'll be a true
square on paper.
We're Done
These should be fairly useful and
portable (between printers) functions. As
usual, I haven't prettied up the code at
all. If you want to protect your program
from brain damaged users who won't
tum on the printer, you'll just have to do
it yourself.
Let's see, what else would be fun? Sixteen color EGA dumps? Four color
printers aren't uncommon. If we grouped
four slightly overlapping dots together to
represent each EGA pixel ... Wouldn't be
that hard to do. Maybe I'll look into it. Or
perhaps I'll just go on vacation. Yeah,
that's the ticket.
•••
Great tor the Experimenter!
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Reader Service !\umber 11
MICRO COR.t'\JUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
41
The Peripheral Technology PT68K-2
A Hacker's 68000 System
Usually I look a bit askance at articles
that are this effusive. I have yet to meet a
prince who doesn't have a few (remaining)
warts. However, Jack's enthusiasm for this
board reminds me of my early feelings
toward the Big Board. And, as you'll see,
he's very aware of the warts.
've got a new toy, and I love it! It's
the PT68K-2 from Peripheral Technology, and it's the computer I've been
searching for for years. It's cheap,
powerful, fast, and fun to use. It's the
perfect hobbyist's system. Perhaps more
important, it's here, and it's real.
For the skim-readers among you, the
PT68K-2 is a new personal computer, targeted to the hobbyist, and built around
Motorola's 68000. The essential details
are given in the Figure 1.
As you can see, it's a serious computer, with the performance of a hot AT
clone. But statistics alone don't explain
why I'm so excited. The reason requires a
little history.
I
A Little History
I'm a computer professional. For more
years than I care to think about, I've been
getting paid to work with computers.
Sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's not.
When I'm at work, I write software the
way my bosses want me to, in the languages they want me to, to solve the
problems they want solved.
I don't have much to say about the
operating systems or the tools, so I'm
forced to be a closet hobbyist. When I'm
at home, I take a busman's holiday. That
way I can use the computer and software
of my choice to do the things I want to
do.
In that sense, I probably have a lot in
common with the hot rodder or the radio
amateur. Many of you are also hard core
hobbyists, or you wouldn't be reading
Micro C.
42
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
The Ideal Hobby Computer
I wanted performance. That means a
modern, fast 16 or 32-bit CPU. Lots of
programmers prefer the 68000 architecture. Its instruction set is simple and rational, a logical successor to the ZSO.
I wanted lots of fast RAM, serial and
parallel ports, floppy and hard drives,
clocks, memory mapped video ...
And, naturally, the hardware should
be hackable, which means an expansion
bus. (Too bad I couldn't use the IBM bus
with all the incredibly cheap I/0.)
It must be cheap and, perhaps, buildable in modules.
What about the software? Nothing
fancy here ... the operating system (OS)
and tools should be simple enough for
one human to understand and customize
in one lifetime. The software, too, must
be cheap.
Above all, the hardware and software
should be rational. There's no point inviting frustration by having to deal with irrational designs. (That leaves out most of
the more popular computers!)
Now, since this is a hobby computer,
better put a debug monitor in ROM. And
there should be some consideration for
reliability and testing built in.
The PT68K-2
There are a number of reasonably
priced 68000-based computers. The Mustang-OS and -020 from Data-Comp, the
QT series from Frank Hogg Labs, and the
Marion Systems MS68K come to mind.
Closer to home, Micro C has supported
efforts to build a 68K-based public
domain system and has run several articles on Joe Bartel's Tiny Giant from
Hawthorne Technology.
However, my list of needs describes
the PT68K-2. Frederic Brown of
Peripheral Technology must have been
reading my mind when he designed this
board.
Like it or not, the PC phenomenon
has given us cheap hardware. The prices
of such things as keyboards, enclosures,
and power supplies represent incredible
bargains of price/performance. That's
one thing that's kept me away from the
other 68000 systems. Even though their
mainboard may be cheap, the price for
the whole system (power supply, terminal, etc.) is pretty steep.
The PT68K-2 is designed around the
PC, right down to the cable connectors.
Plus it's got a PC bus, which accepts any
PC-compatible I/O boards.
The standard OS is SK*DOS, from
Peter Stark of Star-K Software Systems.
For a one-man and relatively new OS,
SK*DOS is surprisingly mature, and
quite bulletproof.
That's because it's a clone of Flex, a
popular 6809 OS, and Peter has been
working with Flex for many years. To a
Flex user, SK*DOS will seem like an old
friend. To the rest of us ...
Peter also supplies HUMBUG, the
ROM monitor, and utility software.
It's my understanding that the PT68K2 is the result of a collaboration between
Peter and Frederic, and I think this
shows in the integration of the package.
Putting It Together
The PT68K-2 motherboard holds lMB
of RAM, so no RAM board is needed (or
accepted . . . the bus is only good for
I/0). Also on the motherboard are the
4K static RAM, four (count 'em) serial
ports, two parallel ports (one of which is
Centronics compatible), and a floppy
disk controller.
The minimum kit is $200. You don't
get much of a computer for this - no
dynamic RAM, and no floppy controller.
But it's a computer.
Add a terminal and power supply,
and you're running with HUMBUG in
ROM and 4K of static RAM. The ROM
even includes a BASIC interpreter. It's
got to be one of the cheapest 68K systems
around!
Add another $200 for 512K of
By Jack W. Crenshaw, Ph.D.
1220 E. Idlewild Ave.
Tampa, FL 33604
dynamic RAM and a floppy controller, or get a complete kit including 10 MHz
CPU for $575. The same
motherboard,
assembled
and tested with lMB of 10
MHz, zero-wait-state RAM,
and SK*DOS goes for $849.
But the PT68K doesn't
end with the motherboard.
The PC bus gives you easy
expandability. Instead of
hooking up a terminal, you
can plug in a PC-compatible video card ($50
from Peripheral Technology), a monitor, and a PC
keyboard.
Finally, if you want a
really serious system, add a
standard Winchester controller card and hard disk.
I opted for the full-house system,
which cost me a total of $1,422, including
enclosure, power supply, AT-style
keyboard, CRT, and two floppies. (Prices
have since gone up.) I pirated a 20MB
hard disk from my Kaypro.
To anyone who has ever assembled a
PC clone, putting the PT68K-L. together is
old hat. Even if you've never assembled
another system, putting the PT68K
together is a piece of cake. Everything
just bolts into place and the cables snap
together. In an hour you have a system.
Firing It Up
I fired it up with just the CRT controller and CRT to verify that I had a
prompt.
Next I added the keyboard so I could
run HUMBUG. Everything looked fine,
so I hooked up the floppy drives (just ran
a cable from the motherboard to the
drives) and booted SK*DOS. Simple.
Adding the hard drive was just as
easy. I just typed HDFORMAT, followed
the menu prompts, and bingo, it ran perfectly.
A PT68K-2 Motherboard.
It's been that way on everything I've
tried. It's so boring ... nothing to work
on! It's bulletproof.
For the record, I also ordered an AT
clone from a very reputable company at
the same time (around Christmas) as the
PT68K-2. The PT68K-2 arrived within ten
days, and was running in two more. I.t
took me three months to get the AT
together and running, plus additional
time and phone calls to get it set up.
Design For Testability
Though I bought mine assembled and
tested rather than in kit form, I really appreciate diagnostics.
My old Altair taught me that a multimeter isn't enough! You can equip a
laboratory with all the test equipment
needed to debug a wayward computer.
It's apparent that Frederic and Peter
remember those days, too. One of the
beauties of their design is the progressive
way you put the kit together.
The whole idea of the static RAM and
a ROM debugger is that you don't need
much to start testing. But they've taken
testing to a much lower
level.
(Peter's
most
elaborate piece of test
equipment is an LED,
borrowed temporarily
from the front panel.)
I won't detail the
whole process here, but
I'll give you the general
idea. Since the LED is
used for testing, it goes
in first. Then it's used to
test the processor support circuits such as the
system clock. The idea is
to get the CPU running
as soon as possible so it
can take over the testing.
I figured that you'd
have to have some pretty elaborate software in
ROM to handle the tests. Not always.
Peter uses a trick that requires no
software at all! He just straps the data
lines to ground so the processor sees a
constant 0000.
After the CPU executes 0000, it increments the program counter (to, of course,
fetch the 0000 from the next address).
Thus, all the address lines get toggled.
By checking the address lines with the
LED, you can verify that the CPU is
working. (The address lines become
square waves which you can use to test
the rest of the circuit.)
Once the CPU is running, you install
and check the memory decode logic. The
ROM and static RAM go in next, and at
this point you have a computer.
The whole process is incredibly slick,
and I'm kinda sorry I ordered my system
assembled. I really missed a lot of fun.
Incidentally, there's a neat little aside
to this story. The literature on the PT68K2 describes a real-time clock, but I found
neither clock chip nor battery.
After the system was up and running,
I came across a command in SK*DOS
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988 43
called "TIME." I figured, what the heck. I
almost fell out of my chair when the
PT68K-2 calmly reported the correct date
and time. Not only was there a clock, but
it already knew the time.
It turns out that Frederic uses a singlechip clock with a built-in battery. The
clock has the same pinout as the 6116
static RAM chips (and the clock chip contains RAM, too). You just pull one of the
6116s and replace it with the clock. The
software spots the clock and you've got
time.
Even better, when the clock chip is in
place, the 2K of RAM on that chip is battery-backed-up so HUMBUG uses that
RAM to store system configuration info.
My Hardware Problem
Now for my one hardware problem.
My copy of MicroEMACS would occasionally go to lunch, and at first I assumed it was a software problem.
However, it turned out that they'd
put a 12.5 MHz clock crystal in my 10
MHz system. Fortunately, they put two
crystals on the motherboard so a single
jumper change slowed me down to 8
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Reader Service Number 40
44
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
PT68K-2
MHz. I'll go in and change the 12.5 to 10
Two Versions Of C
MHz when I get around to it, but for
For $10 Peripheral Technology will
now I'm doing fine at 8.
send you a sampling of the SK*OOS
User's Group library including: a Small C
The Software
compiler, three (!) editors, an nroff clone,
A computer without software is about
and many other goodies.
as useful as a car without wheels. What
Also, Sidney Thompson, president of
the User's Group, and Bud Pass are just
about the software?
SK*OOS reminds me of CP /M. It's
finishing a full K & R version of C. (I
modular, consisting of a BIOS, command
have a beta test copy.) Sidney also sent
processor, and file system. There is essenme the copy of MicroEMACS, developed
using the new C.
tially no part or feature that can't be configured, modified, or replaced (anyone
Finally, I'm starting to see software
for ZCPR68?). It's also small, about 20K.
from other sources. I know of at least two
A hackable size.
more editors, two disassemblers, and a
host of other goodies.
Despite its size, it supports custom
device drivers, pipes, I/0 redirection,
BAT files, a RAMdisk, and TSRs. EveryLet's Be Real
thing except multitasking. (Peter is workI wouldn't be completely honest with
ing on that.)
you if I didn't tell you that there are
You get 40 utilities including: assome things I don't like.
sembler, file manager, the ubiquitous
For those of you who have experience
EDLIN, and a BASIC interpreter.
with Flex, SK*DOS will seem like old
SK*OOS also provides more assembly
home week. For the rest of us it's strange.
language help than we ever got from
Instead of drives A: and B:, they are 0
DRI. There are no less than 60 DOS calls,
and 1. The command processor doesn't
understand the familiar "*" and "?"
organized as "A-line" software intercharacters in wild cards. Instead you just
rupts. These include calls to input and
output text strings or decimal and hex
give the first letters of the filename. Unnumbers.
fortunately, this means typing:
That's on top of the 17 ROM calls.
DIR .C
And you get an INCLUDE file of system
equates to make assembly easier.
Although I didn't know 68K
which not only gives you all the .C files,
mnemonics when I started, I had no
but also all the .COM files, and any other
files whose extension begins with 'C'.
trouble recoding some of my CP /M
library routines. I found, hov1ever, that
The SK*OOS tools also give me more
many of my prized subroutines weren't
help than I care for (a carryover from
needed with SK*OOS, their functions
Flex, I think.) When you copy a file over
were available as system calls.
an existing file, SK*DOS stops you with a
"File exists ... Delete?" message. When
you delete a file, it asks you, not once but
twice, if you're sure you know what
you're doing.
More important, the tools are not as
mature as the OS. Peter's trying to
provide as many tools as possible - and
they work, but many are pretty short on
features.
HUMBUG is no competition for DDT
and I don't like its command syntax.
Neither the Cs nor the assembler support
separate linking. But that's because
there's no linker. (I've promised to write
one as soon as I finish this article, so I
can't blame that one on anyone else!)
Peter has developed a truly elegant
system of I/O control, suitable for
device-independent control of a wide
variety of devices, but none of the standard I/0 drivers use the system.
While SK*DOS fully supports the PCtype CRT and keyboard, it only does so
by treating them in TTY fashion. The
standard SK*OOS driver can't read all
those neat cursor, keypad or function
keys. This isn't a problem because the
User's Group has a driver which supports all these.
Disk I/O on the hard disk is quite
satisfactory, but floppy writes are interminable. That's because the file I/O is
unbuffered, and SK*OOS does a verify
after every 256-byte sector. You can tum
off the verify flag, but you take a chance
that a disk error will corrupt the directory.
SK*OOS also has a flat file structure,
which means that when you do a DIR on
the hard disk, you get lots of files. Now
that's a problem, particularly because of
the lack of wild cards. Fortunately, a
combination of four disk partitions and a
copy of a UNIX-like DIR program from
the User's Group have made life at least
bearable.
Finally,
although
the
PT68K-2
hardware is designed to be fully interrupt-driven, SK*OOS uses polled I/O.
No typeahead. Well, that's okay ... I've
lived without typeahead for five years
with my Kaypro, but I was hoping ...
However, I like SK*OOS. The
problems are teething pains rather than
something fundamental. I remember
how slow the disk I/O was on my
Kaypro before I installed Micro C's
ROM.
The main thing is, the OS is basically
sound and quite bulletproof - a perfectly capable base upon which to build.
None of the problems I've mentioned are
things that can't be fixed.
And help is on the way. Peter is al-
Figure 1 - PT68K-2 Vital Statistics
Mfr.
Peripheral 'l'echnology, Inc.
1480 Terrell Mill Rd., Suite 870
Marietta, GA 30067
(404) 984-0742
User's Group
SK*DOS users Group
Sidney Thompson
181 Greenbriar Ct.
Conyers, GA 30208
(404) 922-3097 {Eves,Voice)
(914) 241-3307 {RSBS,PCBoard)
CPU
Clock
Motorola MC68000
8 MHz standard
10, 12.5, or 16 MHz optional
512-1024K dynamic, 0 wait state
4K static, battery backup
RAM
ROM
32-128K EPROM
Serial
Parallel
Time
Expansion
Floppies
Four RS-232 ports
Two 8-bit ports (one Centronics-compatible)
Real-time clock/calendar, battery backup
6 IBM PC/XT-compatible I/O slots
Built-in floppy controller, four drive
capability
Uses PC-compatible Winchester controller
Serial terminal OR PC-compatible keyboard,
mono or color monitor
Plug-compatible with PC power supplies
SK*DOS (free with kit) or OS-9
Debugger in ROM. Assembler, editor, file mqt.
tools, disk formatter, supplied.
Hard Disk
Console
Power
OS
Software
Other S/W
Available
Price
User's Group provides Small C, editors, modem
program and many other utilities. Software
from vendors includes K & R C, RBASIC & other
compilers, EMACS & other editors,
disassemblers.
Partial Kit {without dynamic RAM, floppy
controller, DUA.RT, or clock)
$200
Full Kit
SK*DOS, 10 MHz, 512K RAM 2 serial
$575
Assembled
SK*DOS, 10 MHz, lMeq RAM 4 serial
SK*DOS, 12 MHz, lMeq RAM 4 serial
$849
$899
/***/
ready working on a new version, which
will have faster disk writes, a hierarchical
file structure, and typeahead.
