10:58:52 AM EDT Sunday, September 14, 1986 (Rob H.) I'm trying to decide upon a disk drive for my Tandy 200. Tony Anderson wrote a message which spoke of the chipmunk. Is the Chipmunk available on the 200? (Sysop .^Dave^.) The Chipmunk drive is the one of choice for the Model 100, but there seems to be a serious flaw in the Chipmunk for the Tandy 200. Mel Snyder has returned to the TDD until PCSG gets the bugs cleared in the 200 version of the CDOS. (Rob H.) Is an operating system such as TS-DOS necessary? (Sysop .^Dave^.) The Chipmunk comes with its' own operating system and there is none other for it. TS-DOS and the other systems are ONLY for the Tandy portable disk drive and most CERTAINLY are not compatible with the Chipmunk. (Rob H.) Purple Computing sells a portible disk which seems the same as Radio Shacks Portible Disk. Is it? (Sysop .^Dave^.) "Seems the same" because it is identical except for the label. (Ralf Burghart) Dave can you tell me were i can find CONFER.HLP? (Sysop .^Dave^.) Yup, t'is in DL 8 and DL 0. Boff uv 'm, all folks overlook the VERY handy stuff of CTRL-V and CTRL-U when you're interrupted in your typing by other folks transmissions. Very handy commands. (larry l) I have noticed that if I use Ctrl-P in a dl while reading a file it just freezes and I must wait till it finishes output. Is there any way to stop reading a long file without using Ctrl-C? (Sysop .^Dave^.) There are several methods that might work better for you. CTRL-O may be better, but you can try two other things after the ^P commmand. press ENTER and you will leave the DL and go back to Function prompt or you can try S/AGE 1 command just to have something interrupt the flow. Dig it? (larry l) It just seems that they should wire it so that when you type that you should get back to the dl prompt. (Sysop .^Dave^.) Progress is progressing along that line. Software is currently under test with various considerations. (Sysop .^Dave^.) Folks, new member Niki Wenger is with us this morning. Niki is an astronaut/teacher type person coming to us from Hampton, VA on her Model 102. (Niki Wenger) Hi all. Dont't know the protocol yet - so forgive. (Sysop .^Dave^.) Okay, we learn from each other a LOT around here. (Rob H.) Is the DOS necessary for the TDD? (Sysop .^Dave^.) There is SOME kind of 'DOS' necessary for the TDD else you have a useless blob of metal and plastic. Options include FLOPPY.CO that comes with it, DSKMGR from the DL 5 database here, and three commercial programs for which see DISKOS.INF in the DL 6 database. (GENE NESTRO) Is there a prog in the DL's that will randomize ten items (col A) with 10 items (col B) for use of a Test? (Sysop .^Dave^.) None that I know of but should be a simple program to write, especially if you put the items in DATA statements. (Sysop Tony) Gene, there is a pseudo "password generator" in DL1, which uses two lists of 100 words and selects one from each. By changing the words in the data list you can get "one from column A, one from column B." (Sysop .^Dave^.) PASSWD.GEN is the program name. (Rich L) I've been busy and have not been here for awhile; has anyone played with Hugos DOS yet? (Sysop .^Dave^.) Ummm, you mean Disk Power? Think so. (PhilW) I have played with disk Power 100. A very nice package with one (for me) major problem: it must be at the bottom of RAM and sits just where the PG Designs Menu progrm goes (and hits Supera, too). But it is a very nice piece of software. They should make it relocatable. (Sysop Tony) the 200 version is about the same as the 100 version allowing for the larger screen, of course and it has a lot of features other DOS's don't such as full disk directory display on one screen and showing you the first line or two from a file, by just putting the cursor over the file name. But the bad thing for me, is that you have to cold start the computer to get rid of it! It's written to be a permanent extension of the ROM programs, and the only way to turn it off is to cold start. (Sysop .^Dave^.) Rich, methinks there are two semi-conflicting reviews in DL 6 of the l'il fella. DSKPWR.REV and DP100.REV that may help you. (PhilW) I agree with Tony. Summary is -- good software, with poor product (read user interface) engineering. I hope they make it relocatable and let it be removed without trauma! (Sysop Tony) (agree) (Sysop .