Micro_Cornucopia_11_Apr83.pdf

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April 1983

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Souping Up the BB I ...............................................

Detailed View of the BB II .........................................

Dyna, A Very Fast Disk ...........................................

Easier Reverse Video Cursor .......................................

Data Base Handlers ....................

..........................

Epson MX-80 .......................................................

PlannerCalc .......................................................

REGULAR FEATURES

Letters;........................

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

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

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

KayPro ........................

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

Technical Tips .................

Bugsbury ......................

"THE ORIGINAL BIG BOARD"

OEM - INDUSTRIAL - BUSINESS - SCIENTIFIC

SINGLE BOARD COMPUTER KIT!

Z-80 CPU!

64K RAM!

(DO NOT CONFUSE WITH ANY OF OUR FLATTERING IMITATORS!)

THE BIG BOARD PROJECT: With thousands sold worldwide and over two years of field experience, the Big

Board may just be one of the most reliable single board computers available today. This is the same design that

was licensed by Xerox Corp. as the basis for their 820 computer.

The Big Board gives you the right mix of most needed computing features all on one board. The B i9 Board was

designed from scratch to run the latest version of CP/M·. Just imagine all the off-the-shelf software that can be

run on the Big Board without any modifications needed.

$319

(64KKIT

BASIC I/O)

FULLY SOCKETED!

FEATURES: (Remember, all this on one board!)

64K RAM

SIZE: 8'12 x 13'/. IN.

SAME AS AN 8 IN. DRIVE.

REQUIRES: +5V @ 3 AMPS

+ - 12V @.5 AMPS.

24 x 80 CHARACTER VIDEO

Wllh a crisp, flicker-free display that looks extremely sharp even on small

monitors. Hardware scroll and full cursor control. Composite video or split video

and sync. Character set is supplied on a 2716 style ROM, making customized

fonts easy. Sync pulses can be any desired length or polarity. Video may be

inverted or true. 5 x 7 Matrix - Upper

lower Case.

Uses Industry standard 4116 RAM's. All 64K is available to the user, our VIDEO

and EPROM sections do not make holes in system RAM. Also,

very

special care

was taken in the RAM array PC layout to eliminate potential noise and glitches.

Z-80 CPU

Running at 2.5 MHZ. Handles all 4116 RAM refresh and supports Mode 2

INTERUPTS. Fully buffered and runs 8080 software.

FLOPPY DISC CONTROLLER

Uses WD1771 controller chip with a TTL Data Separator for enhanced reliability.

IBM 3740 compatible. Supports up to lour 81nch disc drives. Direclly compaUb.le

with standard Shugart drives such as the SA800 or SA801. Drives can be

configured for remote AC off-on. Runs CP/M" 2.2.

SERIAL

1/0

(OPTIONAL)

Full 2 channels using the ZSO 510 andtheSMC S116 Baud Rate Generator. FUll

RS232! For synchronous or asynchronous communication. In synchronous

mode, the clocks can be transmitted or received by a modem. Both channels can

be set up for either data-communication or data-terminals. Supports mode 21nl.

Price for all parts and connectors: $39.95

TWO PORT PARALLEL

1/0

(OPTIONAL)

Uses Z-80 PIO. Full 16 bits, fully buffered, bi-directional. Uses selectable hand

shake polarity. Set of all parts and connectors for parallel I/O: $19.95

BASIC

1/0

Consists of separate parallel port (Z80 PIO) for use with an ASCII encoded

keyboard for input. Output would be on the 80 x 24 Video Display.

REAL TIME CLOCK (OPTIONAL)

Uses Z-80 CTC. Can be configured as a Counter on Real Time Clock. Set of all

parts: $9.95

BLANK PC BOARD -

$119

CP/M*'

2.2 FOR BIG BOARD

The popular CP/M" 0.0.5. to run on Big Board is available for $139.00.

The blank Big Board PC Board comes complete with full

documentation (including schematics), the character ROM,

the PFM 3.3 MONITOR ROM, and a diskette with the source

of our BIOS, BOOT; and PFM 3.3 MONITOR.

