Micro_Cornucopia_23_Apr85.pdf

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April...May,

1985

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Automatic Disk Re..logging With CP/M 2.2 ........................

Interrupt Driven Serial Print Driver..................................

Review: Microsphere RAM Disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Do It Yourself Smart Video Controller..............................

In..line Object Code In Turbo Pascal.................................

An Inspired Turbo Tutor.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

New Strokes for KSTROKES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A Low Cost EPROM Eraser .................................... . . . . . .

Pascal and C Compilers Benchmarked

~..............................

Running CP/M's TPA .................................................

Ready To Use Files .. _...........

:t~,-

........ ; ..

<' .. :.: ...... : ..............

Regular Features

The S.. 100 Bus...............

In The Public Domain.......

The Xerox Column..........

C'ing Clearly.................

The Slicer Column..........

The Kaypro Column. . . . . . . .

Pascal Procedures............

FORTHwords ...............

On Your Own............... 72

Technical Tips............... 74

Culture Corner ........ .. .. .. 82

Future Tense

Tidbits ..........-. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

Review: Epson PX..8 ........ 84

The Last Page .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 88

They

said

couldn't

be done.

Borland

Did

It.Turbo

Pascal

The industry standard

With more than 250,00Q users worldwide Turbo

Pascal is the industry's de facto standard. Turbo

Pascal is praised by more engineers, hobbyists,

students and.professional programmers than any

other development environment in the history of

microcomputing. And yet, Turbo Pascal is

simple and fun to use!

TURBO

3.0

TURBO

2.0

The best just got better:

, PASCAL

Introducing Turbo Pascal 3.0

We just added a'whole range of exciting new

features to Turbo Pascal:

• First, the world's fastest Pascal compiler just got

faster. Turbo Pascal 3.0 compiles twice as fast as

Turbo PascaI2.0! No kidding.

• Then, we totally rewrote the file

110

system, and .

.we also now support

110

redirection.

• For the IBM PC versions, we've even added

'turtle graphics" and full tree directory support.

• For all 16 Bit versions, we now offer two addi-

tional options: 8087 math coprocessor support

for intensive calculations and Binary Coded

Decimals (BCD) for business applications.

• And much much more.

COMPILATION SPEED

EXECUTION SPEED

CODE SIZE

BUILT-IN INTERACTIVE EDITOR

ONE STEP COMPILE

(NO LINKING NECESSARY)

,,:"

The Critics' Choice.

Jeff Duntemann, PC Magazine:

"Language

deal of the century .

Turbo Pascal: It

introduces a new programming environment and

runs like marjic."

Dave Garland, Popular Computing:

"Most

Pascal compilers barely fit on a disk, but Turbo

Pascal packs an editor, compiler, linker, and run-

time library into just 29K bytes ofJandom-

access memory."

'Jerry Pournelle, BYTE:

'What I think the

computer industry is headed for: well

documented, standard, plenty of good features,

and a reasonable price."

COMPILER SIZE

TURTLE GRAPHICS

BCD OPTION

PRICE

Portability

Turbo Pascal is available today for most computers

running PC DOS, MS DOS. CPIM 80 or CPIM 86. A

XENIX

version ofTurbo Pascal will soon be announced.

and before the end of the year, Turbo Pascal will be

running on most 68000 based microcomputers.

(*)

Benchmark run on an IBM PC using MS Pascal version 3,2 and

the DOS linker version

2.6.

The 179 line program used is the "Gauss-

Seidel" program out of Alan

Miller's book:

Pascal programs for

scientists and engineers

(Sybex. page 128) with a 3 dimensional

non·singular matrix and a relaxation coefficient of

1.0.

An Oller You Can't Reluse

Until Jl:me 1st, 1985, you can get Turbo Pascal 3.0 for

only $69.95. Turbo Pascal 3.0, equipped with either the

BCD or 8087 options, is available for an additional

$39.95 or Turbo Pascal' 3.0 with both optiotls for only

$124.95.

a matter of fact, if you own a 1"6 Bit

computer and are serious about programming, you

might as well get both options right away and save

almost $25.

•

Update policy

always,

our first commitment is to our customers.

You built Borland and we

will

always honor your

support.