Right now, SK*DOS is like CP /M
before the public domain guys got hold
of it. It's badly in need of a cadre of users
to write software for it. There are already
a few, including the very active user's
group.
If you are not the adventurous sort,
you don't have to get SK*OOS with the
PT68K-2. OS9 is also available. For the
record, I have heard more than one person say that OS9 is the best OS ever written for micros, bar none. Some say it's
the best OS, period. But it's $500, the
BASIC compiler is another $500. To me,
that kind of money runs counter to the
whole spirit of the system.
software are solid. The software tools are
not as powerful and/or friendly as, say,
Turbo Pascal, but they are adequate. Certainly adequate for creating more and
better tools.
If the public domain underground
ever gets hold of this computer, there's
no telling where it will end.
•••
Finally
The system is fast, powerful, modular,
and cheap. The hardware and the
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988 45
Sharing At SOG
This is the kind of SOG piece that I
can't write. It's not a disinterested look (I
don't think it's possible to attend SOG and
remain disinterested), but Barbara definitely
has her own perspective. This is also a
reprint. It first ran in Oregon Computer
News. Many thanks to its editor for permission to run this piece.
same problems. Micro C, as the magazine
is fondly referred to, is all about sharing.
SOC begins with an optional white
water raft trip on the Deschutes river.
This is the perfect ice breaker. It's very
difficult to be stodgy as a dribble of cold
water slides down your back, especially
when aimed by an overzealous bailer.
This year our sixsome was given the
option of taking a series of rapids
pproximately
400
"computer
techies" and myself gathered in
Bend, Oregon, to attend SOG, the
Semi-Official Get-together that each
year celebrates the publication of Micro
A
sibilities, this year's group also shared.
People whose names are synonymous
with the computer industry, like George
Morrow and Jim Warren, come back and
touch roots at SOC.
The Sessions
Two days of intensive sessions began
Friday morning at 8 a.m. Software
programmers were immersed in compilers, tools, operating systems and
debugging techniques. Software designers listened and questioned as the
logic of the new modular language Trilogy was introduced. A designer ex-
Cornucopia.
Micro Cornucopia is a bi-monthly computer magazine for the dedicated computer enthusiast. It's interesting to read,
Heading for lunch.
Don and Marilyn Thompson check
stock at Microsphere's SOG table.
but also very technical. It informally
showcases new languages and operating
environments, hardware design such as
graphics processors and coprocessors,
and mathematical solutions. Leading
edge work and experiences are shared
with others who may be battling the
without the raft. Five of us accepted and
were dropped off on the river bank. As
we walked back to the appropriate water
entry point, we had time to contemplate
our folly. It was a very long walk, too
long to gracefully retrace our steps. (Besides, those red-blooded males weren't
going to let a skinny female be the first
and only taker of this exquisite dare.) The
raft trip sets the tempo, and the informal
mood continues.
We discarded suits and ties in favor of
grungies. Many wear SOC T-shirts from
former get-togethers.
Much as early designers of hardware
and software pulled up a chair, leaned
back and explored problems and pos-
If that's a 334, then this must be a ...
plained the processes and problems encountered in developing the Tele operating systems.
PC and drive diagnostics provided
solutions to hardware problems. Hawthorne Technology presented its 68000based single board computer and operating system. Hardware designers examined the pitfalls of obtaining FCC approval for their boards and computer
systems. We were all treated to some
magnificent color 3-dimensional fractals
46 MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
. l.
By Barbara M. Hall
ProLogic, Inc.
9900 S.W. Wilshire, Ste. 120
Portland, OR 97225
. . . and the mathematical process that
produced them.
Industry leaders PC Tech, Microsoft,
Logitech, Intel, Zortech, and new companies who could become familiar names
provided this year's speakers. SOGers
usually had to choose between two lectures scheduled in the same slot.
Talks such as "Neural Control and
Relaxed Sharing
This relaxed group feeling of sharing
was an important part of the two-day
seminar. Lunch was not really break
time, but an opportunity to keep the discussion going or greet old friends from a
previous year. I heard "remember when
we talked about ... " as SOGers updated
colleagues on their current progress.
The next year Micro Cornucopia's
editor Dave Thompson moved to Bend,
Oregon, and so did the Semi-Official Gettogether. This second annual celebration
was attended by 125 Micro C enthusiasts
who
squeezed
into
Dave's
home/magazine space. SOG was growing rapidly and even the Fish Hatchery
building in Shevlin Park proved almost
too small for the 250 who attended SOG
III.
Since those early days, SOC has found
a home at Central Oregon Community
College. The attendees number from 400
to 450, which is just about the right size
for the College facilities.
Clark Calkins describes his source code generator.
Parallel Programming with Transputers,"
"Ray Tracing on the 34010 ," and
"Numeric Applications" vied for attention. Even with such esoteric titles,
speakers often found themselves face to
face with an audience which seemed to
know as much as they did and was not
always of the same opinion. There were
lively debates and some of the talks
developed into full-blown forums.
In contrast to the technical and often
specifically focused nature of many of the
speakers' topics, the organizing committee thoughtfully included a couple of
business know-how topics. Even technical designers need to know the pitfalls of
publishing their books or energizing their
employees.
The discussions really take on the air
of intensity as small groups gather after
the structured day sessions end to talk
long into the night over coffee or beer.
They explore solutions, kick ideas about,
and renew creative energies. It's not all
talk . . . members of one small group
emerged at 4 a.m. with computers they
each had built!
History
The Semi-Official Get-together is
Oregon grown and bred. Seven years ago
60 people, some from as far away as
Australia and Holland, gathered together
in Portland for a single day of talk. There
was no formal agenda; they shared ideas,
potluck and good will. From these
modest beginnings SOG was born.
Jim Warren
The
Semi-Official
Get-together
provides an opportunity for innovators
to touch base with others who are in the
same league, to work and to play
together. It's a network for people from
all over. The glitz of the formal computer
magazines and commerciality that has
invaded the big computer shows have
not touched this homespun world. SOG
is truly a unique sharing experience.
•••
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
47
By David Thompson
Staff
Bits From Your Past
You thought you could hide behind your
mailbox. You thought you could just sit
back and chuckle over other people's misadventures. Wrong, Bunky. This is Micro C,
and you're the target of our next expose.
he evening discussion (at SOG VII)
was drifting along pretty much
undirected when someone popped
up with a question to the fellow sitting
next to me.
"How' d you get into computers?"
Well, that led to some pretty interesting stories, and it sure brought
memories for me. My first computer
was a stock KIM-1. I bought it from an
engineer at Tektronix and, along with
the board and power supply, he gave
me a stack of newsletters called the
KIM-1 User Notes. I was impressed.
Page after page of object code listings
that I could key in on the hex keypad.
Wow! I remember pecking at that
keyboard for hours to turn that tiny
computer into a digital clock. It worked,
and it was accurate to within five
minutes a day.
I wrote my own programs, spending
hours scribbling out 6502 object code,
then entering and testing it. About six
years ago I loaned the KIM to an aspiring young computer student. Unfortunately, he and my beloved KIM have
disappeared, apparently forever. SIGH!
How did I feel about micros then?
That KIM was unadulterated magic,
though through the hex keypad and 7segment display I only got a glimpse of
what was to come. (Now we have real
assemblers, interpreters, compilers, text
editors, graphics displays, real control
of real events, real information processing ... )
How have my feelings changed?
Wow! It's hard to avoid getting lost
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MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44,Nov-Dec, 1988
53
86
WORLD
By Laine Stump
% Redhouse Press
Merkez PK 142
34432 Sirkeci
Istanbul, Turkey
Yet Another Travelog ...
(From Out Of The East ... Somewhere)
If you wondered what Laine goes through to
write a column while camping, caving, busing, consulting, eating, and sleeping - (hey, it's a hard
life), then read on. If you'd rather skip to the code
for this issue, just skip to the end. The very end.
(And if Laine calls and tells me the column is on the
bus, I'll believe him. Next time.)
o you think it looks easy to write a
magazine column, do you? You just sit
down in front of the screen and the
ideas flow swiftly out your fingertips
and onto a disk which you exchange for large
stacks of money. Piece of cake. Anybody could
do it. Good way to earn a few extra bucks.
Doesn't take much time at all ...
"That sounds like fun, Laine, but I'm sorry
to say that I'm already planning to go caving in
Kastarnonu province next week. If you can't
find enough people to go floating, you're welcome to come along with us."
I was on the phone with my friend Oral.
Trying once again to get up the necessary five
for a boat trip, I was running into snags. "If
you like, we can take the boat along. There's
one river that might be big enough, and it's an
awesome canyon. We could take off from the
cave camp for a day or two and try floating it.
The camp's going to be quite large, so we'll
have no trouble finding people."
Four days later I was trucking into the sunrise in a Nissan crew cab with Sarni (Oral's
brother-in-law and the owner of the Nissan)
and Ceasar (Sarni's mother's golden retriever). I
was leaving a lot of work behind in the city
but, hey, it's Kurban Bayrarn (a Muslim
Holiday)! The whole country is on vacation.
Why not me too?
While Ceasar wiped his wet nose against the
back of my neck for the twentieth time, I quietly filed away a list of "Things To Do After
Vacation." Let's see, I need to put Turkish on
that Wyse monitor for Onur. I need to unsolder
the character generator chip from my Zenith. I
need to go to Ankara and show my Toshiba to
that guy who's interested in buying it. I need to
contact Infinite about Turkish fonts for Post-
S
54
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
Script printers. I need to write a column for
Micro C ... Oh God! Not another one!
In Search Of A Topic
What can I write about? I've now been successful in publishing just about every piece of
code I've ever written. At least the interesting
pieces. And some of the boring pieces. And
even some that I stole from somewhere else
(SShhhh!). What am I going to write about????
With ,Ceasar nudging my back, competing
for window space to flap his tongue in the
breeze (much like his namesake, and like most
politicians of today as well), I tried to bring
up a mental picture of everything I hadn't already written about. Blank. I'll have to try
again tomorrow.
We arrived in the base camp deep in the
luscious green forests of the Western Black
Sea Coast the next morning and, after setting
up my tent and meeting a few of the other
campers (members of the Bosphorus University Cave Explorers Society), I tried to think of
things to write about. Still no luck. Maybe
after lunch.
While we were four-wheeling down the
high mountain roads, swimming in rock
studded canyons (not enough water to boat),
and (of course) photographing the many
varieties of unique looking mushrooms in a
newly discovered cave, I was constantly (welt
sometimes) trying to think of topics to write
about before my upcoming deadline.
Welt I hate to let this out, but it's pretty
damn difficult to come up with article ideas
for a computer magazine while frying bread
over a gasoline backpacking stove in the middle of a beautiful green meadow over 50 miles
from the nearest paved highway. Maybe I
should see if there are any openings at Outside
Magazine.
I asked some of the others for ideas.
"How about 'Caving as Recreational
Therapy for Computer Scientists?'"
"I know. You can write about a computer
controlled camp dinner menu creation system.
Of course it would ignore all requests to put
sujuk (a disgusting spiced sausage) on the
menu."
"Show how to write a program to
take all the measurements we make and
generate an accurate map of the cave
automatically."
"Wait a minute! Let's get back to this
idea of sausage elimination."
No luck there. We had the sujuk, and
we had to eat dinner. But I didn't have
the necessary equipment to do the
development work (my new machine
doesn't run on batteries). Besides, you
don't need a computer program to
eliminate sujuk from the menu.
So I gave up for awhile. Hung my
sleeping bag out to dry in the morning.
Dug the Landrover out of a clay bank in
something will come."
"Yeah, maybe. But I've got to go to
Ankara and sell my old computer
tomorrow. Maybe I'll think of something while I'm there ... "
Off on the night bus to Ankara. My
seatmate was a student in dentistry at
Hacitepe University in Ankara. We
talked about how rich the dentists get in
the U.S. and how Turkish dentists aren't
compensated nearly enough for their efforts. No MC article ideas there, but at
least he told me about a new Mexican
restaurant just opened by a friend of his
in Ankara (the first Mexican restaurant
in Turkey!).
the afternoon. Dashed across the mountain tops clinging perilously to the roll
bar on the back of the Nissan. Sat
around the campfire scrounging "taste
tests" from the evening meal as it was
being cooked. Refused to wash my hair
until just two days before the end of
camp.
We parted in the morning with an
exchange of phone numbers and a
promise to get together and eat Mexican
food ("It would be very useful for you
to go there. None of us know what
Mexican food is supposed to taste like.
They just put something on the plate
and if it's hot we figure it must be right.
They really need an expert's opinion.")
Still no ideas for an article. I hoped I'd
come up with something while working
in Ankara.
It was the normal scene in Ankara.
"Laine, did you ever find the IC I
need for my power supply?"
"We need some help making those
Still In Search Of A Topic
Back in Istanbul I was in true form.
"What's up, Laine?"
"Oh, I've got this stupid magazine
article to write and I can't think of anything."
"If you sit down for a few hours
new 30 meg drives work right."
"We're converting these programs
from Turbo Pascal 3.0 to 4.0 and we
can't figure out what to do with this inline assembly code that does an indirect
call to ConOutPtr."
"I just imported these printers from
France for next to nothing, but they
don't have a Turkish character ROM. Do
you suppose ... "
In two days I managed to: put the
Turkish character set on a Wyse high
resolution monochrome card and a no
name Japanese printer; teach a technician (who doesn't speak English) how
to install and format Miniscribe 8438
drives with OMTI 3527 RLL SCSI bus
controllers (fast, reliable, and cute); send
a FAX to PC Tech asking what happened to the 20 5380 SCSI chips we
asked for; inquire once again into the
disposition of my reimbursement for
bus and airplane tickets from last
January; and even get a down payment
for the sale of my Toshiba T1100. Still no
article ideas.
Oh, I didn't quit thinking about it. I
asked everyone I met.
Ergun said, "Why don't you forecast
what's going to happen in the industry
in the next few years?"
"Are you kidding? Only Jerry PourMICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec, 1988
55
nelle and John Dvorak are godlike
enough to do that."
"How about forecasting what you
would like to happen in the next few
years?"
"If I did that, everyone would think I
was just complaining (again)."
"I guess you could always write
about your caving trip. Judging from
that silly thing you wrote last year,
you'd probably get away with it."
Back to the main menu.
In Search Of A Topic, 3D
Another night bus back to Istanbul.
"I'm really going to do it this time.
I'll come up with a humdinger, all time
showstopper of an article. This one's
going to knock their socks off. Yeah.
That's it. Their socks. And their
monogrammed slippers, too. They'll be
wiping Jolt Cola off the floor with their
bandanas after this article knocks them
out of their seats. Yeah. Jolt Cola. That's
the ticket. Jolt Cola ... "
The potholes on the Istanbul highway rocked me off into dreamland, as I
feebly attempted to squeeze an article
idea out of my last two months.
I awoke with a start, brought to my
senses by the putrid smell of burning
rubber, and realized that the bus was
stopped. As the moustached man in the
next seat snored on in oblivion, the
steward turned on the PA system
"Respected passengers: One of our tires
has blown out." It was 2 a.m.
Off the bus to check out the situation. There was a crowd of about 15
men gathered around one of the rear
wheels, trying desperately to survey the
situation with only the aid of a small
cigarette lighter. I climbed back into the
bus and returned, much to the amusement of the crowd, with my Tekna Lite
2 waterproof flashlight.
"Is he a tourist?"
"No, I'm not a tourist."
"Hey, you know Turkish! Does that
thing run on NiCads, or what?"
An hour and a half later, the tire
replaced and the brake drum cooled
with several bottles of water, I sat back
in my seat. My seatmate was just
waking.
"What happened? Did the brakes
lock?"
"Yeah. Just after the tire blew out
over an hour ago."
"Oh."
