TDISK.COM
                        BY Robert Boggess

TDISK.COM is a menu driven utility that will allow the use of the 
Tandy Portable Disk Drive with the STARLET NEC 8401 computer.
It  is a no frills machine langauge program however,  it does the 
job. It is not a DOS......

Files  can be writen to the 3 1/2 inch floppy disk  and  retrived 
from the disk. Much the same way as tape only much faster.

                LOADING AND INSTALLING TDISK.COM

Download  TDISK.COM if you havent done so.  Make sure that it  is 
named just as writen.

Using the option command of the starlet set the printer to serial 
and the LPT= 8N81N.

Connect  the disk drive using the usual precautions.  Turn on the 
computer and the disk drive. Insert a raw unformatted disk in the 
drive.

Execute TDISK.COM The following menu will appear:

^A>FORMAT DISK
^K>KILL FILE
 R>READ FILE
 W>WRITE FILE
 T>TOP FILENAME
 N>NEXT FILENAME

 SELECT?

Enter  a  control A the the drive will begin to format  the  disk 
thats in the drive. This takes a little over a minute.
NOTE  THAT ALL COMMANDS ARE IN CAPITOL OR UPPER CASE LETTERS  AND 
THE PROGRAM WILL RECOGNISE ONLY UPPER CASE LETTERS.  SO THAT  YOU 
DONT FORGET THE REST OF THIS DOCUMENT WILL BE IN UPPER CASE....

AFTER  THE  DISK HAS BEEN FORMATTED ENTER "F" AND NEXT TO  THE  F 
THAT  YOU  ENTERED WILL APPEAR 9E THIS IS THE NUMBER  OF  SECTORS 
THAT ARE FREE IN HEX FORMAT.  EACH SECTOR WILL HOLD 1280 BYTES OF 
DATA.

ENTER  THE  LETTER  "W"  AND THE PROGRAM WILL ASK  FOR  THE  STAR 
FILENAME THIS MUST BE ENTERED IN UPPER CASE AS TDISK.COM FOLLOWED 
BY A C.R.  THE FILENAME ENTRY ROUTINE DOES NOT SUPPORT BACK SPACE 
SO  BE EXACT.  IT DOES HOWEVER FORMAT THE FILENAME IN THE  PROPER 
WAY WHEN THE "." IS ENTERED BEFORE THE EXTENTION. 
THE  FILE WILL BE WRITTEN TO DISK AT THIS TIME AND  THE  FILENAME 
ENTERED IN THE DIRECTORY AS TDISK   COM (NOTE THE PERIOD DOES NOT 
APPEAR  IN THE FILENAME) HOWEVER WHEN ENTERING THIS FILENAME  FOR 
READING YOU WOULD ENTER   TDISK.COM   LIKEWISE WITH OTHER FILES.

REPEAT  THE FORMATTING AND WRITING TDISK.COM TO AS MANY DISKS  AS 
YOU MAY ENTEND TO USE.
WHEN  YOU  HAVE FINISHED WITH THIS FORMATTING WRITING  PROCEEDURE 
YOU MAY PRESS "\" WHICH WILL EXIT THE PROGRAM BACK TO  CPM.  NOTE 
THAT IS "\" AS OPPOSED TO "/".....


                     INSTALLING THE LOADER.

DOWNLOAD  THE  PROGRAM  DLOAD.COM YOU MAY NAME IT  ANYTHING  YOUR 
HEART DESIRES...

PROTECT THE LOADER PROGRAM BY CHANGING ITS STATUS TO $R/O.

WITH  A  DISK  CONTAINING TDISK.COM IN THE DRIVE  AND  THE  DRIVE 
CONNECTED AND ON, EXECUTE THE LOADER...
TDISK.COM WILL LOAD AND EXECUTE FROM THE DISK AT THIS POINT.


                         NOTES ON MENU.

^A FORMATTS THE DISK
^K WILL KILL THE FILE THAT YOU ENTER
 R WILL READ THE DISK FILE YOU ENTER INTO RAM1 OF THE COMPUTER.
              (THE NAME WILL BE ENTERED INTO THE COMPUTERS 
               DIRECTORY WHETHER IT EXISTS OR NOT ON THE DISK)
 W WILL WRITE THE DISK FILE YOU ENTER ONTO DISK IF IT EXISTS
   ON THE STARLETS RAM1 DIRECTORY OTHERWISE THE PROGRAM RETURNS
   FILE NOT FOUND.
 T WILL  RETURN  THE  TOP FILENAME ON  THE  DISK  DIRECTORY  AND 
   POSITION THE HEAD AT THE DIRECTORY SECTOR. THE LETTER T 
   PRECEEDING THE TOP FILE NAME IS THE COMMAND ENTERED.
 N WILL RETURN THE NEXT FILENAME IN THE DISK DIRECTORY. THE 
   LETTER N PRECEEDING THE FILE NAME IS THE COMMAND ENTERED.
 F WILL RETURN THE FREE SECTORS ON THE DISK IN HEX FORMAT

 NOTE: TDISK WILL NOT OVERWRITE A FILE ON THE FLOPPY DISK. IF
       YOU WANT TO OVERWRITE YOU MUST KILL THE ORIGINAL FILE
       ON THE FLOPPY DISK.


TDISK.COM CAN BE ERASED FROM THE STARLETS RAM1 DIRECTORY AS  LONG 
AS  YOU HAVE A DISK WITH IT ON IT AND THE LOADER IS INSTALLED  IN 
THE STARLET. THE RESULT IS A 1K OVERHEAD ON THE STARLET IN THE 
32K MODE.



HAVE  FUN  AND YOU GOOD PROGRAMERS HELP ME CLEAN IT UP. WHO  KNOWS 
MAYBE ONE OF YOU COULD TURN IT INTO SOMETHING THAT LOOKED LIKE  A 
DOS . A MEMORY MAP IS AVAILABLE TO ANYONE ENTERESTED.