50,'to make your upgrade tathe fl)«;iting new version of

Turbo Pascal 3.0 easy, ,we will accept your original Turbo

Pascal

disk

(ina bend-proof container) for a

trade-i!'""~

c .

credit of $39.95 and your Turbo87 original

disk

for

$59.95. This trade-in credit

may

only ,be applied

toward

the purchase of Turbo Pascal 3.0 and its additional BCD

and 8087 options (trade-inoffer isonly vand directly

through Borland and until Juneist, 1985),

',' ,

BORlAnD

INTERNATIONAL

Software's Newest Direction

4113 ScottsValleyDnve

Scotts Valley, Califorma 95066

TELEX,' 172373

MICRO CORNUCOPIA

P.O. Box 223

Bend, Oregon 97709

503-382-5060 Orders Only

503-382-8048 Tech. 9 - Noon

Editor

Publisher

David J. Thompson

Operations Manager

David Pogue

Assistant Editors

Rebecca Ozrelic Gary Entsminger

Accounting

Sandra Thompson

Graphic Design

Craig Lannes

Michael Odell

Technical Department

Dana Cotant

Eric Roby

Bruce Berryhill

Laine Stump

Advertising Director

Alice Holbrow

Staff Assistants

Dorcas Dsenis

Tracey Braas

Cary Gatton

Carla Miller

Laura Pendley

Secretary

Christina Donaldson

Typography

Patti Morris

Martin White

Irish Setter

MICRO CORNUCOPIA supports systems

programming languages and builders of single

board and 5-100 systems.

Application to mail at second class postage

rates is pending at Bend, OR 97701. Published

bimonthly by Micro Cornucopia Inc., 155 NW

Hawthorne, Bend, OR 97701. Postmaster:

Send address change to Micro Cornucopia

Inc., PO Box 223, Bend, OR 97709.

SUBSCRIPTION RATES:

1 yr. (2nd Class)

$16.00

1 yr. (Canada

Mexico)

$22.00

1 yr. (Other foreign)

$30.00

Make all orders payable in U.S. funds on a

U.S. bank, please.

ADVERTISING RATES: Available on request

(call Alice Holbrow).

CHANGE OF ADDRESS: Please send your

old label and new address.

SOFTWARE, HARDWARE, AND BOOK

VENDORS: We would very much like to re-

view your software, Single Board, and 5-100

products. Send materials to the Review De-

partment, Micro Cornucopia.

All

rights reserved

111110 1101111110.11

April-May 1985

The Micro Technical Journal

No. 23

April

Fool

SOGIV

you saw the list of folks who have

already signed up for the SaG this year,

you'd be surprised (we're certainly sur-

prised).

Ezra Shapiro, West Coast technical ed-

itor for Byte, will be our keynote speak-

er. His talk will be titled "The Demise of

Innovation." Ezra will be sharing with us

his very definite ideas about the 'me-too'

designs.

Slicer will be having a board construc-

tion party again (they'll throw in a bare

expansion board free if you build one

this year), plus they'll be bringing all the

rest of their new products to demon-

strate and selL Call them to reserve a

board.

The Ampro folks will be bringing up

their Little Board and they are going to

be holding a construction class (at special

prices). In fact, you'll be able to put to-

gether a complete Little Board system

complete with Integrand cabinet and

drives, right at the SaG. they'll have

something new to demonstrate. The lit-

tle Board folks will also be giving a talk

on designing with the Z80. (Actually the

Ampro folks think they are giving

it.)

Integrand will be here displaying their

Little Board cabinet (if you're surprised,

go back and reread the previous para-

graph). They'll also be doing a presenta-

tion on cabinet design and system cool-

ing.

We've invited Philippe Kahn back,

this time to talk about Modula-2 (Turbo

style), and to toot his own horn (he plays

a mean sax). We're still waiting to hear if

he can come.

Speaking Of Music

In fact, we have a very musical group

working at Micro C. Gary and Craig play

guitar (semi-professionally); Bruce plays

the flute; Jean (his other half) plays fid-

dle, and I have one of those fancy Yama-

ha synthesizers (the DX7), so I can pre-

tend to be just about anything (even an

editor).