He was immediately back in his
snoring stupor. Obviously he didn't
have to come up with a column for a
computer magazine.
56
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
Now where was I? Let's see ... Computer controlled Dorita production in
developing nations ... With such an exciting topic to think about, sleep arrived
in my frontal lobes (or wherever it is
that sleep arrives) without much
provocation.
I was awakened by the steward three
hours later as the bus motored through
the first glimmer of dawn, just pulling
into Izmit at the east edge of the Sea of
Marmara. "Would you like some tea?"
he asked as he, not unpolitely, shoved
the glass under my nose.
It was the aroma that awoke me. My
most pleasant awakening in months.
Not counting last Saturday morning
waking up in the dewy 6 a.m. mist next
to a dormant campfire, doing my best to
not wake anyone else as I started the
fire for morning tea. Yeah. Morning tea.
What if I wrote about the possibilities of tea packaging machines that
automatically tested radiation levels of
tea (a big question down here just south
of Chernobyl) and automatically put the
bad tea into a special hopper for
delivery to the Nuclear Energy Commission. Or maybe the effects of high
tea consumption on the writing energy
of witless young computer journalists
Nah. Nothing has substance yet. If
that OS/2 kit would just show up ...
And the other Meg of RAM. But then
one of the guys at the caving camp
works for Lotus in Boston, and he told
me that even 2 megs isn't enough to do
anything useful with OS/2 ... So, like I
said, if that other 3 megs of RAM would
show up ...
Jeez, I can't even get a manual for
Turbo Pascal 4.0! What am I doing talking about an OS/2 Developer's Kit. I
should be trying for the easy stuff first.
Sometimes it's not easy being a
freewheeling computer "samaritan."
Maybe I should try writing again about
getting jobs overseas. That might
prompt me to go do some work myself
so I would have enough money to buy
this stuff with cash instead of trying to
beg it under the auspices of doing
magazine reviews.
The bus arrived in Istanbul during
the morning rush hour so it wasn't allowed to drive downtown and drop me
off at the bus company's office near my
house. Instead, we pulled off at an overpass to transfer to a smaller shuttle bus
for our final trip into the city.
As the cargo hold was opened, I
noticed that my computer was no
longer sitting on top of its six inch foam
pillow. "What have you done?!?" I
asked the steward. "I said that my computer had to ahuays be on the pillow!
It's very delicate!"
"It's okay. I just moved it half an
hour ago, at the last stop."
If damage was done, it was already
done. I was too tired to explain to him
that the little black bag I was so concerned about cost more than his wages
for an entire year, and that it didn't
matter if it was off the pillow for five
hours or five minutes, it only took one
good bump in the road to clobber the
winchester drive. I tossed my things
into the service bus and headed home
for a shower.
Hmmm. Maybe I could write about
the bad things that can happen when
you're working overseas. The misconceptions. The disorganization. The
equipment ruined by ignorance. The
frustrating delays and feelings of falling
off the edge of the earth as soon as you
take off from JFK International.
The people who don't trust computers and insist on entering all the
numbers in the spreadsheet in alpha
mode and adding them up by hand.
The executives who don't take you
seriously because you wear T-shirts and
blue jeans to the office in a country
where even farmers sometimes wear
ties and suit coats in the field. Because
you carry a Caribou Mountaineering
backpack instead of a briefcase, and because you are under 45. No, that would
be too negative. I complain about negative people too much to be one. At least
to publicly be one.
In Search Of A Topic, Part IV
At home I hit the button on my
answering machine and got the message from Lois and Elaine, calling from
Van in Southeastern Turkey. "We're
still planning on meeting you in Trabzon at 4 p.m. on the 10th. Onok and his
friend are coming, too. We decided that
we should meet at the Tourism Information Office instead of the City Hall,
though."
Great. I've got three days to unpack,
pack, and get on the bus for an 18 hour
ride out to Trabzon. The boat is at
Sarni' s mother's house and it needs
repairing. I need to seal the seams of
my tent, wash all my clothes and duffles, take inventory, call Tarsus and
have them send up the boat adhesive
from Jack's refrigerator. And I still have
to think of a topic for the Micro C
column. The seagulls screaming from
the top of the mosque across the street
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Reader Service Number 10
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec, 1988
57
called into my mind an image of a dead
albatross tied around my neck.
It was 8:20 a.m. Just over six hours
since the tire blew up on Bolu pass. I
grabbed a towel and headed for the
shower but was stopped by the
telephone ringing. "Hi, Laine. This is
Ayfer. What are you doing this afternoon?''
"Oh, just resting," I lied.
After my shower I went to Redhouse
Press to discover everyone else out on
vacation. Fatih was there, though, and I
asked him if he had any ideas of what I
could write about.
"How about the things we've been
doing to get the transfer between our
machines and the typesetter working
properly?"
"I don't think so. The readers would
never understand why it took so much
time to do something seemingly so
easy. They don't care about the trials
and tribulations of having an alphabet
with extra characters not in the ASCII
or ANSI standards. It just doesn't apply
to them."
Arriving home at 9:30 p.m., I saw the
huge pile of clothes on the bedroom
floor and decided to give up for the moment. Maybe if I rested for half an hour
I'd think of something. The bed seemed
abnormally comfortable (not surprising,
since I'd spent two of the last three
nights on the bus).
My next moment of awareness was
at 2:45 a.m. I stumbled to the bathroom
and pried my contacts out of my eyes,
cursing at my stupidity in once again
falling asleep without removing them. I
resolved to come up with a real mind
bending topic first thing in the morning
and crawled back to bed.
The next morning
borrowed
Murad's car and drove up to Sami's
mom's house to pick up the boat. Then
out to the bus station to get the boat
glue newly arrived on the overnight bus
from Tarsus. Things were starting to
pull together. "I should be able to leave
tomorrow," I said, without much confidence.
Oh yeah. I forgot. I've got to do my
taxes. I got a three month extension
since I've been working overseas, but
my three months will come due while
I'm somewhere in the middle of a rapid
on the Coruh River in Northeastern
Turkey. I added that to my list and realized that maybe, for the first time ever, I
would have to call Cary and tell her
that I just couldn't write a column.
I waited until 2:30 a.m. (that's 4:30
p.m. in Oregon) and called Micro C.
58
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
"Hey Cary, I just can't make it. If
you don't see anything by Wednesday,
that means I couldn't come up with
anything."
"Oh, that's fine. We'll just put
another article in place of yours."
She almost sounded pleased!
Then I talked to Larry.
"Yeah, I tried to get out of writing a
column once too, but Dave convinced
me otherwise. You're lucky to be so far
away. It's a bit tougher to be convinced
from such a long distance."
Yea! My conscience is free! I don't
have to write a column now. I can go
down and get a bus ticket for Saturday.
Just leave tomorrow. Just like that.
"Sorry, but all our buses to Trabzon
are full until Tuesday." Okay, I can live
with that. Maybe I'll write that column
after all. But it has to have substance. I
can take a look through my source disks
and see if there's anything worthy. Let's
see ...
Return Of In Search Of A Topic
A program to set the serial port to
38400 baud? No, I got that out of BYTE.
A rewritten boot sector that handles any
format of boot disk? That would have
been useful back when I wrote it, in the
DOS 2.11 days, but it's pretty worthless
now, what with DOS 3.3 and all that.
Besides, it's long.
How about a program to lengthen
the timeout on INT 17h printer status to
avoid "printer not ready" errors on
slow printers? Nah. It doesn't really
show anything new. Okay, then how
about the low level procedures for that
disk copy program I was going to write
for Tony and never finished? Well,
maybe ... What if I also threw in the
SW APDISK program that can make the
B drive appear to be A or vice versa?
Well, maybe ... I guess it's better than
nothing.
Alright then. I'm ready. Where's my
coffee cup? I need some drugs in my
system if I'm going to do this. Let's get
the CD player hooked up and some
good Indian tabla music going; do this
up right ...
Disks
Okay, so the topic is: Low level disk
functions on PC compatibles. Has this
been covered before? Probably. As
usual, I won't bother telling you about
the details you can learn from The Pink
Shirt Book. I'll just give you some code
fragments that you can use in your own
programs.
Reading And Writing Tracks
Awhile back I was going to write a
disk copy program that didn't bother
rereading the disk after making the first
copy. But like usual, I got so bogged
down thinking of the ultimate user interface that I never finished it. I did
write the procedures to read, format,
and write the disks, though. (See Figure
1.)
The functions needed to access the
disk at this low level are fairly easy to
use, thanks to the biosdisk() function in
bios.h of the Turbo C library.
readtrack() and writetrack() just put the
biosdisk() function into a retry loop.
This is necessary because many BIOSes
don't wait for the disk to become ready,
so they often return a "Not Ready"
error on the first call. I've found that
three retries usually ensure reliable
error reporting.
formattrack() is a bit more complicated, but not much. First, it must build
a table of sector header information
with each entry being four bytes: track,
head, sector, sectorsize. Second, a verify
operation is performed on each track
after formatting before giving it a passing mark. Note that all the constants for
SECSIZE, NUMSECS, etc., are for standard 360K diskettes. If you want the
program to be general, you should
make these constants into parameters
which are passed as arguments to the
functions. Hey, these are just examples.
What do you expect?
Since an entire disk would be much
larger than the maximum limit of 64K
for a single data item (in anything but
HUGE memory model), I decided to
represent a disk as an array of
NUMTRACKS pointers to one track
worth of information. This data structure was defined in three steps to make
it easier to understand.
First I made a typedef called
TRACKBUFFER, which is an array large
enough to hold one track worth of data.
Then I made the typedef BUFPTR,
which is a pointer to one track of data.
Finally I declared the variable "data,"
which is an array of BUFPTR (i.e., an
array of pointers to a full track of data).
It would be possible to declare the same
data structure with a single variable
definition, but then probably nobody
short of Kernighan or Ritchie would understand it. This way it's pretty obvious.
Reading And Writing Disks
Most of you can now easily see what
you need to copy an entire disk. I see no
reason for publishing Yet Another for()
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Floppy controller ......... $22
20MB Hard Disk Kit .... $279
30MB Hard Disk Kit .. $309
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PRINTERS
MONITORS
PC/XT
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NEC P2000
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Call for prices of other brands
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Samsung EGA color . .. $359
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AC power center ..
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AC power strips
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Diskette file box
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Reader Service Number 42
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec, 1988 59
Loop in the magazine. I'm sending in
the readdisk and writedisk functions to
Micro C though, and they will put them
on the bulletin board or something.
Have fun with them.
SWAPDISK
And what about that SWAPDISK
program I talked about? Well, it's pretty
simple, too. No sense in wasting paper
on a listing. Just look for it on the bulletin board or on the Issue #44 disk.
I should tell you why I thought it
necessary to write SWAPDISK, though.
Redhouse Press is using a program
(PTS) sold by Compugraphic which can
transfer word processing files to a diskette readable by a Compugraphic
typesetter. PTS is pretty cheesy, but it
works.
One of its problems is that the
"Compugraphic Diskette" (i.e., the one
that is in "Compugraphic format") can
only be drive A or drive B. All of the
Redhouse machines have 3.5 inch floppies in A and B. Compugraphic
machines use 5 inch disk drives, so I
wanted to put a 5 inch in as C. PTS, in
the spirit of true "User Hostile"
software, will not allow that.
I first tried using the ASSIGN
program that comes with MS-DOS. Unfortunately, ASSIGN works at the DOS
level, while Compugraphic' s PTS
program accesses the disk with ROM
BIOS INT 13h calls (the same as our
readtrack and writetrack procedures).
What I needed was something to
reroute disk calls at the ROM BIOS
level.
It was really pretty easy. I just wrote
a TSR (in assembly language) which
captures all INT 13h calls and changes
the drive number according to a routing
table. This has been working nearly
daily for over six months now.
I should say that, although in this
case SWAPDISK is better than ASSIGN,
there are still many uses for ASSIGN.
ASSIGN works great for programs that
access the disk only at the DOS level. It
is especially nice since it lets you send
requests to a winchester drive, which
SW APDISK cannot do. (SW APDISK
only works with floppy disks.)
What A Bunch Of Bull!
Can you believe this? I go through
all that mental torture for over two
weeks just to end up with a couple of
silly little programming examples. The
only thing that would be even more in-
60 MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
Figure 1 - Example C code for reading and writing tracks
#incl~
#define
#define
#define
#define
#define
#define
#define
#define
#define
DISKREAD
2
DISKWRITE 3
DISKVERIFY 4
DISKFORMAT s
NOMSECS
9
NUMBYTES 512
SECSIZE
2
NUMTRACKS 40
NOMHEADS
/* 0=128, 1=256, 2=512, 3=1024 *I
2
typedef char TRAC:KBU!'FER{NOMSECS*NUMBYTES];
typedef TRACKBUFFER *BUFPTR;
BUl'PTR data[Nmr.rRACKS}(NOMHKADSJ; /*array of pointers to TRAC:KBUl'FER*/
int readtrack(int drive, int track, int head, BUFPTR data)
{
int ct, success = O;
for (ct= O; {ct++< 3} i& (!success); )
success=(biosdisk(DISKREAD,drive,head,track,1,NUMSECS,data)==O);
return (success);
}
int writetraclt(int drive, int track, int head, BUFPTR data)
{
int ct, success = O;
for (ct= O; (ct++< 3) && (!success}; )
success=(biosdisk(DISKWRITE,drive,head,traclt,1,NUMSECS,data)==O);
return (success);
int formattrack(int drive, int traclt, int head)
{
int *tptr;
/* tptr MUST HAVE sizeof(int) = 2*eizeof (ehar) */
int
et; /* as well as low order byte being at lower address */
int success = 0;
static char formatinfo[NUMSECS] [4) = { {0,0,1,SECSIZE},
{0, o, 2, SECSIZE} {0, 0, 3, SECSIZE}
{0,0,4,SECSIZE}, {0,0,5,SECSIZE},
{0,0,6,SECSIZE}, {0,0,7,SECSIZE},
{0,0,8,SECSIZE}, {0,0,9,SECSIZE} };
I
I
tptr = (int *) formatinfo;
for (ct = O; ct++ < NUMSECS;
{
*tptr =track I (head<< 8);
tptr += 2;
}
for (ct= O; (et++< 3} && (!success}; )
{
success= (biosdisk(DISKFOitMAT,drive,head,track,
0,NUMSECS,formatinfo)==O);
success = success && (biosdisk(DISKVERIFY,drive,head,track,
l,NOMSECS,0)==0);
return (success);
***
credible is if they actually print it ...
Editor's note: Sorry Laine. If Larry can't
get away with travelogs, neither can you.
Be forewarned that at this very moment I'm
at the Bend Trailways station waiting for
the next bus to Istanbul. See ya.
•••
C CODE FOR THE PC
source code, of course
NEW!
NEW!
NEW!
NEW!
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MS-DOS File Compatibility Package (create, read, & write MS-DOS file systems on non-MS-DOS computers)
Bluestreak Plus Communications (two ports, programmer's interface, terminal emulation) . . . . . . .
Turbo Programmer (database application generator; source for library only; specify Turbo C or Microsoft)
PforC or PforCe++ (COM, database, windows, file, user interface, DOS & CRT) . . . . . . . . .
CQL Query System (SQL retrievals plus windows) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
GraphiC 4.1 (high-resolution, DISSPLA-style scientific plots in color & hardcopy)
. . . . .
Barcode Generator (specify Code 39 (alphanumeric), Interleaved 2 of 5 (numeric), or UPC)
Vmem/C (virtual memory manager; least-recently used pager; dynamic expansion of swap file)
PC Curses (Aspen, Software, System V compatible, extensive documentation) . .
G.reen.leaf Data W!ndows (windows, menus, data entry,_interactive form design) . .
Vitamin C (MacWmdows) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Greenleaf Communications Library (in term pt mode, modem control, XON-XOFF)
1l1rboTEX (TRIP certified; HP, PS, dot drivers; CM fonts; LaTEX) . . . . . . .
