Men-U-tility (c) Custom Software 1308 Western Wellington KS 67152 (316) 326-6197 Review by J.K. Heilman [71216,1375] Although the Model 100 is a marvel of features in a small package, some compromises were necessary. Many routine file/system management commands were either left out entirely or made accessable only through BASIC program routines. A minor objection to be sure but it can be very frustrating, particularly for the computer novice. Custom Software has tried to fill in some of the gaps with a compact machine-language program which supplements the M100's Main Menu with nine new functions that can be accessed with one-key ease. Men-U-tility comes on cassette in two parts - a BASIC loader program and a data file which the loader accesses automatically to generate the actual machine code program (about 1.9K bytes). Through the loader, Men-U-tility is fully relocatable to any address the user chooses, thereby reducing the likelihood of conflict with other .CO programs. The tape is packaged with a spiral-bound User's Manual which clearly explains how to load the program and how to use its features. When Men-U-tility is installed, the Microsoft copyright notice on the top line of the M100's Main Menu is replaced with the number of free bytes in the machine and the size in bytes of the file the cursor is on. The bottom line shows a set of eight new functions which are accessed by pressing the corresponding key (F1-F8). The first four act upon the file currently highlighted by the cursor. They are 1) "Name", which allows the user to rename the file; 2) "Kill", which deletes the file from memory; 3) "Prnt", which prompts for several basic format settings and then sends the file to the parallel port for printing, and; 4) "Invi", which allows the user to remove the file from the menu without deleting it from memory. "Invi" can be very useful if you use BASIC driver programs to run, allocate and deallocate space for .CO programs. The .CO file name can be made 'invisible' to ensure the .BA program is used to access it. (NOTE: Making a file 'invisible' does not release a directory slot. The directory can hold a maximum of 26 names, including the built-in programs, system buffers and 'invisible' files.) F5, F6, and F7 allow the user to reset the day, date, and time respectively. F8, "Alrm", prompts for a time and will set off an alarm at that time no matter what mode the computer is in, however, the computer must be turned on for "Alrm" to work. Men-U-tility only needs to be entered once and replaces the Main Menu until the program is turned off. This can be accomplished two ways: 1) by pressing CODE-O which will return to the normal Main Menu, or 2) by responding "Y" when asked "Remove Men-U-tility?". The system asks the question any time the user tries to access a .CO file from the Menu. This is a safety feature to avoid any .CO conflicts which might cause the computer to cold-start. Users of the LUCID spreadsheet ROM may be surprised to see this question pop up when they try to access .CA files from the Menu. Because LUCID uses a .CO file format for its spreadsheets, Men-U-tility treats them like machine code files, however, there is no conflict between the two programs. To further protect the program from accidental erasure, Men-U-tility resets MAXRAM to an address below itself. This change can come in very handy if you normally use BASIC driver programs for other .CO programs. By including a program line which checks the value of MAXRAM, overwrites and cold-starts can be avoided. For example, [1 IF MAXRAM <> 62960 THEN PRINT "Men-U-tility Installed": GOTO 1] could prevent a very aggravating accident. When Men-U- tility is turned off, MAXRAM is returned to its previous address. (NOTE: DVI users should enter "?MAXRAM" in BASIC mode and use that answer in place of 62960 in the line above.) Men-U-tility performs very well and has enough error traps to protect most users from potential problems. It would have been nice to see an option in "Prnt" to keep the M100 from stripping out the line feeds. Day, Date and Time could have been combined under one key, leaving room for other more commonly used commands like CLOAD and CSAVE but Men-U-tility as delivered is an excellent, inexpensive package to help manage many of the day-to-day housekeeping chores of the Model 100.