My little MSX computer also contains

a pretty decent synthesizer (rhythm any-

one?), so we should be be able to come

up with something interesting.

In fact, we will have a jam session

Thursday evening after the Kickoff

Cookout. You are all encouraged to bring

your woodwinds, bongos, strings,

horns, synthesizers, kazoos, speech

generators, Integrands, tin ears, every-

thing ....

we come up with something

that even approximates music, maybe

we'll have a lunch-time performance on

Saturday.

White Water Rafting

This year we'll have the 21/2 hour raft

trip (just like last year), plus an all-new,

all-day affair. The all-day white water

trip will feature a total of

41/2

hours on

the McKenzie River (not counting the

one-hour lunch on the bank). There will

be an incredibly beautiful P/2 hour van

ride to the starting point through some

of the most beautiful alpine terrain in the

Northwest.

Reservations

There are limitations on the number of

people we can accommodate in the dorm

(there are only 25 double rooms). The

rafting trips shouldn't be any problem

because the guides will run as many

groups as necessary. But please call us to

verify space if you want to stay in the

dorm.

Trenton

The 10th annual Trenton Computer

Festival will be held April 20 and 21 at

Trenton State College, Trenton NJ. They

say it's the oldest computer fair in the

country. I've also heard they have one of

the best flea markets going (a whole

parking lot full of tables and tractor trail-

ers). When I mentioned that I would be

attending, Sol Libes suggested that I

come in a truck.

(Continued on Page 77)

ISSN 0747·587X

LETTERS

Go Winnie!

I have enjoyed your publication very

much during the past year. In fact, I re-

cently changed my subscription to first

class and submitted two gift subscrip-

tions.

I have a comment on the closing para-

graph of your Kaypro column for Octo-

ber.

We have had three Kaypro lOs with

this same 'status 02' error over the last six

months. Each time the error occurred,

the hard disk was not up to speed when

the Kaypro 10 tried to read it. In all three

cases the problem stemmed from the

hard disk controller board. After the

boards were replaced, the 'status 02' er-

ror problem was resolved.

StanleyD. Watson

4745 Convention Street

Baton Rouge LA 70806

sion of ZCHESS out there somewhere

without the bug?

The other thing I wonder about is that

the version of ZCPR on your second re-

lease of it (haven't tried the first) puts a

/I'

at the end of each comment it makes, in-

cluding each listing in a directory. Minor

little mark, and it's so damned useful

that it's certainly overlookable. But what

the heck is it doing there? And can the

thing be exorcised? (By the way, rm run-

ning it on an '83 II.)

Whitney Blauvelt

505 E. Denny Way #507

Seattle WA 98122

not sold in Radio Shack or in most

elec~

tronic supply houses. Nor could I find it

in most computer stores which claim to

have a service department.

The Micro C Plus-4 Decoder Board

does not go on the obvious way. The

numbers on the decoder board must cor-

respond with those on the main board,

which means that the decoder board will

cantilever out over the drive enclosure.

When the cover is put back on, every-

thing shorts out. This probably never

happens to the Micro C folks who never

put their covers back on. The problem

can be fixed up with some electrical tape

and cardboard, but it would be better

the designer went back to the drawing

board.

Neither the problems nor their solu-

tions were very profound, but resolving

them took about three quarters of the

time needed for the entire installation.

Everything is working nicely now.

WalterB. Whitcher

319 E. 24th Street

New York NY 10010

Editor's note:

also got a call from a local dealer about this

problem. He had contacted two of the drive

manufacturers and found out that some of the

drives Kaypro is using are the low current

versions which start very slowly. (In fact,

they often won't start at all if the head gets

left somewhere other than in the safety posi-

tion and is resting on the disk.)

He has found that if he lubricates the win-

chester's stepper arm with a little silicon

spray, the head will return to the safety posi-

tion between data fetches and the drive will

start properly the next time the system is

turned on.

ZCHESS

Ticks

I certainly wouldn't begin to complain

about the value of your users disks. But I

would like to point out a bug or two.

First, on ZCHESS from K3 there have

been several occasions when the com-

puter playing black thinks it's entitled to

move two pawns two spaces at once

from other than the second rank. This

wouldn't bother me so much except that

it won't let me cheat in the same way.