Essential resident C (TSRify C programs, DOS shared libraries) . . . . . . . .
Greenleaf Functions (296 useful C functions, all DOS services) . . . . . . . . .
Essential C Utility Library ( 400 useful C functions) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Essential Communications Library (C functions for RS-232-based communication systems)
. .
.
WKS Library Version 2.0 (C program interface to Lotus 1-2-3, dBase, Su percale 4, Quatro, & Clipper)
OS/88 (U **X-like operating system, many tools, cross-development from MS-DOS) . . . . . . . . . . .
ME Version 2.0 (programmer's editor with C-like macro language by Magma Software; Version 1.31 still $75)
Turbo G Graphics Library (all popular adapters, hidden line removal) .
CBTree (B+tree ISAM driver, multiple variable-length keys) . . . .
Minix Operating System (U **X-like operating system, includes manual)
PC/IP (CMU/MIT TCP/IP implementation for PCs) . . . . . . . .
B-1tee Library & ISAM Driver (file system utilities by Softfocus) . . .
The Profiler (program execution profile tool) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Entelekon C Function Library (screen, graphics, keyboard, string, printer, etc.)
Entelekon Power Windows (menus, overlays, messages, alarms, file handling, etc.)
TurboGeometry (library of routines for computational geometry) . . . . . . . .
.
.
QC88 C compiler (ASM output, small model, no longs, floats or bit fields, 80+ function library)
Wendin Operating System Constmction Kit or PCNX, PCVMS 0/S Shells . . .
C Windows Toolkit (pop-up, pull-down, spreadsheet, CGA/EGA/Hercules)
JATE Async Terminal Emulator (includes file transfer and menu subsystem)
MultiDOS Plus (DOS-based multitasking, intertask messaging, semaphores) . .
WKS Library Version 1.03 (C program interface to Lotus 1-2-3 program & files)
TE Editor Developer's Kit (full screen editor, undo command, multiple windows)
Professional C Windows (lean & mean window and keyboard handler) .
Ip (tlexible printer driver; most popular printers supported)
Quincy (interactive C interpreter) . . . . . . . . . . . .
EZ.ASM (assembly language macros bridging C and MASM)
PTree (parse tree management) . . . . . . . . . . . . .
MicroFinn Toolkit (28 Unixesque utilities for MS-DOS) . . .
XT BIOS Kit (roll your own BIOS with this complete set of basic input/output functions for XTs)
HELP! (pop-up help system builder) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Multi-User BBS (chat, mail, menus, sysop displays; uses Galacticomm modem card)
Make (macros, all languages, built-in rules) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Vector-to-Raster Conversion (stroke letters & Tektronix 4010 codes to bitmaps)
Coder's Prolog (inference engine for use with C programs)
Virtual Memory System (least recently used swapping)
C-Notes (pop-up help for C programmers ... add your own notes)
Biggerstaff's System Tools (multi-tasking window manager kit) .
PC-XI NU (Comer's XINU operating system for PC) . . . . .
CLIPS (rule-based expert system generator, Version 4.1)
Tiny Curses (Berkeley curses package) . . . . . . . . . . .
TELE Kernel or TELE Windows (Ken Berry's multi-tasking kernel & window package)
SP (spelling checker with dictionary and ma111tenance tools) . . . . . . . . . . .
Clisp (Lisp interpreter with extensive internals documentation) . . . . . .
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XLT Macro Processor (general purpose text translator)
C/reativity (Eliza-based notetaker) . . . . . . . . .
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The World Digitized (100,000 longitude/latitude of world country boundaries)
KST Fonts (13,200 characters in 139 mi..xed fonts: specify TEX or bitmap format)
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Reader Service Number 4
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44,Nov-Dec, 1988
61
Help For The Listless
Anthony Barcellos
P.O. Box 2249
Davis, CA 95617-2249
(916) 756-4866
line feeds) to create overprinting lines.
Provided that your printer wouldn't take offense at the file (a big proviso!), the printout
would contain bold characters and underlining
- things not usually available from ASCII files.
Unfortunately, this came at the price of a much
he MS-DOS TYPE command has one larger file size (so many lines occurred in dupligear: forward. Since TYPE won't scroll cate) and limited printer compatibility.
With LIST I was able to create a filtered
backward, the quest for lost text has incopy
that was nearly a third smaller and printspired several deluxe DOS utilities. Vernon Buerg' s LIST program is justly the most able on nearly any printer. I merely followed
Buerg's concise directions in LIST.DOC, the 16famous of them.
Computer users speak of LIST as though page user's guide to LIST:
While displaying the troublesome file, invoke
"excellent" or "wonderful" were part of its
name. It's on everyone's short list of indispen- junk filtering with Alt-] (a mnemonic command!).
sable tools. But LIST raises the simple act of Press Alt-M to mark the top of the file, press End to
screening a file to a high art that most of its jump to the bottom of the file, press Alt-B to mark
users don't appreciate. I thought it was high the bottom, and then hit Alt-D to dump the data to
time to do more than praise LIST in passing. disk. LIST asks you what filename to use and either
creates the file or appends the dumped data to the
Let's list, as it were, some of its virtues.
end of the previously existing file by that name.
You don't have to dump the entire file, by
How Do I List Thee?
First of all, LIST will list a file (of course). the way. Simply use Alt-M and Alt-B to mark
You can scroll right and left in a wide file, as the top and bottom of any portion you want.
well as the usual up and down. A toggle can You can hop through a file, picking bits and
turn off the high bit on the extended ASCII set pieces. If you always use the same filename for
if you are viewing a WordStar document file. the disk dump, LIST will accumulate your data
Tabs can be expanded. Hexadecimal codes for in one place with its append feature.
This is a wonderfully sophisticated piece of
the ASCII characters can be displayed. LIST can
work, and Buerg can take just pride in the slick
even manage a binary file (like .COM).
Buerg describes the text-processing features tool he has created. (My appreciation is magof LIST as "filtering." One of his most impres- nified by my experience in trying to clean the
sive filtering feats is the elimination of ex- file with the naked carriage returns by my own
traneous garbage like control codes (often klutzy programming efforts. LIST did away
found in the session-capture files of com- with all the drudgery once I realized its
capabilities.)
munications programs).
But Buerg goes one better by giving LIST the
power to clean up messy files. That is, not only Read Your Friendly Manual
LIST's power-user features are no secret.
can you read a file without the interference of
"noise" characters and happy faces, you can Buerg dutifully sets out the program's many
write to disk a copy that matches the tidy ver- functions in the manual. His collection of
"exotic" applications includes file sharing
sion you've seen on screen.
Shareware authors are getting better or- under DOS 3.x, shelling to DOS, and screen
ganized and more sophisticated these days, but saving.
Screen saving? No, Buerg isn't talking about
in the past I found LIST indispensable for reading the quirky documents that appeared on dis- the monitor-blanking utilities that turn off your
screen to save the phosphors. He means LIST' s
tribution disks.
I recall a particularly egregious case in peculiar practice of remembering the screen
which the author used bare carriage returns (no display at the moment it was invoked.
(Here's a TYPE program that's become a LIST,
DUMP, filter, and more. After the review of LIST,
Tony tells you where to get an index of Mier~ C.
T
62 MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
If you exit LIST with the Alt-X command (rather than with Esc or FlO),
LIST restores the screen to its exact appearance before LIST was used! Amusingly, this option leaves no sign of
LIST's activity; even the DOS prompt is
restored to its original state.
Listing To Port
One advanced application isn't tucked away with the exotic stuff. Rather,
the nifty /S option is heralded right on
page 1. LIST uses it with redirection
and piping. If invoked with the /S option, LIST can grab text that has been
redirected or piped to a file or the
screen. Buerg's simple example of
LIST's piping ability is:
dir a:
I list /s
Instead of going to the screen, as
usual, the output of the directory command is channeled to LIST. There you
find yourself able to scroll up and down
through the directory listing of drive A.
That's one good way to improve a DOS
command!
Following Buerg's guidelines,
created a batch file that uses Phil Katz's
PKXARC in conjunction with LIST to
read text buried in an archive file. For
the Sacramento PC software library, I
created a disk called Volume 0, which
contains descriptions of the programs
available in the library.
To save space I had to condense the
text files into an archive. To help the
people who try to use Volume 0 (many
of them inexperienced computer users),
I arranged to spare them the intricacies
of archives by means of LIST's /S feature.
My solution is a batch file called
READ.BAT. A command like "read
079" goes hunting in the LIBRARY.ARC
file for the text of LIBRARY.079. The /C
option of PKXARC extracts the file to
the console (screen) instead of to a disk
file. The screen output is intercepted by
piping it to LIST with the /S feature
enabled.
The user can then scroll around and
read to his heart's content. When he
leaves LIST, the archive is intact, and no
additional space has been used by the
extracted file.
You do need some work space for
PKXARC and LIST to do their thing.
The batch file won't work on a disk
with 0 bytes free. I don't know just how
much work space is needed. In my case
I did it by trial and error - putting
stuff on the disk until it didn't work
Extended Indexing
In discussing the Letus A-B-C index
of articles from computer magazines
(July I August 1988), I alluded to the absence of Micro Cornucopia from the list
of indexed magazines. I'm happy to
report that help is available from a different source.
Thomas Brundage of The Logical
Connexion has prepared a computerized index for Micro C. Mr.
Brundage' s index is fairly freeform, containing the requisite information on
issue, author, article description, and
anymore, then backing off a bit. See
Figure 1.
While most people think of LIST as
shareware, Vernon Buerg goes his own
way, preferring to describe the suggested $15 contribution as a "gift"
rather than as a registration fee. It's a
gift worth giving.
Vernon D. Buerg
456 Lakeshire Drive
Daly City, CA 94015
(415) 994-2944 (24-hr BBS)
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Reader Service Number 118
68 MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
which had invested in an Oregon hard drive
manufacturing startup. They came over
(from Medford, if I remember correctly) to
ask me if they should pony up another
$2,000,000 or lose the $5,000,000 they'd already invested. They proudly showed me a
sample of the 10 meg drive designed by
their Bay Area guru.
I asked them if they could sell the drive
for $200 a copy and make a profit, figuring
warranty, customer support, etc. From the
shock on their faces, I knew the answer. I
recommended they save their $2,000,000.
Later, I heard they'd put up the money,
but the company folded shortly thereafter.
The Seagate 225 had killed them.
Background
It seems like almost every time a
new column is started there is the
obligatory discussion of the writer's
background. To that end I have included the following thumbnail sketch.
I have worked in the high tech industry as a software engineer for over
fifteen years. During most of that time I
have consulted on the side as a way to
pay for my expensive high tech toys.
My clients have ranged from no-tech to
super-tech.
I've spent the last two years completing my Masters in Management at a
local college. During that time I spent a
year working as a sales manager for a
small computer VAR, and am currently
employed as a business manager for a
small no-tech consulting company.
My time is currently split between
consulting on PC-based projects and independent management consulting for
the Center for Entrepreneurial Ventures
(CEV) in Portland, Oregon. The CEV is
a small publicly-funded training
program for individuals who are either
currently running a high growth business or are looking for nonfinancial help
in starting a new company.
•••
Around the Bend
2
Continued from page 4
planes ahead of me. Hoping the one behind me hadn't gotten
lost. (He had.) We buzzed three airports, all prearranged. No
one noticed.
I spotted a hawk, maybe 20 feet above me. He wheeled
sharply left and disappeared.
So much for yesterday, now I have to deal with a damp,
surprisingly noisy dawn.
My air mattress is sagging. I wouldn't have noticed if that
duster pilot had stayed in bed. But he didn't. So I notice. And
now I, a hard-core night person, am writing in a tent, before
sunrise, in a strange and lumpy place.
Boy, my fingers get stiff in this cold air. Wait a moment
while I tuck them into the sleeping bag ...
There, that's better. The door of my mountain tent is open,
it gives me just enough light to see the Kaypro 2000 screen.
Really lets in the cold, though.
Very still outside, the air hasn't awakened yet.
My fellow travelers? I don't know. There are all types; except for a couple they're pretty much retired. Most have lots
of time for piddling with airplanes, a few have money. Some
of the craft are owned by as many as 13 people, and I can imagine 13 people standing in a circle drawing straws to see
who gets the plane for this tour.
Most are pretty simple: 65-horse Continental or Franklin
(whatever was around 40 or 50 years ago). Tiny wood or
metal prop. A wooden or tubular frame covered with cotton
and varnish (lots of varnish). No radio. Few instruments. Conventional landing gear with tiny tail wheels. Some don't even
have compasses. (We each received a map showing the week's
route. Now I understand why it's a highway map.)
Shucks, the crop duster is back. Landing on the taxi way,
he sidles up to his giant chemical vat and refills. A chemical
smell slowly envelopes my tent. With a second roar, he's off
again. Coughing has almost completely drowned out the snoring.
The snoring's coming from the Jack tent. I had expected
better from pilots, but there was a smoking and drinking
(never go anywhere without their Jack) crowd. Smoking is
deadly, especially above 10,000 feet. They can't breath.
My hands are getting really cold, think I'll just shut down.
Sunday 4:44 p.m., Roseburg
I'd assumed we were flying low because of the clouds and
because we were tiptoeing through the Portland Control Zone.
But the weather has cleared a bit, Portland is well behind us,
and we're still hugging the deck. Close enough to read highway signs, close enough to race, nose to nose, with unsuspecting cars, close enough to watch kids play squareball on small
town streets.
I'm on edge, traveling through narrow valleys. Rounded
hills which look insignificant from 10,000 feet now rise far
above me.
After the rude wake-up, this morning was eventful. Low
scud hid the hills as we crawled out of tents and bags, so we
aborted our planned hop to Florence.
Florence is on the Oregon coast, which means ducking
through twisty little valleys to reach the ocean. (Then you face
the coastal fogs.)
Instead we headed south, following, as long as we could,
the broad Willamette valley. A few minutes after takeoff I
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MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec, 1988 69
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Around the Bend
Continued from page 69
noticed my generator wasn't working. After kicking myself for
not paying more attention during run-up, I shut off running
lights, strobe, radio, everything that used electricity (the spark
plugs have their own power) and grabbed the map. The largest
nearby airport was Salem; I waited until it showed up off my
right wing and turned on the radio.
"Salem Tower, Stinson 8077K, five miles east, with an electrical problem. Is there a mechanic on the field?"
"77K wait one.
"77K, Roger on the mechanic. Active runway is 31, you're
cleared to land."
The mechanic found a tripped circuit breaker and I was on
my way again. (Hey, I help people with their computer
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Flying in Formation with another Stinson.
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Reader Service Number 103
70 MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
problems all the time, and I didn't suspect a silly circuit breaker?
Cost me $10, too! Ah well, it's vacation.)
The Cottage Grove Experimental Aircraft Association was
holding its summer barbeque, so (by pure coincidence) we (22
planes) dropped in for lunch. Made very quick work of their
hamburgers.
It was in Cottage Grove we learned that Florence had been
waiting for us. They'd had 150 people at the airport, complete
with the Florence High School Band. (A real band, no one's ever
met me with a band before.) We gathered in the Cottage Grove
airport office to sha :e the news and kick ourselves for not sending out scouts (planes with radios) to see if the coast was clear
(or clear enough).
The trip's been so exciting, we'd have risked life and limb to
hear that band. Gives you some idea.
As I enter this, I'm sitting next to the Stinson on hot gravelcovered blacktop. We're in Roseburg, our overnight stop, and I'd
better get off this computer and set up the tent. The red sun isn't
going to be red forever, and nights here can be thunderstormy.
Monday 8 p.m., Grants Pass
First day of work I've missed in a long time. Feels good to be
away. Almost forgot about the magazine, Micro ... ???
It's a lazy afternoon, clear, sunny, warm, north wind. I'm sitting on my bedroll, leaning against the shady side of the Stinson.