^Dave^.) Major astronaut conference coming up late this month on another SIG. Will get details if'n ya all want. (GENE NESTRO) Did I read on this SIG or elsewhere - that Acroatix (Power-Disk) is coming out with an upgrade? (Sysop Tony) Yes, there will be an improved POWR-DISK.... also some new stuff from Traveling Software that Phil has found out about. (PhilW) Yes verily, what Tony says is the case. Don't know much about the powr-d upgrade, but the TS product will allow 8 files to be open, support random access, do lost file recovery, etc. -- based on telecon with Mark Eppley on Thursday. CAN'T wait to get my hands on it! (Sysop Tony) And the information was leaked here first over a month ago, in the file DISKOS.INF in DL6. (heh heh) (Sysop .^Dave^.) Say Phil, howzabout some comments on early BIGRAM impressions. (PhilW) LOVE IT. Not one problem to date. The menu utility upgrade is not yet available. New menu utility will be out in about 2 wks. Old one works fine so long as you follow some precautions (see RAMPG1.TIP in DL4 for particulars.) I am very pleased with it. (Larry R.) I am having a wee problem but what else is new, is it possible to either print M100 textfiles (using WRITE.ROM) to a Digital LQP02 or 03 printer OR to xfer files from M100 to DecMate 3 computer? I believe the LQP printers are of the variety one cannot access via our printer port. I get the terms mixed up. (Sysop Tony) Yeah, welll theoretically, you can send data to ANY printer (PhilW) [DEC printers = serial!] (Sysop Tony) but the problem appears to be one of compatability. Most serial printers want various degrees of handshaking; some of them use Xon/Xoff, some want hard-wired handshaking. The computer, of course, is built to support a parallel printer using the CENTRONICS Parallel standard which is almost universally used, as it's the most trouble-free method. The serial printers, by the nature of their non-standardness, are almost an "every one is different" problem. The best you can do is to compare the signals required by the printer, and try to match that up with what you can get from the Model 100 (et al), which MAY or MAY NOT make the printer work. there are some printers that just won't seem to work. Suggest a message on the board may get more concrete help on this question. (Larry R.) what about the idea of uploading to the DecMate 3 and letting it print my doc. (Sysop .^Dave^.) What is a "DecMate", is it IBM compatible? (PhilW) does it have an rs-232 port for phone and other uses? does it have disks? is it a computer or a stand-alone word processor? in short, what interface capability dose it have? (Larry R.) I have no idea. It is a wordprocessor with telecom capabilities, uses 5 inch floppies, has built in drives (2), anything else? Oh yes, is made by Digital. (Sysop .^Dave^.) Methinks some time spent with the Manuals would be more productive of help from here. Need to know communications parameters needed for both the printer and the DecMate. (PhilW) if it has telecom capabilities, it can probably be done, some how! At worst, upload to storage here and download into it or connect the two by phone i/f and do it at 300 baud but better is likely... re manuals, DEC stuff is hard to penetrate from experience with rainbow. DAves idea is best -- start with manuals. Then leavea detailed message in SIG (Sysop .^Dave^.) Most important, methinks, is to find out what the communications setting should be as in parity, bits, stop bits, et alia. MAYBE the Write ROM can handle it IF you know what the printer is looking for. The Write ROM would take sump'n like COM:88N1E as a file to print to. (Larry R.) Also, write rom has phone funtion which might be useful for a direct feed via phone to the DM? (Sysop .^Dave^.) If going to the DM, you won't want to use Write ROM. Methinks. (Larry R.) OH??? why? (Sysop .^Dave^.) If the DM is a word processor, seems to me t'would be best to give it the raw TEXT file to work on. Methinks. (PhilW) I just wanted to mention that programmers will be interested in one little piece of UT-LF2.100 (DL4). It has a clever LF utility by Jim Irwin which he has been intending to upload as a stand-alone. He has allowed me to include it in my utility. It uses the last menu slot to hide the code, and gets around the problem of f-key resets zapping the lf patch in LFUTL.PW1. Versions for the 200 et al will be coming up "real soon now", i.e. when Jim has time to upload them. he has new toy (Toshiba 1100+) which he is funning with! Lf part of program is modular and can be pulled out of UT-LF2. (Sysop Tony) Tank youse. Sounds real USEFUL. (Sysop Tony) Well, general commentary then. Since the first program in BASIC tends to stay at the bottom of RAM and since that is the key to the workings of