Now, there's certainly twelve bucks

worth of other stuff on that disk, but it

would be nice

the main attraction for

, me didn't have that bug. (The CRC

checks out, by the way, although I guess

there could be some obscure memory

problem in my machine causing this

slip.) Anyway, I wonder if there's a ver-

Editor's note:

Due to papular demand we changed ZCPR

to display special characters (the normal CCP

doesn't let them reach the screen, but people

wanted to display them and

... ).

Any-

way, that little tick you see on the screen is

what the Kaypro displays when it sees a null

(0) byte. Every other system I've seen simply

discards the null, but not the Kaypro (there

are a number of situations where the null can

be very irritating).

it is not without malice

of forethought that our Pro-Monitor ROMs

throwaway nulls.

Pro-8 Installation

Someone once said that the devil

dwells in the details. I found this to be

true when I recently did the Pro-8/Plus-4

upgrade on my Kaypro II, installing two

Mitsubishi half-height, quad density

drives (4853) in place of the original 'A'

drive. I would like to pass along what I

learned about some of the details of this

upgrade.

The existing screws holding the Tan-

don drives require a

7/64"

allen wrench.

This is a size not found in most of the

common allen wrench sets.

The screws from the Tandon do not fit

the Mitsubishis. You need 3m x 1m sock-

et head cap screws which are not avail-

able in most hardware stores.

To install two half-height drives in

place of one full-height drive the entire

drive enclosure must be removed from

the computer case and new holes drilled

in it. This is not particularly difficult, but

laying out the new holes is tedious. This

wouldn't even need to be done

only

one new drive were being installed.

The power connector for the drives is

Editor's note:

You are right about our covers. They come

off when the machine comes out of the box and

they usually stay off. Forever. Now, we are

using a new low profile connector (the part

that hangs out over the drives)

folks' cir-

cuits shouldn't be

short any longer.

Xerox 820 Info

I've recently 'discovered' Micro Cor-

nucopia and I am enjoying it. It's nice to

see a magazine that gets down to the

basics. I wrote the Apple Cart column in

Creative Computing for three years

when an author could still do some of the

things you do in your publication. Now,

you aren't reviewing someone else's

software, no one wants your articles.

The parts of Micro C that I am most

interested in are those about the original

820 CPU. I was the senior electrical man-

ufacturing engineer on the program

from its beginning. From that perspec-

tive I'd like to make a few comments.

A technical reference manual called

/lSoftware Development Guide" was

published to complete the only detailed

source of 820 documentation. The book

includes all the software and hardware

information available for the 820 board.

Micro Cornucopia, Number 23, April-May 1985

LITTIRS

All the schematics for PWA etches 1 and

2 are there, as are the listings for versions

1.0 and 2.0 of the monitor ROMs. There

is a wealth of other information includ-

ing programming data for the SIOs,

PIOs, the CTC and the FDC chips. Per-

haps you could get permission to reprint

this as a project for Micro C magazine.

About disk drives, software, and other

things. Most people know that the 820

'was designed for single-sided 51/4"

drives. Later, the double-sided drives

were added and so were single-sided 8"

drives. With the etch 1 CPU, it was not

directly possible to use DS 8" drives. For

DS 51/4" drives, version 3.0 of the

CP/M

operation system was issued. This al-

lowed the user to initialize and copy on

two-sided media.

In the process of developing test pro-

cedures and equipment for the two-sid-

ed drives, I discovered that the software

was really looking at four separate sin-

gle-sided drives. Once a diskette was

initialized with the 3.0 INIT program, I

used my DS system as four drives in the

sequence A,C and B,D; worked fine, too.

I could get the equivalent of four single-

sided drives in a two-drive package.

Otherwise, the original system was ca-

pable of four single-sided drives any-

way. The user would only need to prop-

erly wire and encode the drive block on

the individual drives. Shugart's SA400

manuals show how to do this.