Gusts are strong enough to shake the old bird occasionally.
Someone said 20 knots. Tried to catch a nap inside the plane, but
Around the Bend
Continued from page 70
the sun heats things up too much when the doors are closed.
When they're open, anything loose takes flight lessons.
Local flying aficionados put on a picnic for us at a
physician's house. It's obvious that planes make wonderful
food-fellows. At least here. We're talking roast ham and turkey,
uncountable salads and vegies, beer, wine, pop, and desserts.
(Let me tell you about the desserts.) Stuffed ourselves for two
solid (stolid) hours.
Tonight's feast was a real improvement over last night when
our fare resembled untanned leather. The locals called it pizza.
Am carrying about 60 pounds for a couple who are traveling
in an ancient two-place Interstate. (I guess the name comes from
the type of road they follow.) They can't haul anything more
than themselves. (Themselves being significant.)
Boy, do sixty additional pounds fill up the back seat. I
wonder what's happening to my weight and balance, but the
old bird doesn't seem to notice. I burned about 6 gallons during
the half-hour 50-mile flight from Roseburg to here (Grants Pass).
Grants Pass is drier than anything we've seen so far and it's
very hilly, much like Northern California. More afternoon
winds, glad we arrived early.
Tuesday Evening, Montague, Calif.
It's blowing like a banshee here, wind sock as straight as
starched slacks. Gusting to 30, really shaking the plane despite
the ropes. A local said there's a chance of an afternoon
thunderstorm if the wind dies down.
Haven't seen a windier place than this. People bend down
and hunch their shoulders, even when they're inside.
Air was quite rough coming in so it was a real relief to get
the Stinson on the ground. For a lark, I landed on the hay field
they said was their alternate runway. (Guess that makes them a
real airport, having an alternate hay field.) It was rougher and
shorter than it appeared from the air.
The members of the group who watched me come in figured
I'd just missed the runway. They might have been right.
This morning, we took off from Grants Pass and flew about
60 miles into the mountains to a small untended airstrip near
the logging community of Prospect. The strip was an
uphill/ downhill swath in the woods with some very sturdy
looking firs at each end.
The town, an easy half-mile walk from the strip, sported a
single small diner. As we nonchalantly wandered in the front
door, the waitress grabbed her apron, both menus, and announced that their grill was only so by so. However, she came
up with 20 lumberjack-sized breakfasts in less than an hour.
One plane, a Piper, had magneto trouble at Prospect, right
mag quit. (This is serious. If both right and left quit, the engine
quits.) So he let his passenger ride in another plane while he
flew to Medford. I followed him in the Stinson in case of further
trouble.
Ah, well, back to the present.
Having a laptop along has been great, it needs a lit screen so
I can write in the tent at night without fussing with a candle burned my fingers twice. But the computer's better than paper
and I can recharge the little beastie while I'm flying.
Looking around, I'm surprised. The Montague airport is
gamey as airports go, tin hangars, white peeling buildings,
grass so dead it crackles underfoot. Really feels like a ghost
town.
But the people who work here, and the flying buffs who
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MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec, 1988
71
Around the Bend
Continued from page 71
hang out here, go out of their way to be friendly. Plus there's a
shower, a real, hot, wet, free, work-up-a-warm-lather, shower.
Haven't gotten in line yet but will definitely dig out the soap
and before the evening's over. (First shower in four days.)
Don't know where I'll pitch the tent. Most of the ground is
gravelly and covered with stickerburrs. But I don't want to
spend the night folded up inside the plane, and I don't want
to get blown away. Shucks, was hoping to throw the sleeping
bag under the wing, just once.
We've been joined by a home-built, sort of a flying wing
thing with its tail out front and tiny 2-cycle motor in the back.
(Maybe they just put the prop on backwards.) Goes 85, stalls
at 50, sounds like a sewing machine. The huge wing appears
very hard to control in turbulence.
We're trapped if the weather gets nasty, but that's the way
it is with this kind of flying. I guess I shouldn't worry about it,
I'm on vacation.
It's fun sitting here, writing for the joy of it. Writing to get
down the feelings. To get down the thoughts I don't want to
lose. It's still fresh, this touring around. It's an adventure.
Oops, last person's out of the shower, guess I'll fold up this
computer and grab my washcloth.
Tomorrow I'll break out of the pack, climb to 10,000 feet,
and make the 2-hour dash to back to the office to see if everything's OK.
As you probably noticed last issue, Carol will soon tell me that
last issue's editorial is too short. (This isn't anticipatory journalism,
this is weird.)
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72 MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
94710
John Jones
If you have a copy of Micro C Issue #1, you know that John
Jones wrote a short piece on his disk formatter for the Big
Board (complete with listing). He showed up again in #2 and,
well, has been very regular since.
After seven years, he's called it quits.
Thanks John. I've appreciated your help a lot. A whole lot.
Looking Ahead
You were all great when we asked for database information. So we' re asking for more ideas.
Here are the (tentative) themes for the next year:
Computer Aided Design - Jan/Feb
Bruce Eckel, Sam Azer, and a whole group of assistants are
working on comparative reviews of CAD packages, but I'd
like someone to come up with a complete tale of joy and woe
as he did a complete project using CAD for everything from
schematic capture to film for the PC board. (A blow-by-blow
account similar to my ongoing saga with desktop publishing.)
Tools - Mar I Apr
Okay, so you don't qualify as a robot. You know what tools
are. We're talking libraries, debuggers, logic simulators,
program generators ... You know, tools.
If you write tools, or if you use or test them extensively or
know what tool creators should be working on, then shout.
Robotics - May /June
My first flash when someone says robot is Heath's early
do-it-yourself rug rat. Several engineers in my group at
Tektronix used one of these wire-controlled kludges to clear
the area of people from the manuals group. (It worked.)
Robots are, however, much more than novelties. Twenty
years ago we knew that humanoid robots would soon be
doing the manual labor for society. Well, I haven't seen a
humanoid in Bend lately (they've probably all moved to the
East Coast), but that doesn't mean we don't have robotics.
If you're working on or with a computer that can see,
speak, drill, shape, weld, move ... get in touch. (Either you, or
the computer.) I'm looking for theory and practice. (The
Marines are looking for a few good humanoids).
Handicapped Systems - July I Aug
Of course, most systems are handicapped. But I'm referring
to ways to make computers more available to the sensory impaired and to those who have trouble moving limbs.
I've been thinking about this lately, and I know that as
voice synthesis gets better and cheaper, it'll become standard
in all systems, just as graphics have replaced character displays. That means I could have my X-16 read back my
editorials. (Faster and less addicting than sleeping tablets.)
1/0 Systems - Sept/Oct
These are controllers, monitors, alarm systems, atmospheric
testers, and so on. The possible topics here include: a look at
controller processors (I/0 features instead of MIPs), AtoD,
DtoA, converting temperature, pressure, humidity, stress,
position, to voltage or current. Polling remote sensors ...
Plus there's the software end of this. How about the
problems of developing and testing programs? Building embedded systems? The PC is a good development system, how
about using it as a hardware platform, too?
UNIX - Nov /Dec
I'm looking for some UNIX pieces to run before the
Nov /Dec 1989 issue but I'd like a real blow-out UNIX issue
Around the Bend
for Christmas. With the popularity of 386 systems and the
problems OS-2 is having, UNIX might just take off. (We'll
shell-shock 'em.)
So:
If you're heavily into any of these areas, have other suggestions for articles, or whatever, call Larry, Cary, or me at 503382-8048, or write (P.O. Box 223, Bend, Oregon 97709), or leave
a message for the SYSOP on the Micro C RBBS (503-382-7643,
300,1200,2400).
SOG VII
We had quite a group of women at SOG VII. Two of the
stars were Deborah Norling and Christy Quinn of Grassroots
Computing. Grassroots Computing puts together hardware
and software systems for the handicapped. Though Debee is
blind, she was an active participant in everything from white
water rafting and barbeque to doing two impromptu presentations. During two 11 p.m. sessions, she demonstrated how she
writes software and reads publications using only her laptop
and a voice synthesizer.
Continued from page 72
equal, not just a poor little blind girl.
"But again, Debee is one of a handful of blind people in the
U.S. who are really trying to contribute."
Debee's demonstrations of her system were a real hit at
SOG. We've got her scheduled for a formal presentation of
computing for the visually impaired at SOG VIII. By the way,
we're scheduling SOG VIII for July 13-16. Mark your calendars.
If you want to get in touch with Debee or Christy, they're
available at:
Deborah Norling & Christy Quinn
Grassroots Computing
PO Box 460
Berkeley, CA 94701
(415) 644-1855
Compuserv ID: 72236,2655
Missing Author
A couple of months ago, we received a really interesting
description of the language Tenne-C. It's a substandard language, replete with expletives. For instance, the loop and conditional constructs include:
Hauloff and Do
Fer, til loop
Who!, longasyerattit
Yehbut, nowait
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Debee Norling and Christy Quinn at SOG.
After SOG I called Grassroots and talked to Christy. After
meeting Debee, I was really excited about the role computers
could play in the lives of the country's handicapped. Christy, a
professional counselor, painted another picture.
"Eighty-five percent of the blind are unemployed - on
welfare. They get discounts on everything, special privileges,
and they're used to having people do everything for them.
They're the receivers. Getting something for nothing. We set
these people up with computers and they wind up in the
closet (I think she means the computers). Every once in a
while, we make a good mistake and someone takes it and runs
with it, just like Debee did.
"There's a cerebral palsy guy who's really blossomed; he
lives on it, wrote his first letter to his folks after getting his system. For two years another fellow just formatted disks, then he
blossomed.
"SOG was really exciting for Debee. After a couple days she
decided she really fit in. Had lunch with Walter Bright (author
of Zortech's C++); they had a great discussion and she came
away feeling very good about herself. She felt professional, an
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Reader Service Number 103
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec, 1988
73
Around the Bend
It's great Culture Corner material and it's signed by
Andrew B. Peed of AT&T Bell Laboratories. We haven't found
Andrew, yet. Another clue: A note at the end states it
originated at the Micro Message Service RBBS 919-779-6674.
(However, the SYSOP didn't know how he got it.)
I'd love to find the original author and get permission to
Hauloff and Do this'n.
Disk Technician
I mentioned Disk Technician in my last hard drive article
and then forgot to tell you where to find it. It's available from:
Prime Solutions
1940 Garnet Ave.
San Diego, CA 92109
(619) 274 5000
Dave Thompson, Larry Fogg and Gary Entsminger hold an
impromptu SOG meeting.
Pricing Your Product
Earlier today I was on the phone with a prospective adver.tiser. At the beginning of the conversation, I mentioned that he
would not do well in Micro C until he reduced his price. (Over
$300 for a library with source.)
While we were discussing his ad, he mentioned he was getting an impressive number of bingo inquiries (circle the number ... ) from his ad in Computer Language.
"They're interested but they're not purchasing," I guessed.
He agreed.
He said he had called some of the prospects to see why
they weren't ordering. Only one person mentioned the price.
Everyone else said:
"We're already in the project cycle."
"Don't have a use for it yet."
"It isn't quite what I was looking for."
He also said the people who were using it had said the real
value of the package was far more than the price. And he
added that they've got a 700 page manual which costs them
$50 a copy.
"Put yourself in their shoes," I countered. "From what you
see in the flyer or the ad, would you order the library for
74 MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
Continued from page 73
$325? Would you order it for $99?"
"That's a no-brainer. Of course I'd jump on it for $99."
Which makes my point. People always weigh price against
the perceived value. (Forget about real value, these folks don't
have the product yet.) If the perceived value wins they buy it.
If not, they don't. The higher the ratio of perceived value to
price, the larger the audience.
So: everyone he talked to told him the price was too high.
He just didn't realize it.
Finally. There's a lot to be said for just getting copies out
there. It gets your product into people's hands so they can use
it, get to know it, tell their friends about it, purchase upgrades.
(There's a down side to early volume. If there are problems
with the software or the manual, then lots of copies could
mean lots of irritated owners and lots of bad publicity.)
At Micro C we don't make a cent off newsstands (let me tell
Jim Skinner arrives at SOG fly-in.
you about newsstands), but we're there. Those copies are our
version of inexpensive software packages. They give us exposure, credibility, new subscribers, and new advertisers.
They're our way of reaching the marketplace.
Speeding Up AT Floats
Sandy uses Autocad to do our schematics. It's a good package, but larger drawings (like the XT schematic) get pretty
slow. (Five minute redraw on an 8 MHz 80186 with an 8 MHz
8087.)
So we put together a 12 MHz 80286 AT clone with an 8
MHz 80287 math chip and a super fast hard drive. Boy, did
that puppy scream (four minute redraw).
Now hold on a minute. What's happening? This system
costs twice as much as the other one. It's got to be faster than
this!
About a week later Scott Baker called to tell me about his
little adaptor board.
"If you have an 8 MHz 80287, this'll make it run 8 MHz."
Big deal, I've got a 12 MHz AT. Sure the 287's running
slower than the 286, but it's no doubt already running faster
than the 8 MHz that_it's rated. (Intel has had trouble making
fast 287s, so ATs have traditionally run their coprocessors significantly slower.)
"I'll send you some benchmark programs. Run them, you'll
Around the Bend
be surprised."
He did. I was.
My $250 80287 was loafing along at 6.2 MHz. At this rate it
might as well have been a really cheap 6 MHz 80287. No
wonder Sandy's plots were slow. Okay, I popped out the laggardly 80287, plugged in Scott's tiny adaptor board (it
generates a 24 MHz clock which the 80287 divides by three),
and plugged in the math chip. Wow! Only 3 1 /2 minutes.
Oh well. At least that 287 is finally pulling its weight. I'm
wondering how fast the 287s run in 6, 8, and 10 MHz clones.
Those spendy chips are probably taking lunch breaks in the
middle of transcendentals.
You'll find the benchmark programs in the issue #44 ARC
file on the RBBS so you can see how your system is doing.
You can get the 80287 speed up board for $29.95 from:
Sierra Circuit Design
18185 West Union Rd.
Portland, OR 97229
Continued from page 74
Final Comments
An important part of SOG is the feedback we get from attendees. But attendees aren't necessarily representative of the
rest of you. So, it would be great if you'd take a minute and
fill out the survey card we've bound into this issue. There's a
stack of three cards (probably near page 64). The bottom one is
the survey.
In conjunction with the survey, I'm also interested in your
life story. (With respect to computers, anyway.) Check out the
short article in this issue on "Bits From Your Past."
Also, be sure to see the SOG article by Barbara Hall. She
wrote the piece for Oregon Computer News. It was so much better than anything we could do, we asked her if we could
reprint it. She said "yes."
Finally, don't read Laine' s column right after this one. I
don't want to change our cover from "The Micro Technical
Journal" to "The Travelog For International Computer
Freaks."
(503) 645-0734
David Thompson
Flighty Editor
•••
Jim Warren
Exciting New IBM
IBM is one of a very few computer companies that isn't
knee deep in back orders. In fact, IBM's been so successful at
keeping up with demand, it's reportedly been able to shut
down five assembly lines and lay off 900 employees.
However, that success may not last long. IBM has announced the model 35. It has a fancy new 80286 processor. It's
AT compatible. And, I'm guessing that it'll have AT-compatible card slots. (IBM is strongly denying that it's backing
down on the micro channel.)
Maybe they've created this dramatic new product because
their PS-2 systems aren't very PC compatible. Maybe it's because micro channel cards are expensive. Maybe it's because
the micro channel performance issues are moot since IBM's
machines aren't particularly fast. But, it's probably because no
one's writing software that runs exclusively on the PS-2. (I'm
sure they were hoping.)
I took a lot of flack from some IBM employees for not being
properly impressed with the PS-2 series. Now, I suppose
they're ex-IBM employees. I'm sure they'll let me know.