PFM 3.3

BIG BOARD SOFTWARE SPECIAL -

$149

Through special arrangement with COL we offer a powerful package of TDl Z-80

software that has a suggested retail of almost $600. Includes: Extended Disk

Business Basic, ZEDIT text editor, MACRO II Macro Assembler, LINKER,

DEBUG I and DEBUG II. Supplied on 8 in. diskette with extensive manual.

2K SYSTEM MONITOR

The real power of the Big Board lies in its PFM 3.3 on board monitor. PFM commands include: Dump Memory, Boot CP/M", Copy, Examine, Fill Memory, Test Memory, Go To,

Read and Write I/O Ports, Disc Read (Drive, Track, Sector), and Search PFM occupies one of the four 2716 EPROM locations provided. Z-80 is a Trademark of Zilog.

Digital Research Computers

(OF TEXAS)

P.O. BOX 401565 • GARLAND, TEXAS 75040 • (214) 271-3538

TERMS: Shipments will be made approximately 3 to 6 weeks after we

receive your order. VISA, MC, cash accepted. We will accept COD's (for the

Big Board only) with a $75 deposit. Balance UPS COD. Add $4.00 shipping.

USA AND CANADA ONLY

*TRADEMARK OF DIGITAL RESEARCH. NOT ASSOCIATED WITH DIGITAL RESEARCH OF CALIFORNIA, THE ORIGINATORS OF CPM SOFTWARE

**1 TO 4 PIECE DOMESTIC USA PRICE.

MICRO CORNUCOPIA

P.O. Box 223

Bend, Oregon 97709

503-382-8048

IICBD CDBBaCD.l1

April 1983

The Single Board Systems Journal

No. 11

Editor

Publisher

David

Thompson

Graphic Design

Sandra Thompson

Illustrator

Gary Whitley

Typography

Patti Morris

Martin White

Irish Setter

Staff Assistant

Barbara Hicks

Fairely

Flagged!

The Computer Faire

It's hard to be both a participant and

an observer but here

am trying to tell

you about the West Coast Computer

Faire after Sandy and

observed it from

the confines of one small booth.

Of course it seems crazy in Bend

sometimes with the phone ringing,

stacks of mail to be answered, user disks

to put together, and a magazine to pro-

duce; but the Faire really puts things in

perspective.

First of all, San Francisco streets are a

good place to find out

you have any

insecurities. The two and a half blocks

between the show and our hotel were a

sort of no man's land of empty shops,

porno flicks, and panhandlers. The

parking lot attendent suggested that we

not leave our little green Honda (Kermit)

in the lot overnight because it would be

broken into.

Smashing,

thought-where do we

keep the car, in the hotel room? Hello,

room service? Please send up supper for

Sandy and I, plus a quart of your best

10/40 for Kermit. (Anyway, we were for-

tunate. The Honda was not molested.)

Second, manning a booth means 30+

hours of talking. Actually, the first day

we shouted in an attempt to be heard

over the din, the second and third days

our voices were in no shape to shout.

So it was a crazy time, two weeks get-

ting ready, one day of travel, one day of

setup, three days of Faire, one more day

getting back to Bend, and then back into

the thick of things trying to get caught

up.

It was worth going. We were able to

put together a lot of names and voices

and faces. Also we found out that a lot of

people are aware of the Big Board and

have considered getting one but didn't

MICRO CORNUCOPIA is the sin-

gle board systems journal support-

ing systems programming lan-

guages and single board systems-

including the Big Board, the Big

Board

II,

and the Xerox 820.

MICRO CORNUCOPIA is pub-

lished six times a year by Micro Cor-

nucopia of Oregon, P.O. Box 223

Bend, Oregon 97709

SUBSCRIPTION RATES:

1 yr.(6 issues)

1 yr.(Canada

Mexico)

1 yr. (other foreign)

$16.00

$20.00

$26.00

All subscription orders payable in

U.s. funds on a U.s. bank, please.

ADVERTISING RATES: Available

on request.

CHANGE OF ADDRESS: Please

send old label and new address.

. SOFTWARE, HARDWARE, AND

BOOK VENDORS: We would very

much like to review your CP/M

compatible products for Micro

Please send material to the Review

Editor, Micro Cornucopia.

LEITERS TO THE EDITOR: Please

sound off.