some of the progams that folks find most useful including SUPERA, and MENU.BA, and the bank switch program for PG Design's banks. Why doesn't somebaudee put all that sort of stuff in one BASIc program, and let the routines be called by jumps or calls depending on what the user wants to do? I was thinking the other day, if various ML routines were hidden in that first BASIC program as has already been done, then the jump addresses would always be the same and more than one routine could be used. As it is now programs are starting to compete for that space, the same as they used to compete for high memory. (PhilW) Reply is that: a) Basic program would be huge, to store that much m/l in data or string format; and 2) Why carry all that around if you need only one or two of those programs? It would be enough (and possible) to make those programs relocatable to they could be "stacked" in low RAM, much as we now stack stuff in high RAM (e.g., relocate X-TEL to run below CDOS). (Sysop Tony) Well, "stacking" was the basic idea. But your LFUTL routine takes what? 8 or 12 bytes? A single REM line in a BASIC program can save about 250 bytes or so, thus a half-dozen such routines. the next REM line can have a whole other set of routines etc. Two lines, in BASIC, 500 or so bytes, could hold a whole bunch of ML stuff. (PhilW) But, LFUTL is a 10 byte m/l program. "menu.ba" is a 1500 byte m/l program and SUpera and DP100 are even larger. And the 10 bytes in LFUTL take about 6 bytes each to store. [in Basic!] (Sysop Tony) What? That doesn't seem possible. I recall in the early days of personal computing before we had BASIC interpreters and such you loaded code a byte at a time from source code. loading a byte at a time for ML seems like it would be the same since you are dealing with "tokens" in the 0-255 range. (PhilW) Right, but LFUTL uses Basic and that takes added bytes! Code is stored as chr$(nnn)+chr$(mmm)+, etc. But I'm only speakin of lfutl, not what is possible. Sounds like a phone conversation -- not of general interest! (Sysop Tony) With only us and Curtis here seems like "not of general interesst" doesn't matter much but I was thinking that there are lots of little things I'd like to do while in TELCOM and right now, I have only one function key choice (Tandy 200, you know....) But if I could jump to a routine that would give me several options such as FILES, FRE(0), LPRINT, etc and have a jump back to TELCOM, it would be most useful. Now I realize this is sort-of what SUPERA does and more!!! but for many reasons, SUPERA is not what I want. So I've been looking at the alternatives and since ML programming is not my bag I've only been asking, "Why can't we", meaning, "Why doesn't somebody?" (PhilW) Can do exactly that with X-TEL in Telcom! Run any Basic program, so long as you do not go to the Menu or do a Telcom thing while lthere. NEAT! (Sysop Tony) Yes, but it has a few other problems making it less useful for 200 users, among which seems to be the "dedicated-ness" of the program, you need a version SPECIFIC to the hardware configuration and if that changes, you need a different program. (PhilW) I don't understand the "dedicatedness" -- Example? (Sysop Tony) X-TEL.100; X-TEL.200; X-TEL.100 with Chipmunk; X-TEL.200 with Chipmunk; X-TEL.100 for POWR-DISK; X-TEL.200 for POWR-DISK; X-TEL.100 with Xmodem for Chipmunk X-TEL.100 with Xmodem for TDD; X-TEL with/without the kitchen sink etc. (PhilW) Well, that is just the relocatedness of it. ALL have xmodem. I use only one version, now (RAM use, in high ram permanently). Denny has a single version for the 'Munk (I think). I don't see any problem here, just an opportunity to do lots of things. Better than one unrelocatable, unkillable version of Disk Power 100! (Sysop Tony) OK.... well it's 10 o'clock in the Pacific Time Zone and since Dave has not returned (probably mugged by a chicken lunch....) I guess it's time to close this CO for this week..... So, unless there is something more pressing.... This CO is "el finito!" Bye all. 1:01:04 PM EDT Sunday, September 14, 1986 User ID Nod Handle ----------- --- ------------ 70250,211 LTR PETER 71266,125 TOR PhilW 72157,1264 NRK Rich 72216,512 RPA GENE NESTRO 72275,337 SYR Rob H. 72316,430 SFG STAN w. 72516,475 CSJ Larry R. 73337,1743 SMO Bob S 73337,763 QCA Ralf Burghart 73765,605 NYJ larry l 75715,100 ATJ Rich L 75725,1130 CVK Curtis G 75765,1124 DCQ Mike A. 76475,662 QEI J.SHADE 76576,2033 ROA DAVID M. MITCHELL 76703,4062 SIE Sysop Tony 76703,4300 HPV Niki Wenger 76703,446 BMD Sysop .^Dave^.