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MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec, 1988 75
The Fun Has Just Begun
UNITS &
MODULES
Michael S. Hunt
845 E. Wyeth
Pocatello, ID 83201
(208) 233-7539
With John Jones leaving the fold, I had a chance
to expand the Pascal Column. (Not that John didn't
stretch things a bit with his looks at Modula and his
$6 scanner.) Fortunately, at SOG, Mike volunteered
to do an algorithm column and this is it. (By the
way, I understand the Army is famous for this kind
of volunteering.)
Mike has a B.S. in Mathematics/Computer
Science and he's currently a graduate student in
mathematics and a teaching assistant at Idaho State
University.
his column started at SOG. Dave was
looking for a topic for a new column,
and he mentioned it at the Micro C
forum. I suggested an algorithms
column. I didn't realize it then, but I had
walked into a trap. Dave said in an hypnotic
voice, "Would you be interested in writing the
column?" I don't remember much after that.
After my head cleared, I found myself sitting in
the dark staring at the computer screen. Somewhere over my shoulder there lurked a deadline.
So, what can I say about algorithms? An algorithm is a finite sequence of instructions,
each (hopefully) clear in meaning, that can be
executed with a finite amount of effort in a
finite amount of time. Algorithms run naturally
through the code we write. Almost every article
in Micro C has an algorithm. Even On Your
Own and Around The Bend give us an approach or methodology for solving a problem.
T
Units & Modules
And what do units and modules have to do
with algorithms? Units and modules are
abstract machines. The internal workings of the
machines or units can be hidden from the user.
The user is only concerned with what each
function or procedure does, not how it's done.
A unit or module attempts to be a collection
of functions, procedures, and data types that do
something. A well-designed unit should contain a well-designed algorithm. That way we
create libraries of reusable abstract tools.
This column will deal primarily with algo-
76
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
rithms, their design and usage. The module or
unit concept provides an excellent vehicle for
their presentation.
Directions
Most of my computer experience is from
academia, not the real world. Academics spend
a great deal of time studying and improving algorithms. But an algorithm is nothing more
than a mind game if you don't have a real
problem.
A good algorithm will often take advantage
of peculiarities in the problem in order to find a
solution.
Though no two problems are alike, many
problems have similar characteristics. Often
you can manipulate a problem into a different
form so that you can use familiar tools to solve
the problem. Radical and unorthodox thinking
can provide you with a view of the problem
you might not have normally seen. With practice, it gets easier to see similarities between the
current problem and previous ones.
Each issue I'll throw out a programming
problem. In the following issue I'll present at
least one solution. The solution will be an algorithm that I hope will be more elegant than
brute force.
Left to run amuck and out of control, I'm
planning to cover the following:
The Black Art of Sorting
Stacks & Queues
Linked Lists
Strings & Character Manipulation
Tree Structures
Arrays & Matrices
Graphs & Networks
Search Strategies
Set Operations
Design & Analysis of Algorithms
Operations Research
Numerical Analysis
Mathematical Modeling
I'll try not to rehash previous Micro C articles but, where appropriate, I'll include
references to other books and magazines.
All the code that I write will be available as
a Turbo Pascal 4.0 unit and a Mo prev then
begin (* if *)
temp := n;
n := prev;
prev := temp;
Prevwhat;
end; (* if *)
end; (* what *)
beqin {* who *)
if not eoln(input) then
begin (* if *)
read(n);
What;
Who(n,What);
write(' ',n:l);
end C* if *);
end{* who*);
procedure Whereinput;
var endWho : integer;
procedure EndWhat;
begin
end; (* endwhat *)
begin ( * whereinput *)
endWho := MAXINT;
Who(endWho,EndWhat);
writeln;
end; (* whereinput *)
begin
Whereinput;
end. {* program
I'll be covering the black art of sorting.
I changed a few identifiers in the
WhatAmI program so they would not
give away the function of the program.
Follow the code carefully and take notes
if necessary. There is a very subtle hint
in the above paragraph. Next time I'll
reveal the true nature of this program.
Coming Up
Even with the 1 MB on my PC Tech
X16B or the 64 KB in my Kaypro 4-83, I
still run out memory. This often happens when trying to run mini problems
on a micro. Much of the information we
store and retrieve in computer applications is redundant. (Let me repeat that
... ) A method for mapping all of the
redundant information into the same
storage space could reduce memory requirements significantly.
This space savings doesn't come
without a price, however. The additional algorithms and data structures require computational time and memory
space. The savings comes when the
space saved exceeds the overhead for
the data structures. The algorithm running time can often be offset by the
reduced amount of data to be maintained.
We could also devise a virtual
storage system and swap some of the
information to and from disk, but disk
storage can also be limited. I have yet to
write that great virtual storage system.
Instead I will try reducing the amount
of data to be stored.
A good example of redundant data is
a spelling dictionary. Many words have
the same prefixes and I or the same
roots. Mapping all the redundant sequences would create a tangled maze of
paths. So, I'll tackle the problem with
linked lists and trees.
The problem is: given a list of words,
how do we store them on disk (or in
memory) so we can use them as a dictionary?
That also leads to other questions
like: How do we check words in a text
file? How do we add words to or delete
words from the dictionary ... ?
Think about it. I'll take a look at this
problem and tell you what "WhatAmI"
does in the next exciting episode of
"Units & Modules."
•••
*)
***
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44,Nov-Dec, 1988 77
Letters
RAM Speed Debate
I
read
with
interest
Gary
Entsminger' s comments in the Tidbits
column (Micro C issue #42) regarding
RAM chip speeds. Gary must have an
uncanny way of choosing chips that fall
on the very good end of the spectrum.
Dave must also be quite good at it judging from his editorial comments.
I'm not as lucky. My experience is
that with 1 wait state systems you need
150 nsec at 8 MHz, 120 nsec at 10 MHz,
and 100 nsec at 12 MHz. It appears that
the number of wait states is at least as
critical as the system speed.
For instance, I have four banks of 120
nsec 256K chips (NECs, mind you) that
run at 10 MHz, 1 wait state but not at 8
MHz, 0 wait states (theoretically, they
should). I've also had a couple of banks
of 120 nsec, 64K chips that wouldn't
even boot at 8 MHz, 0 wait states but
would come up (albeit crash after a
short run due to parity errors) at 12
MHz, 1 wait state.
Incidentally, those who are thinking
of building a fast AT clone might be
better off buying a cheap XT clone
board with 256K of slow 150 nsec RAM,
and adding an Intel Inboard 386/PC.
It comes with 1 Meg of 32-bit
memory and costs less than what you
would pay for the 80386 and the
memory chips by themselves. It runs
applications an average of three times
faster than an AT, even with its 8-bit
I/0 setup. Tricks like hard disk caching
and remapping ROM and EGA BIOS
into 32-bit memory help. It's almost as
fast as a real 386 board, but costs a lot
less money.
Hector Santos
2616 Berkeley Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90026
Editor's note: Gary was optimistic, but
his optimism isn't always unrewarded. I
was conservative because I like to know my
machine will work. I suspect something in
your system's RAS, CAS, buffering or
RAM select logic is a bit slow. That would
make the system more demanding. (I
haven't heard anything bad about the
Japanese RAM parts.)
C Vs. ASM Imbalance
I wish to hastily object to Tim
Berens' parting request (Micro C, issue
#42, p. 6): "Please print a more
78 MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
Continued from page 6
balanced view of issues such as these in
the future."
In the first place, Eric Isaacson cannot be wrong. He's from Indiana. Indiana people invented the television
(Philo T. Farnsworth), the hand-held
calculator (Bowmar Brain MX-10), and
the home video game (Magnavox Odyssey). Eric's A86 assembler is so fantastic
that it makes higher level languages obsolete - just as Jack Purdum's Eco-C88
compiler is so outstanding that nobody
would ever think of using assembly.
In the second place, how many
people read Micro C because it gives
them a balanced view? Peter Norton
describes C as an "industrial strength"
language - not safe for households
with children. I like to think of Micro C
as the "industrial strength" magazine.
For a balanced view there's always
Mother Earth News. Micro C readers
prefer the touched and sullied output of
unbalanced.minds.
I sure would have liked to take an
afternoon off and drive up to SOG.
How many miles north of South Bend
are you? Incidentally, it's a 90 mile
round trip to buy Micro C on the
newsstand, so I've been meaning to
send for a subscription. But I forgot to
include the check before I sealed the envelope. Maybe next month.
Steven Thomas
6010 Southeast Willow Rd.
Warren, IN 46792
Editor's note: We've sent a couple of
bicycle delivery kids to the south part of
Bend to give you a genuine Micro C envelope· for your check. None have succeeded.
I suspect you're either confused (do you live
in Peoria maybe?) or your town was misnamed.
DBASIC Post Mortem
I thought you might like to know
what happened to the great DBASIC experiment. In two words: it flopped.
DBASIC worked very well. Even the
reviewer who least liked it rated it
above all the other BASICs for speed
and for being bug-free. So it was an artistic success but a marketing disaster. I
sold 70 copies at $40 each during its
first four months on the market, and
there was no evidence of growth at the
end of those four months. What happened? A lot of things.
Giving a lot of copies to user groups
backfired. DBASIC became known as
the free BASIC. I'm still getting letters
asking for free copies. I was charging
$40 for single copies but giving 10-copy
sets free to user groups (to get the
software out). Unfortunately, single
users were claiming to be user groups.
The other free BASIC, the one that
comes with the ST, was awful. But most
ST types don't program very often, so
that's the one they use. Free BASIC
competing with another "free" BASIC is
a very tough way to make a living.
When the ST first came out, a lot of
techies were buying it - just the right
market for DBASIC. While I was busy
turning DBASIC into a commercial
product, those sales stopped and a new
buyer came along: the drooling rockshooter. Rock-shooters don't write
programs.
DBASIC had a command line interface, just like MS-DOS and the older
CP /M and Apple II machines. ST folk,
like the Macintosh folk, are dedicated
mouse I icon freaks and refuse to use a
command line interface.
The biggest problem is that the ST, in
the U.S., is a toy computer. DBASIC
was intended to be a useful BASIC.
That's why it had double-precision
floating point and transcendentals.
There were lots of reasons why
DBASIC failed; all of them were my
fault; I did not correctly identify a
market before blindly charging ahead.
A market is a group of folks who are
able and willing to buy a product or
service. For instance, I can't stand the
typical ST magazines. And yet, the
magazines which support a computer
tell you a lot about those who own it.
Early in December I filed for dissolution of DTACK Grounded Inc. and
packed my bags. I left New Mexico at
the end of the year and am now in
Silicon Valley. DTACK did not go
bankrupt; all the bills were paid. But it
was obvious that the company could
not survive, even with just one
employee. I still get about one check a
week for DBASIC. I send the checks
back. I don't have a business license or
manuals - most of them are in Santa
Fe's municipal land fill.
Hal W. Hardenbergh
1111 W El Camino Real Ste 109-406
Sunnyvale, CA 94087
Editor's note: Hal, I'm curious about the
rock-shooter. (Don't send one, we have
enough extra stuff around the office.)
Beware Vaccine
While at the West Coast Computer
Faire, I picked up a copy of Vaccine to
protect my system from viruses.
The program examines the files on
your hard disk - all executables and
important data files. It keeps a catalog
of the files along with CRC information.
Then, before it allows a program to
load, it verifies that the program hasn't
been changed.
When I installed Vaccine on my AT,
I ran into a few interesting problems. It
seems that Vaccine uses the DOS COPY
and FORMAT programs to make a
master disk which you can use to
authorize new programs. Well, when I
inserted 360K disks into the HD drive,
FORMAT and COPY failed but the Vaccine installation program continued to
run without taking notice of the errors.
The result was that all programs on
all disk drives were locked out. (I mean
all programs.) The system was dead. I
had a prompt but I couldn't run anything. The step of copying the master
authorization file to the hard disk from
the temporary floppy failed. The result
was that no program was authorized to
run.
I was in a panic. I thought, "The ultimate virus got me." Actually, the cure
was to reboot from floppy and erase the
Vaccine TSR from the hard drive's
AUTOEXEC.BAT. When I went back
and reread the manual, all it said was
the floppies had to be "compatible"
with the drive type. What they meant
was a high density disk had to be used
with HD drives.
Correcting this step, I reinstalled and
this time it went smoothly. All COM
and EXE files were checked and
authorized in addition to the master
data tables. As a further safeguard these
files were set to read-only, making it
that much harder for a virus to change
things. When loading a file there was a
slight delay while " ... program checks
OK ... " flashed on the screen but, other
than that, everything worked just fine.
The main problem is that I do a lot
of program development, and before I
can run a newer version of a program, I
must "authorize" it. This is a pain.
After a few hours I de-installed Vaccine.
For me, maybe the system worked too
well.
This isn't meant to be a review, only
some comments on what is actually a
fairly good program (especially good
for bulletin board SYSOPs, I imagine).
Clark A. Calkins
worse. I offer as evidence Borland's
recent "TurboMan" series in the front of
BYTE. The ads in Micro C are not what I
call the flashy 5th Avenue type, but
rather tend towards a subdued black on
white.
Keep up the good work.
C.C. Software
1907 Alvarado Ave.
Walnut Creek, CA 94596
Editor's note: Tadas Osmolskis held a
SYSOP session at SOC. The primary topic
was viruses and Trojans, and I understand
no one from the group had yet seen such a
beasty. (We haven't.)
There appears to be some paranoia
among the general population, however. We
just had a customer return a group of Micro
C disks because he found some remnants of
erased files and some sector errors. He was
absolutely certain we were trying to infect
his system, especially when he noticed that
files had been changed. (Hey, we've come a
long way from the early days of public
domain, but this is crazy.) As for the sector
errors, we've always been ready to replace
or refund.
A Pat On The Back
I've been reading your magazine off
and on for a couple of years and have
finally
been
moved
by
David
Thompson's eloquent plea in Micro C
#43. If I had known before that subscribing would encourage irresponsibility, funny articles and all that lot, I
would have signed up a long time ago.
I'm not really an anarchist, but that's
just because I'm not organized enough.
I'd like to compliment all of your
editors and contributors. Micro C is one
of the few magazines that I ever read
from cover to cover, every word, including the ads. In particular, Bruce
Eckel's "Delving Into The Black Arts" (I
built the board in slightly more than an
hour, but the time passed quickly.),
David Thompson's "Keeping Your
Hard Drives Running," and all of Larry
Fogg's PC support chip articles were
absolutely first rate. Of course, everything else is too, but these articles stick
in my memory, probably because I
read each of them several times (refresh
cycles).
In reference to the new format looks good. The content doesn't seem to
have suffered for the change. As for the
advertisements and Ron Schroeder's
comments in #43, things could be a lot
Nathan Engle
6465 Piping Rock Lane #30
Indianapolis, IN 46254
Editor's note: Thanks for the kind words,
Nathan. And, just to show how responsive
we are to reader input, check out page 13
for our first ever, inside, four color ad!
Epsilon Info?
Two years ago a friend bought a
used Data General One laptop (an early
IBM PC compatible). Some software
came with it, including an EMACS type
of editor called Epsilon. It's similar to
Perfect Writer, but loads a file into RAM
without using a swap file.
The help file is somewhat incomplete, and there is no information about
the origin of Epsilon: I don't even know
if it's a public domain or commercial
program.
Have any Micro C devotees heard of
Epsilon? Can anyone tell me more
about it?
Deborah Rose
4444 Yale Station
New Haven, CT 06520
•••
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
79
Kaypro Clock Fix
CPM
NOTES
I'm writing in response to Dr. Yates' letter in
Micro C issue #41. I assume, Dr. Yates, that your
Kaypro 10 motherboard is similar to my Kaypro
1 motherboard. Even if not, what follows may
be of use. (Kaypro seems to have gone out of
their way to make their model designations
thoroughly confusing.)