CP/M is a trademark of Digital Research, Inc.

Micro Cornucopia

know about Micro C. There was also a

LOT of interest in the KayPro.

Most of the KayPro folks were not in-

terested in hardware or software details,

they were just users. But those interest-

ed in the nits and grits were delighted to

see the kind of information they could

get in Micro C.

We put up a little sign announcing the

Saturday meeting of the Big Board

Users. We got a larger room than we had

last year but we filled it (had more folks

than the TRS-80 color users and we were

a-much more colorful group). I did a

rough count and it looked like better

than 100. Over 90 percent had at least

one Big Board 1,20 percent had Big Board

lIs, 5 percent had KayPros, and 2 percent

had Xerox's. I know this doesn't add up,

but I'm sure you realize that you don't

have to be into sports to give more than

100 percent.

The presentation was very impromptu

(unorganized) and

spent good a por-

tion of the time sucking on a lemon (to

save what was left of my voice).

There were a lot of questions: "What is

the history of the BB I, the Xerox, the

KayPro, and the BB II?" "What is Bend

like?" "Who are you (meaning me)?"

"Tell us more about the BB II." "What is

the story about the RAM disk?" "Are

they ever going to finish the documenta-

tion for the BB II?"

Fortunately Bill Siegmund was there

to field the BB II questions. I still don't

know, however,

or when Cal-Tex is

going to finish the manual. I'm going to

give you as much BB II information as I

can through Micro C but it would be real-

ly super

they would come up with doc-

umentation appropriate to such a pow-

erful system.

Tony Ozrelic was there to handle the

questions about the new RAM (Dyna)

disk, so I turned the podium over to him

and I went back to sucking on my lemon.

He had just installed Dyna on my BB so

at the end of the meeting we all adjorned

back to the booth to watch my BB play

VAX (VAX simili?).

I don't know how many orders he got

at the Faire, but he sure had a mob of

folks following him about. See my very

(continued on page 26)

LETTERS

Dear Editor,

My BB is running 4MHz. I had prob-

lems with the EPROM and with the

74LS04 in clock generator circuits (video

system). I replaced them with 7404.

The second problem I had with floppy

drive SA901.

was an error in the index

circuit. I found the error in four hours

without an electric scheme.

Now I am building a box from wood

for the BB and floppy drive.

In December I received JRT PASCAL!

is very good.

In software I made simple assembly

programs for copying programs using a

single drive, .and made a calculator in

Pascal. In future I shall make screen edi-

tor in JRT Pascal.

At the end I must write: 1. BB is the

best. 2. Micro Cornucopia is very good.

3. I am happy.

I hope that you understood all. My

English is not well.

Martin Mali, Dipl. Ing.

Borovnica Blok-7

61353 Borovnica Yugoslavia

There is some truth to the rumor that

Siemens is getting out of the drive mar-

ket. I was told that Siemens had sold

their drive operation to a place called In-

ternational Storage Technology (or

something like that). No one seems to

know yet whether or not it will change

names, but the drives will go on. (Until

the stepper motors quit.)

Two more notes that may be of inter-

est:

First, anyone interested in the Dvorak

keyboard layout can find an article in the

history and a picture of the layout in the

June 1980 issue of

Phi Kappa Deltan,

pp.

671-3. I have set up my keyboard this

way and I have to agree, it is quick to

learn and easy to use.

Second,

you have had difficulty lo-

cating a solid state relay for the time-out

on the disk drive AC motors (Micro C,

Sept. '81, p5), then write or call

ITT Components

3201 S. Standard

Santa Ana, CA 92707

(714) 751-3900

for a distributor in your area. The price is

about $8.50 each.

Darren Hiebert

1188 Masselin Ave.

Los Angeles, CA 90019

Dear Editor,

Horrors! Murphy has struck. The arti-

cle I wrote on putting a LST: in your

BIOS (issue #10 page 4) has a problem.

appears that SYSGEN ignores inputs

from a SUBMIT program so that the

.SUB file I included with the article does

not work.

The easy fix is to remove the XSUB

from the SUBMIT. You will have to do

more input during the BIOS incorpora-

tion because you have to enter data from

the keyboard rather than having it

passed by SUBMIT. Otherwise the proc-

ess is the same.