Chuck Carpenter

3714 Bishop Hill Dr.

Carrollton TX 75007

Fixing The SBASIC Sorts

In Jack Rodenhi's SBASIC column (Is-

sue 19) there seems to be some confusion

about SBASIC's rules governing recur-

sion. Rodenhi states, "In the manual's

example program on recursion, X2

seems equivalent to our variable List-

Size. In the discussion of their program,

they claim that X2 would not be duplicat-

ed when P3 is called from P4." Jack is

correct that ListSize is equivalent to X2

and that it is indeed duplicated. Howev-

er, he is incorrect in saying that this cor-

responds to P4's calling P3 on line 20 of

the manual's example program.

In SSSORT (Jack's procedure which

contains ListSize), it is SSSORT itself

which calls its nested procedure READ-

RECORDS (causing ListSize to be treat-

ed recursively). The corresponding call

is on line 26 of the manual's example

program, where P2 calls P3. There it

clearly shows that X2 will be duplicated.

Although the example program cor-

rectly indicates how SBASIC's recursion

occurs, the manual does not. (So what

else is new?) Recursion occurs when a

procedure calls itself or when one nested

procedure calls another nested proce-

dure (including the situation where a

nested procedure calls the unnested pro-

cedure which contains it). Recursion will

also occur when a nested procedure is

called by the procedure which contains

it. (Anyone for Peter Piper?)

Also, arrays are treated differently

than variables in recursive calls because

arrays are not duplicated.

(If

the call

causes the DIM statement to re-execute,

however, the array may be reinitialized.)

This provides at least four ways for

Jack to fix his program:

1. Procedures (such as READ-

RECORDS) which change one of the

variables he ,describes as "global in the

procedure SSSORT" could be rewritten

as subroutines.

2. Those same procedures could in-

stead be rewritten as functions which re-

turn the value of the changed variable (in

use this might look like "ListSize

READRECORDS (ListSize(O)").

3. The variables in question (such as

ListSize) could instead be declared as

one-element integer arrays (e.g., List-

Size (0)).

4. Those same variables could be

made global to SSORT by moving their

declaration outside of the procedure (of

course, that would make them global to

the rest of the program as well).

Richard Levine

3105 Meadow Grove Dr.

San Diego CA 92110

Run CP/M On An IBM?

I need your help with a

CP/M

prob-

lem. I haven't been able to locate any

products that will do what I want.

I am writing software in Turbo Pascal

under MS-DOS. I want to port over fin-

ished software to run on CP/M ma-

chines. For this conversion, are there co-

processor boards I can add to my

PC-compatible system so it will look like

a CP/M system to a CP

Turbo Pascal

compiler? Are there any products for the

PC that emulate the Z80 or 8080 to do

what I want?

Please supply the names and address-

es of any suppliers of suitable boards and

emulators. Many thanks for your help.

, Frank

Mihm

Box 622

Aptos CA 95001

Editor's note:

What a refreshing request. For

while

there,

thought everyone was going in the

other direction.

OK,

there are several clones

(or semi-clones) that say they can run both:

Rainbow, Chameleon, and,

believe, one of

the Heath systems. However,

am not aware

of any plug-in boards that will handle this.

Any suggestions, anyone?

The obvious option would be to get a Kay-

pro and transfer the software over serially.

Kaypro also has a utility that is supposed to be

able to read MS-DOS disks and transfer files

1M.

far, we haven't been able to get it

to work. What are you working on, by the

way?

Speed-Up Problem

I purchased a Pro-Set II so I could up-

grade my 1983 Kaypro II to 5MHz (and

then do a program for the Palm Beach

KUG). In the process, I learned a few

things.

First, my Kaypro II is really a 4 inside

so I had to exchange the Pro-Monitor II '

for a Pro-Monitor 4. Second, the Z80B

costs between $12 and $45 depending on

where you buy. Third, I'm still having a

problem because at 5MHz the system

runs for about a minute and a half and

then locks up.

Gene Klein

12775 Builford Circle

West Palm Beach FL 33414

Editor's note:

You are not the only person who has a

with the heart of a

Anyone with an older

Kaypro

(pre-84-which means it has the

standard full-width Tandon drives and no

graphics) should take the top off his or her

Kaypro

and read the paper stuck to the top

of the monitor ROM (there are two chips

with paper on top-the one nearest the front

(Continued on Page

64)

Micro Cornucopia, Number 23, April-May 1985

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