I bought a Kaypro 1 in December of last year
from a liquidator. The production tag indicates
that the machine was produced in November
1986, and I suspect that Kaypro made a final
run to clear out its parts inventory. What's important is that this is probably the final version
of their universal board. It incorporates certain
changes (upgrades?) which don't appear on the
Micro C schematic and are not documented in
any articles.
As you probably know, the Kaypro 1 is really a 4-84 without the parts for the clock,
modem, and SASI. So I decided to install the
missing parts and document any differences between my board and the Micro C schematic.
Enclosed are my efforts to date. (See Figure 1.) I
believe I've covered most, if not all, of the differences. I only wish someone could check my
work since circuit tracing is very tedious.
I'm assuming that you have access to a Micro
C schematic. If not, pin 23 (PWR ON) of the
clock chip was originally tied high directly. On
my board, pin 23 ties high through an unidentified resistor (R53). An unmarked capacitor
(C87) goes from pin 23 to ground. This capacitor
is obviously an electrolytic.
Based on a reading of the MM58167A data
sheets, past experience, and superstition, I settled on a lOOK resistor and a 1.0 µF dipped tantalum. Also, I'm using a small button type
lithium cell.
For CR6 I'm using a 1N270 germanium
diode in order to minimize voltage drop. (Never
heard of a "1001.") And I substituted a 6.8 µF
dipped tantalum capacitor for C54. The
schematic says it should be 0.1 µF. But I like the
idea of a moderate-sized tantalum to achieve
some degree of orderly voltage decay while still
providing good bypass qualities. Besides, my
board calls for an electrolytic at that location.
I'm self-educated in electronics and a pro
might argue the wisdom of some of my choices.
80 MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
But my clock has performed flawlessly from
day one. Not one error through numerous
power up/downs. If your board already includes these changes, or if the addition of
these components doesn't solve your problem,
you might also try pulling pin 3 (WR) high
through a lOK Ohm resistor.
If you're interested in the rest of what I've
doped out, I hope my drawings are sufficiently clear. I haven't had time to really study all
I
·m self-educated in
electronics and a pro
might argue the
wisdom of some of
my choices.But my
clock has performed
flawlessly from day
one.
of what I've drawn, but on the surface it appears that Kaypro may have had an 8 MHz
upgrade in mind for this board. If so, I'll
definitely try for it after I've addressed the bus
loading problem of the 84s.
Van S. Vangor
Bethlehem Tool
346C Retreat Rd.
Island Falls, ME 04747
Floundering Forth
Back in 1984 I got a copy of FIG Forth for
the Kaypro II (from Micro Cornucopia) that
had the extensions added by Bob Bumala and
Kevin Appert. Recently I've been trying once
Figure 1 - Updates to MicroC Schematic for Universal Board (Final Version).
U76 NOT ON SCHEMATIC
NOTES:
N.S =
NOT SUPPLIED
N.C. = NO CONNECTION
X =
U76 - 16 PIN
"SPARE"
(EMPTY)
GND
i
NO LONGER CONNECTED IN THE NEW CIRCUIT
16
Vee
1-7, 9-15
N.C.
I
I
I
R10 & Rl .3 NOT ON PCB
U7
N.S
Vee
I
R1.3
100K
I
I
R5.3
N.S
~ 00K ?
R10
~.20:\
I
I
~ ~1~
I
GND
20K
LM.324
NS.
GND--i
_
_
_
_
_
j
MM
58167A
CLOCK
rT----<>-------2-3~PWRON
C87 - N.S
ELECTROLYTIC
1 uF ?
I
_
rl
U36
_ _
I
U22 IS 74LS08, NCT A .3.9-< RESISTOR PA-<
U74 NOT ON SCHE"1ATIC
gyN.C.
I
GND
U10
U2
LS14
PNC
9
U13
LJ20
LS
373
LS
245
81-189
VIDEO
PAL
~
u1 s
U74
LSl 57
U10
I
I
' 6116
81-189
VDEO
PAL
:
LJ
GNO
DIR
PA2
30
tL_h_
7,9,12
11
12
,.__-___,.___ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_,DA0EN
U43 PIN 21
GND
5,6,8,10
11,13,14,15
29
K1J
280
A11----------<,,___
y11------
GND
I
U75
~ LS74
LSI 4
"FORMERLY UNUSED"
'1
16
CLKl-------+----_J
21
I
23
Vee
U16
6845
Q2
CLK
016
6845
U53 NOT ON SCHEMA TIC
~-----1-6,
9-13
1 - - - - - - N.C.
U53 - 14 PIN
"8 MHz" (EMPTY) 14
Vee
GND
Vee
10
A'.
83
111
16
Vee
U70 NOT ON SCHEMATIC
AJ
82
Y2
GND
U45
U46
~
GND~GNC
•1
'
~~
J70
LS157
A SELECTED
A3
11
16
YJ A2 Vee
1 MHz
Vee
U73
31
WD
CLK
FORMERLY
"UNUSED"
U44
1793
Vee
4 MHz
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec, 1988
81
• SEE HOW PROGRAMS WORK
• EASILY MODIFY PROGRAMS
SOURCER™ creates detailed commented source code and listings from memory
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SAMPLE
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Fully
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Program
header
PAGE
Detailed
comments
!I
Created:
Version:
data_le
- 0008
equ
J
; (0040:0008·J78h)
;------------------------------------------------------------ seg_a ----seg_a
segroont para pub1 ic
assurre cs:seg_a, ds:seg_a, ss:stack_seg_b
resetprn
proc
far
Jill>
short 1oc 1
start:
658E:OOOO
658£:0000 EB 23
658E:0002 52 65 7J 65 74 50
658E:0008 52 4E 20 76 Jl 1E
658E:OOOE JO Jl OD
658E:00ll 0040
658E:OO!J OD DA 52 65 7J 65
658E:0019 74 20 50 72 69 6E
658E:OO!F 746572JF2024
658£:0015
658E:0025 OE
658E:0026 !F
658E:0027 .BA OO!J
658E:002A 84 09
658E:002C CD21
data 2
data)
db
'ResetPRN-vl.Ol ', ODh
dw
db
40h
ODh, OAh, 'Reset Printer? S'
push
pop
mov
int
cs
ds
dx,offset data_J
ah,9
2lh
int
ah,!
2lh
loc_l:
; (658E:OO!J-0Dh)
; DOS Services ah-funct1on09h
658E:002E
658E:OOJO
B4 01
CD 21
658E:OOJ2
658E:0034
658£:0036
658E:003A
658E:003E
658£:0041
658£:0043
JC 79
75 16
8ElEOOll
88 16 0008
83 C2 02
80 08
EE
c~
jne
mov
add
mov
out
al,79h
locJ
ds,data1
dx,ds:data_le
dx,2
al ,8
dx,al
display char string at ds:dx
; DOS Services ah•functionOlh
; get keybd char a 1, with echo
'y'
; Ju~ if not equal
; (658E:00ll•4Dh)
; (0040:0008·J78h)
; port J7Ah, printer-2 control
al-8, initialize printer
;
658E:0044 B9 8000
658£:0047
658E:0047 E2 FE
658E:0049 80 oc
658E:0048 EE
cx,8000h
locloop_2:
loop
mov
out
locloop_1
al,OCh
dx,al
mov
int
ah,4Ch
Zlh
; Loop if ex > O
; port J7Ah, printer-2control
;
Easy to
read
format
Pagel
15-Apr-88
1.01
;
Simulator
follows
segment
changes
4:05 pm
60,1J2
RESETPRN
Assembler
directives
Determines
data areas
and type
19-Apr-88
SourcerL1sting
ResetPRNvl.01
resetprn.lst
658E:004C
658E:004C
658E:004E
84 4C
CD 11
resetprn
seg_a
659J:OOOO
al ·OCh, init&strobeoff
loc_J:
'L'
; DOS Services ah·function4Ch
terminate with al-return code
endp
ends
;------------------------------------------------------- stack_seg_b ---stack_seg_b segment para stack
db
192dup(OFFh)
stack_seg_b ends
OOCO[FF)
end
start
(Source code output and inline cross reference can also be selected)
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more to get a handle on the language
by working through the code in Steve
Burnap' s book on Forth. All was going
well until I tried to use the PAD and
TYPE words in the development of the
records database. Trouble.
In plain FIG Forth, the statement
"PAD 20 EXPECT Sgt. Pepper
" causes PAD to accept characters
until the . When "PAD 20 TYPE"
is used to display the string, only the
characters up to are displayed.
However, in the KForth derived
from the extensions, the "PAD 20
TYPE"
only
displays
"EFORTH
." Further examination of memory in the area
reveals the same string no matter what
is written to PAD by means of the EXPECT word. The string actually extends
from "HERE 63 +" to "HERE 99 +,"
and consistently overwrites that part of
PAD. The string is a group of five numbers followed by the word EFORTH
and a series of dashes.
So I did some sleuthing.
After loading SCN 2 (which has
some screen clearing words, a new
LOAD, etc.), PAD works okay. But
TYPE caused the screen to clear and the
cursor to home!
Loading the editor (SCN 61-97)
caused TYPE to display characters after
the in the string (even if they
were garbage), up to the number requested. SCNs 12-17 showed no change.
After SCN 18, the ERR/OOPS
words, characters after the were
represented by an underline. However,
after the Magic Incantation (SCN 7) and
the P ATCHes to QUIT, FORGET, and
ERROR, the command "PAD 20 TYPE"
returned the aberrant string. In one attempt, the string didn't appear until I
saved the new Forth after BYE.
I'm not familiar enough with Forth
to know why the PAD memory and
TYPE word are corrupted by the additions (which, otherwise, I find most useful). I hope your resident Forth guru
might shed some light on this problem.
Walter J. Rottenkolber
P.O. Box 936
Visalia, CA 93279
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Editor's note: Sorry, our resident Forth
guru wandered off years ago to live in a
Wisconsin chicken coop. (No, I don't understand Forthers either.) But, there must be
someone out there (cooped up, no doubt)
who can send us an answer Forthwith.
303 t Tisch Way, Suite 905, Dept. M3, San Jose, CA 95 t 28 (408) 296-4224
PS 2. AT. XT. and PC are trademarks o1 IBM Corp
Reader Service Number 62
82
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
•••
Want to write for
Micro C?
Short Guide For Micro C Authors:
1. Read Micro C:
You'd be surprised how many people think we'd
love to print their reviews of Apple II games, or their
handy cheat sheet for WordStar 4.0. Fortunately,
we're a technical journal so we're looking for people
who are poking about along the front lines. (If you're
doing something that hasn't been done before, or
something very technical and very intense, holler.)
2. Communicate:
Articles that show up as a surprise generally don't
get run (and if they do run, it's with significant
revision). When David or Gary works with you, he
can help you tailor the piece for Micro C or can point
you to another, more appropriate publication. A
majority of these 'unsurprising' articles get printed.
3. Be active:
The verb "to be" is overused and underpublished.
Anytime you see "is" or "are" or "isn't" or "aren't,"
you're seeing passive verbs. Example: The parser is
able to scan characters as they are input. Replace
with: The parser scans keyboard characters.
4. Keep it meaty:
People read Micro C for information.
5. Keep it light:
(I know, I said "Keep it meaty.") You're writing from
experience so let readers in on the frustration and the
fun. We call ourselves "The Micro Technical Journal," but just between you and me we're really just
technical people talking to our peers about exciting
discoveries.
6. Use the first and second person.
First person is "I," such as the first line of #5 above.
Second person is "you." "You" can be implied.
"Keep it meaty!" implies the second person because
I'm really saying, "You keep it meaty!" (And don't
forget it!)
7. Short and Sweet:
Avoid long, twisted, windy, gargantuan sentences
that run on and on, tied together by commas, ands,
and buts, with lots of ideas - similar to, but not
limited to, sentences such as this. (In other words,
keep it simple.)
Keep your paragraphs simple too. A paragraph
should contain a single, simple idea. We like short
paragraphs, like this one.
8. Use subheads:
Subheads are very, very handy. They notify the
reader of major shifts in subject, they're great for later
reference, and they aid skimming.
Subheads also help you organize your writing. For
instance, if you need to repeat the same subhead, or
you can't come up with a single subhead that summarizes the material which follows, then you need to
look at your organization.
I like to have a subhead every 15 to 30 lines (on the
screen). That's not hard and fast: sometimes it's 5
lines, other times it's 40, but it averages out about
every 20 lines.
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MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44,Nov-Dec, 1988 83
KAYPRO
COLUMN
By Joseph I. Mortensen
4214 Chelsea Ct.
Midland, MI 48640
Perfect Filer Utility
Extracting Data The Easy Way
If nothing else, the Perfect software series was
controversial. Those who liked it swore by it.
Everyone else avoided it like the plague. For all its
idiosyncrasies, at least it was free with the Kaypro
and people like Joe were soon writing patches and
utilities to cover some shortcomings. Here's one.
xtracting data from Perfect Filer (the
database which came with early
Kaypros) is a painful, tedious process
which nobody should have to do even
once. (See my article in the July, 1988, issue of
PROFILES.) It was an attempt to get Perfect
Filer to generate a comma-delimited file for use
with WordStar 4.0's MergePrint feature that
finally forced me to act.
When I examined my Perfect Filer database
using SuperZap, I found the information in
Figure 1.
E
An empty field is indicated by a null as at
ODOCH in the example. OFFH marks the end of
a record unless the record fills an entire sector,
in which case it ends with null. Any unused
portion of a sector is filled with OFFH. See
Figure 2.
Having discovered how Perfect Filer stores
data, I could proceed to write a program to
convert each record and its several fields to the
comma-delimited format used for data files by
WordStar, MBASIC, dBASEII and many other
programs. After conversion, the sample Perfect
Filer record in Figure 2 would look like this
(broken into more than one line to fit magazine
margins):
"Marguerite","","Bremer", "Mrs.",
"Marg","","","636 Helicon, #285","","Minor Function","CA","92506","","619","5558341 ","x","","","",""
,''1'',''1'',''84''.
Every field is enclosed with double quotes,
fields are separated by commas, empty fields
are represented by"", and the record ends with
Figure 1 - Perfect Filerr Sector 0 Hex Dump
Address
00 01 02 03
04 05 06 07
-08 09 OA OB
OC OD OZ OF
000000
000010
7F 00 02 OD
00 00 00 00
58 00 00 00
00 00 00 00
00 00 00 00
00 00 00 00
00 00 00 00
00 00 00 00
/*** I
Sector zero serves as a file header. It's filled
with OOH except for the first few bytes. Bytes 00
and 01 show the number of sectors in the file in
the usual low byte, high byte order. This example has 007FH, so the file has 127 sectors of
128 bytes each. Bytes 04 and 05 contain the
number of sectors in use (including sector 0), in
this case 0058H or 88.
Sectors 1 and onward store the data. In unused (erased) sectors byte 00 is OFFH. In active
records byte 00 indicates how many sectors the
record uses. Since Perfect Filer allows up to
1024 bytes (8 x 128 bytes/ sector) per record,
byte 00 can range from 01 to 08.
The following example has 01 at byte 00.
Each field in a record ends with a null (OOH).
84 MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
a carriage return. The finished data file consists
of all the records from the Perfect Filer
DATABASE.