I hope no one was unduly inconve-

nienced.

Richard Barnett

604 Robinson St

West Lafayette, IN 47906

Editor's note:

Someone should try the original .SUB file

under SUPERSUB. That might work better

than SUBMIT. Anyway, thanks for the up-

date and thanks again for the super article.

Editor's note:

Don't apologize for your English, Martin.

is very well indeed. And definitely keep Mi-

cro

in mind when you have your text editor

running.

sounds most interesting.

Dear Editor,

Here's the promised update on

Siemens drives. I talked with a sales rep

from a distributor and was told that

Siemens had installed faulty DC

s~epper

motors in several thousand of their FDD

100-8 (8" SS/DD) disk drives before they

found out the motors had a shor;t life

span.

Instead of replacing the motors, .they

decided to call it a loss and dump the

drives on the surplus market instead 6f

trying to pass them off on their regular

OEM customers. Not to worry though,·

the life span of the motors is probably

sufficient for most anyone's purpC?sE;s,

since 'short life' refers to 'industrial'

standards (I don't think I could get a cou-

ple of thousand hours of operating time

out of a stepper motor even

played .

Adventure 24 hours a day!).

Dear Editor

I can implement double density but I

need help with the software.

anyone is

willing to do the software, I would be

willing to share the hardware design in

an article.

I am also working on a disk interface

with DMA, 256K RAM conversion for

CP/M plus, NEC 7220 interface and an

NEC 7261 hard disk controller interface

(1984).

I would also be more than happy to

contribute to the Pascal column.

Robert C Hughes

265 WroeAve

Dayton, OH 45406

Dear Editor,

Keep up the good work. Don't let any-

one try to make you into a

Byte

etc. I am

renewing even though I am building an

5100 board. You have so much really

helpful information including a lot of

hardware articles that I can't get else-

where.

C. Senger

11309 Markab Dr

San Diego CA 92126

Dear Editor,

I am looking for a Double Density

modification using the Western Digital

2795 (all-in-one disk controller chip) and

a new BIOS.

Mark Hedin

320 Prospect Ave #9

Redondo Beach, CA 90277

Editor's note:

Anyone wanting to contribute to the Pas-

cal column should get in contact with John

Jones. John is a really neat person who's

worth contacting even if you are just interest-

ed in Pascal.

Your other offers, Rob, are very exciting.

They are great projects!! See this issue for

Trevor Marshall's versions of these same

things.

Dear Editor,

I would like to know

anyone has a

daughter board that will handle 5" and

8" SD and DD drives at the same time.

Dan R Farris

6101 Alvis Circle, SW

Albuquerque, NM 87105

Editor's note:

would a lot of people. I get requests for

this kind of drive interface almost daily.

(Anyone listening?)

Micro Cornucopia, Number 11, April 1983

Dear Editor,

I'd like to become a Big Board contact

for Central Europe. I'm stationed at the

Ramstein Air Force Base. People can call

me at 0631-54908 just about any time.

Also, UNIVAC just got the contract for

the new phase IV computers for the Air

Force. This means that Burroughs will

probably be dumping a lot of older

equipment on the surplus market. Along

this line, is anyone familiar with a Bur-

roughs RLP, and has anyone interfaced

it to anything but a Burroughs? I'd like to

get mine going.

David Burgess

Box

5921

RamsteinAB

APO NY, NY

09012

I spoke to Bill Siegmund but he was

about to depart with all his equipment to

escape the rising California floodwaters.

It's ironic that we, meanwhile, are expe-

riencing the worst drought in our his-

tory.

I issue #6, Andrew Beck mentioned

he was trying to bring up Turbodos on

the Big Board. Do you know ifhe has had

any success? Also, is there any way to

run CP/M 3 on the BB I?

And may I once again reiterate my

satisfaction with the quality of your pub-

lication. You have no idea what a breath

of fresh air it brings to the technological

desert we live in Down Under.

Jim Reid

Paniwi Rd.

Mosman

2088

Australia

What's wrong

with

CP/M@?

Hard to operate • Too many

commands and options • Too many

ways perfectly good programs can

fall • Not enough specifically helpful

messages ...

It needs

01<1\1~lXM

In 1981-82, many vendors marketed

CP/M

user interfaces (also called front

ends, shells or menu drivers).

All of them (save one) were

mastodons: slow, clumsy, inflexible,

diSk-hungry, hard to install, and

overpriced. Their buyers usually tried

them, sighed, shelved them, and

forgot them.

OKARA, on the other hand, is a

gazelle. Once you have tried OKARA,

you will never willingly go back to

bare

CP/M.

Why? Because OKARA is

Dear Editor,

Instead of cutting board runs when

making modifications to the BB you can

often bend the IC pins out of the sockets

and then solder jumpers to the pins. This

type of change is much easier to undo

than cuts on the board.

David Strauss

247

Greendale Ave

Needham, MA

02914

Dear Editor,

I have not had many disk problems in

the last four years. But recently, the sys-

tem crashed while booting and it de-

stroyed the directory. Ward Christian-

sen's disk editor helped me recover

some of the text files but I lost the rest.

Very discouraging.

I'd like to see a utility that would copy

the directory to another place on the disk

(a reserved area?) or to another disk.

Then, if the utility could access the disk

using the special file as a directory we'd

be all set.

Rex Buddenberg

1910

Ash St

North Bend, OR

97459

Editor's note:

Bill Siegmund's back now, and pretty

much dried out. I am working on reviews of a

number of the data base handlers

I really

appreciate your comments about dBase II.

Good data base application generators can be

invaluable to the programmer and to the end

user but most of them are quite expensive, too

expensive for casual purchase.

Please, anyone using dBase II, Selector,

Quick-n-easy, Software Associates database

system, dBase Window, etc. please fill about a

page with: the name of the package, the retail

price, where it's available, short description

(database language or screen generator),

main strengths, main weaknesses, how it

compares with any other packages you've

tried, and your general impressions. When

you send me your page, specify which user

disk you want in return.

Try

to get your com-

ments in to us by the middle of June. (Also

read the database overview in this issue.)

Inuedlbly fast:

It operates at

memory speed.

Automadc

and nearly invisible in

operation.

flexible

and programmable -

You

decide how it communicates and

just how much control it exercises.

Immediately usable

by the most

casual beginner, yet powerful

enough for the most demanding

OEM.

aiM

In some ways

more capable than

3.0, yet it runs on

CP/M

2.2.

field proven

in many real-world

applications.

Low priced:

$39.95.

Dear Editor,

In a recent issue you asked us to let

you know if we had experience with

dBase II. I have been using it for a year

now and find it excellent. I am about to

take delivery of my first run-time pack-

ages ($50 per copy) so that I can start to

resell the results of my labors.

I have been looking at updating to the

BB II or the Insight Enterprises board (is-

sue #8). I need to transfer data from 8" to

5" but find the drives cannot yet be

mixed on the BB II.

Micro Cornucopia, Number 11, April 1983

Dear Editor,

While using the PFM monitor DUMP

command, I noticed a bug. The ASCII

dump resets bit 7 of the hex byte so a

C3H displays as a

'C'

just like a 43H.

Walking through the monitor I found

the RES 7,A at F23CH. Just NOP out the

two-byte instruction and the dump

works.

This helped eliminate attendant con-

fusion (confused attendants?) during the

birth of yet another BB I (with the prodi-

gious name of ACME). There goes my

favorite Saturday morning cartoon.

Thanks for all the assistance your fine

magazine and readers have provided.

Jordan Freedman

93 Vine Street

Newton, MA

02167

This is the same first-quality software

package we used to sell for $150. We

now proudly join the industry-wide

trend toward reasonable software

prices.

OKARA runs on any standard

CP/M

2.2 system. We distribute it in

CP/M-

standard 8" 5550, Northstar 5500,

and Osborne

formats.

Order today. We're sure you'll be

delighted, and we have stacks of

testimonial letters to prove it.

We are ...

1<11\1

syslel11S

180 Grand Ave.

Suite 900

Oakland

CA 94612

(415) 654-8671

(Letters continued on page 20)

California residents add sales tax. Add $3.00 for

cOO·s. $10.00 for net 30. CP/M Is a trademark of

Digital Research.

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