An Easier Way
I finally found an easy way to extract data
from Perfect Filer. It's a utility program called
PF2ASCil.COM. (You can find it on the Micro
C RBBS or the Issue #44 disk for $6 from Micro
C.) It gets the names of input and output files
either from the command line or from prompts
after the program is running. It opens the Perfect Filer DATABASE and creates the output
file. It then reads sector 0 to determine how
many sectors the input file contains. Next it advances to the first data sector (at offset 80H)
oc ·oo . ·
~.~~-~-~~----:-:
OS ·09·. o~· OB
o~ OF
............... _:_ ______ ..,..----~-~:...,;.-.---------·--~-:.:...-:----------~-:----69 i4 65 00
00 4D 61 72
36 33 36 20
48 65 6C 69
35
4D
69 6E 6F 72
61: 00 43 41
32 34 31 38
31 00 38 34
00 39 32 35
33 34 3100
Ei3
20
30
78
00
00
36 31 39 00 ln.~.92S06. ,619. I
00 .FF FF IT
Fi' FF n IT
FF .IT IT J':tr
n .IT IT r:rr
IT IT J'lf FF 11. 84 • . • •. •· ..•.•• , I
IT IT r:rr FF I· ..... ·•··· ..... '. I
01 4D 61 72
76 65 72 00
000020
000030
000040
000050
0001)60
00()070
oo
67 75 6$ 72
4P 72 73 2E
000000
000010
.ooFF l'F
6F 6E
46 75
36 00
00 00
2C
6&
42 72 65 I.. Marguerite .. Bre I
67 00 00 00 lmer.)Crs .. •rg ... I
20 23 32 JS 1636 Helicon, 4281
63 74 69 Ei!' 1s, .Minor F\lnatiol
00 00>3100 155Stl341.x .••. R : IF
Charcc>unt > 0 THEN WJUTELN (£2 >; INC (NumR.ecs) END;
Cb;arCount : 1: 128; I
If¢haraciter is NULL then check next charac:te:r. Tllen back up file pointer one byte to
make sure no characters are skipped.
If cha.ncter is Ol to 08 (indicating start of
new record) or OFFH (indicating end of record),
add final c:0rama and CR. and go to next sector.
If it's a printable character, put "," to
separate fields.
Increment character count.
1f·N'OLL is last character in file; add final
doUble quote and CR, bump record counter, and
end processing. *)
1F NOT EOF{f1) THEN ReadByte(fl,Ch);
SetPos (fl, Nextl?os.(f1) -lL) ;
CASE Ch OF
Ole .• 10C,EOR : WRITELN(f.2,, "'); CharCount .:= 128;
NULL,
r
I
INC (NumRecs); I
WRITE(f2, r " ' ' " ) ; INC(Cbareount); I
(* CASE *)
•• ',..,
ELSE END;
:
ELSE IF EOF(fl) TUN
WRI'l&LN(f2,' '"); CharCount := 128; INC (NumRecs.) END
INQ; I (* IF NOT *)
(* If character is printable, write it to out.put file
and incr~t cnaracter.count. *)
RI'l'l:(f2,Ch); INC.(CharCount); I
(* If chaJ;acter is 01 to 08 (indicating a new record)
write ado\lble quote to file for first field.*)
01C; ; lOC ; IF CbarCount = 0 THEN WRITE ( £2 t ' ' " ) ; END;
INC(Charcount); I
,.,,, It' Character i$ anything else, ignore it, and b\ltlf)
character count. *)
El'..$EINC:(CbarCount) END (*CASE*)
E!1t> (,. IF NOT EOF *)
END
(*
WHILE .Cha:rCount
E!m; . (* WHILE SecNum *)
/***/
*)
and reads byte 00.
If byte 00 is not OFFH (marking an
erased record), the program then writes
the first double quotation mark to
enclose the first field, reads and writes
each printable ASCII character until it
comes to a null (the end of field
marker). It then inserts quote, comma,
quote (",") to separate the fields and
reads the next byte. If an empty field
(indicated by a null byte) is encountered, the (",") are inserted in the
output.
If the program finds the end of
record marker (OFFH), it puts in the
closing quote ("), adds a carriage return,
and then moves to the next sector and
starts the process all over. When all the
sectors have been read and processed,
PF2ASCII reports the job finished and
closes both input and output files.
See Figure 3 for the main WHILE
loop in PF2ASCII.COM (it's written in
Turbo Modula-2).
Using PF2ASCII
PF2ASCII works with any Perfect
Filer database and has distinct advantages over Perfect Filer's internal
method of extraction (using the
Generate List/Report option). With the
latter the output must be formatted for
each database. The number of fields you
can extract is limited to 19 even though
a Perfect Filer record may have up to 70
fields. PF2ASCII isn't limited.
The input file is always named
DATABASE and is on the Perfect Filer
data disk. If you do not enter input and
output names on the command line
then PF2ASCII prompts you for them.
The output works with WordStar
4.0's merge print which saves you the
misery of preparing data files. Because
the output is in ASCII form, data can be
exported to MS-DOS programs which
accept the comma-delimited format.
Why Modula-2?
Although I used Turbo Modula-2 to
write PF2ASCII, such a short program
could as easily have been coded in
BASIC, C, or Pascal. I happened to have
Modula-2 on hand and wanted more
experience programming with it.
•••
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec, 1988
85
KAYPRO
COLUMN
By Joseph I. Mortensen
4214 Chelsea Ct.
Midland, MI 48640
Perfect Filer Utility
Extracting Data The Easy Way
If nothing else, the Perfect software series was
controversial. Those who liked it swore by it.
Everyone else avoided it like the plague. For all its
idiosyncrasies, at least it was free with the Kaypro
and people like Joe were soon writing patches and
utilities to cover some shortcomings. Here's one.
xtracting data from Perfect Filer (the
database which came with early
Kaypros) is a painful, tedious process
which nobody should have to do even
once. (See my article in the July, 1988, issue of
PROFILES.) It was an attempt to get Perfect
Filer to generate a comma-delimited file for use
with WordStar 4.0's MergePrint feature that
finally forced me to act.
When I examined my Perfect Filer database
using SuperZap, I found the information in
Figure 1.
E
An empty field is indicated by a null as at
ODOCH in the example. OFFH marks the end of
a record unless the record fills an entire sector,
in which case it ends with null. Any unused
portion of a sector is filled with OFFH. See
Figure 2.
Having discovered how Perfect Filer stores
data, I could proceed to write a program to
convert each record and its several fields to the
comma-delimited format used for data files by
WordStar, MBASIC, dBASEII and many other
programs. After conversion, the sample Perfect
Filer record in Figure 2 would look like this
(broken into more than one line to fit magazine
margins):
"Marguerite","","Bremer", "Mrs.",
"Marg","","","636 Helicon, #285"/"',"Minor Function","CA","92506","","619","5558341 ","x","","","",""
,''1'',''1'',''84''.
Every field is enclosed with double quotes,
fields are separated by commas, empty fields
are represented by "",and the record ends with
Figure 1 - Perfect Filer, Sector 0 Hex Dump
Address
00 01 02 03
04 05 06 07
08 09 OA OB
OC OD OK OF
000000
000010
7F 00 02 OD
00 00 00 00
58 00 00 00
00 00 00 00
00 00 00 00
00 00 00 00
00 00 00 00
00 00 00 00
/*** I
Sector zero serves as a file header. It's filled
with OOH except for the first few bytes. Bytes 00
and 01 show the number of sectors in the file in
the usual low byte, high byte order. This example has 007FH, so the file has 127 sectors of
128 bytes each. Bytes 04 and 05 contain the
number of sectors in use (including sector 0), in
this case 0058H or 88.
Sectors 1 and onward store the data. In unused (erased) sectors byte 00 is OFFH. In active
records byte 00 indicates how many sectors the
record uses. Since Perfect Filer allows up to
1024 bytes (8 x 128 bytes/sector) per record,
byte 00 can range from 01 to 08.
The following example has 01 at byte 00.
Each field in a record ends with a null (OOH).
84 MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
a carriage return. The finished data file consists
of all the records from the Perfect Filer
DATABASE.
An Easier Way
I finally found an easy way to extract data
from Perfect Filer. It's a utility program called
PF2ASCil.COM. (You can find it on the Micro
C RBBS or the Issue #44 disk for $6 from Micro
C.) It gets the names of input and output files
either from the command line or from prompts
after the program is running. It opens the Perfect Filer DATABASE and creates the output
file. It then reads sector 0 to determine how
many sectors the input file contains. Next it advances to the first data sector (at offset 80H)
08 09 OA
01 4D 61 72
76 65 72
oo
67 75 65 72
40. 72 73 2E
36 33
35 oo
6!f 00
32\34
20
40
41
38
36
00
43
31
48
69
00
33
00
Fil'
6S
6E
39
34
FF
FF
oa oc
69
72
35
00
69 74 65 00
00 4D 61 72
63 6F 6E 2C
20 46 75 6&
30 36 00 00
78 00 00 00
IT IT
IT IT
IT IT IT !':tr
IT IT. IT !':tr
6C
61'
32
31
OD OE OF
00 42 72 65 I .:Marguerite .. Bre I
67 oo oo oo I mer ,Mra .. Marg ... I
20 23 32 38 1636 JJ•Ucon, 12$ J
63 74 69 6!' 15, .~or !'Vncti<:>I
36 31 39 00 lnA!A.92506; .619. i
00 00 31 00 15558341. x ••••• l . I
IT IT l'I' f f 1L 84 ...• . . . . .. • . , I
IT l'F l'I' f f
I . ; •. , . . . . . . . , . •, I
Figtire 3 - PF2ASCII.COM Main WHILE Loop
WHILE SeCNum 0 THBN WRITELN(f2); INC(NumRecs) ENI>;
CharCount : = 128.; I
(t If chi:lraciter is NULL then clutlok next character. Then backup file pointer one byte to
make sure no characters a:re skipped.
If character·is 01 to 08 (indicating start 0£
new record) or OFl!'H (indicatinq end of :record),
add final· comma·. and CR and go to next sector.
If it's a printable character, put ", •• to
separate fields, Increment character count.
I.f. NULL is last character in file, add final
double CJ:llOteand CR, bump record counter, and
end processing. *>
IF NOT EOF(fl) THEN ReadByte(fl,Cb);
8etl'os(f1,NextPos(fl)-1L);
=·
CASE Ch 01!'
()lC .. lOC,EOR: WRITELN(f2,'"'); CharCount := 128;
INC (NumRecs) ; I
m;JLL, ' ' •. , ..,, : WRI:TE(f2,' ", '"); INC(CharCount); I
ELSE END; (* CASE *)
ELSE II' EOF(fl) TUN
WRI'XELN.(f2, '"'); CharCount := 128; INC (NumRecs)
END
END.; I {* IF NOT *)
(* If character is printable, write it to output file
and increment character count. *)
1$I'l'E(f2,Ch); INC (CharCount); I
(* If character is 01 to 08 (indicating a newrecord)
write a double quote to file for first field. *)
OlC: . lOC : IF Charcount
ENI); ·..
/***/
=0
THEN
WRITE (£2, "" )
i
ENI>;
INC(Charcount); I
(* If character is anything elae, ignore it, and bump
character count. *)
ELSE INC{CJl;arcount) END (* CASE *)
('lo IV J!JQT JtOF *)
(*ards not included.
Reader Service Number 22
92
MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
scrnptr '"' (char far *) OxaOOOOOOO; /* set up ptr to EGA, mein */
f = fopen (filename, "rb"};
/*open file for binary read*/
if (f==NOLL) return;
/* if error openinq file, return */
outp (0x3¢4, 2); outp
fread {scrnptr, 29000,
outp (0x3¢4, 2); outp
fread Cscrnptr, 28000,
outp (0x3c4, 2); outp
fread {scrnptr, 29000,
outp (0x3c4, 2); outp
fread (scrnptr, 28000,
outp (0x3c4, 2); outp
fclose (f);
/* get_screen */
/***/
(Ox3cS, 1};
l, f);
(Ox3cS,
l, f);
(0x3cS,
1, f);
(0x3c5,
l, f);
(0x3c5,
2};
I* set to write plane 0 */
I* 9et plane 0 */
I* set to write plane 1 */
I*
4);
8};
9et plane l */
I* set to write plane 2 */
/*.. qet. plane 2 */
/* set to write plane 3 */
I* qet plane 3 */
Oxf}; /*restore latch register*/
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as a subroutine. Supports most languages and filetypes including Btrieve
and dBase. Unlimited filesizes, multiple
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93
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Power Supply
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Parallel Print Driver
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Keyboard Translation
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Word Processing
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CP/M Disk Directory
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BBi! Installation
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Xerox 820-11 To A Kaypro-8
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96 pages
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96 pages
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Maintaining PCs
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Simulating A Bus
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96 pages
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Building Databases
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Records from Turbo Pascal
96 pages
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Issue 44
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107 American Cosmotron .
Andsor Research . . .
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24
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103 Max Software . .
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Micro Cornucopia . . . . . . 89,94
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24 microSOLUTIONS
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110 NuMega . . . . . . . .
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Contact Advertiser Directly.
Coming in Issue #45 -
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MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec, 1988
95
By Gary Entsminger
1912 Haussler Dr.
Davis, CA 95616
Reasonable Dreams
THE
LAST PAGE
Gary's off on another tangent. This one's
as simple or as complex as you want to
make it.
n his new book, The Dreams of
Reason, physicist Heinz Pagels calls
the computer, "the instrument of
complexity."
Computers
allow
physicists,
chemists,
biologists,
economists, social scientists, and others
to explore (and sometimes solve) complex problems they couldn't tackle
before.
"Computers, because of their
capacity to manage enormous amounts
of information, are showing us new
aspects of social reality ... The power of
the computer (for research) lies in its
capacity to computationally model and
simulate complex systems."
We've already begun to explore
several of these major avenues of complexity in Micro C ("Fractals, etc.," in issues #39 and #43; "Chaos, Butterflies &
The BGI," issue #42), and I'm pleased
with Pagels' attempt to define this new
science of complexity.
Complexity, as you might expect, is
an illusive concept, and like anything
new suffers (and benefits) from its
"newness."
I
What Is Complexity?
In
our
ordinary
language,
"complexity" refers to a state or condition consisting of many interacting components. The interaction of the components is complicated; in other words,
we probably can't easily distinguish all
the interactions at once.
Although this kind of general
description is accurate, it's hardly
"scientific," and in fact isn't very useful.
So Pagels suggests a more quantitative,
less qualitative definition "Complexity is a quantitative
96 MICRO CORNUCOPIA, #44, Nov-Dec 1988
measure that we can assign to a physical system or a computation that lies
midway between the measure of simple
order and complete chaos."
A diamond, he goes on to say, has
neatly arranged atoms, and is therefore
ordered. A rose consists of randomness
and order in the arrangement of its
parts, so it's complex. The movement of
gas molecules is chaotic.
Randomness
Since we're looking for a quantitative
measure of complexity, perhaps the
simplest first approach we can take is to
examine numbers, in general.
What is it about a number, for example, that makes it "random" or "not
random." The number .010101010101
for example, seems ordered. And at
least it seems we can predict the next
digit (O or 1), depending on the previous digit.
A number like .18976454329657345292467
however, seems disordered.
What we'd like to do is quantify the
distinction between these (and other)
numbers. One approach we can take is
to examine their "computability." In
other words, what kind of algorithm
would generate the particular number?
Consider another example -
.18976454329657345292467
other than something like: write
.18976454329657345292467. Which explicitly specifies the number within the
algorithm. In other words, the number
isn't "computable" from other numbers.
Turing and others have used this
non-computability as a possible definition of randomness. "For computable
numbers, even if they're infinitely long,
it's possible to write a relatively short
program that will calculate them. For
the non-computable (random) numbers,
the only algorithm that will do the job
already contains all the information in
the number explicitly - the algorithm
is at least as long as the number."
From this, we might then take a next
logical step and compute a number's
complexity from the length of its algorithm.
Challenging You
Over the next few issues, I'd like
your help in exploring and quantifying
complexity. For reasons I'll save until
next time, I'm not convinced that algorithmic length is complexity's key quantifier.
What do you think? You might begin
by sending me your definition of randomness. If you can, quantify it (via an
algorithm or program).
Meantime, check out Pagels' fascinating book, The Dreams Of Reason (from
Simon & Schuster) - and send me your
quantifiable dreams, reasonable or
otherwise.
. 7142857142 ...
Although this number looks complicated (or random), it's actually easy to
generate. It's simply 5 divided by 7. Or
as an algorithm: divide 5 by 7 and write
the result.
Offhand, I know of no algorithm
generate the earlier number -
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