Micro_Cornucopia_03_Dec81.pdf

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Using Modem7 ............................................. 4

More 4 MHz ................................................. 5

Moving Programs ........................................... 5

Reverse Video Cursor ....................................... 6

FORTHwords .............................................. 8

Safer Formatter .........................

.................. 12

Unica, A Set of Tools ....................................... 14

REGULAR FEATURES

Letters ....................... 2

Notes From Garland .......... 5

Designer's Corner ............. 9

Book Reviews ............... 10

Users Disk #1 ............... 15

WantAds ..........' ......... 16

Source Code!

The

Q/C

compiler includes the full source code for a major

extension to Ron Cain's Small-C:

• For, switch/case, do-while, goto

• Assignment operators

• Improved code generation

• Command line arguments (argv and argc)

• Conditional and comma operators

• I/O redirection

• I/O library wriHen in C

• Generates code for MBO (or ASM or MAC)

Q/C

does not include float, double, long, unsigned or short;

static externals; initializers; sizeof; typedef; casts; structures and

unions; multidimensional arrays; #ifdef, #if, #undef, #Iine.

For only $95 (including shipping in the US and Canada) you

get the full source code and a running compiler with sample

programs on disk, along with a well-written user manual.

(Requires 48K

CP/M

system.)

We also sell

CW/C,

a C compiler which runs on a 56K

CP/M

system. It supports structures, unions, multidimensional arrays,

#ifdef, and will selectively search "source library" files for

functions used by your program. The

1/0

library for

CW/C

written almost entirely in assembler.

CW/C

costs

$75~

and does

not include source code for the compiler.

and

Q/C

both grew out of Small-C, but were

developed independently. Jim Colvin of Quality Computer

Systems implemented

Q/e.

We are offering

Q/C

for the many

Small-C fans that want the source code to an extended compiler.

(We still distribute the original Small-C source code on disk for

only $17).

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

CA residents add 6% tax. Visa and MasterCard welcome.

cr\lCRO.

~./

C .

TheCodeWorks

Box 550, Goleta, CA 93116 805-683-1585

GIVE YOUR BIG BOARD THE TIME OF DAY

MICRorl• •

CLOCK/CALENDAR BOARD

8 MASKABLEINTERRUPTS -

1/10 SECOND TO EVERY MONTH

TO 1/1000 SECOND

FULL TIME AND DATE FUNCTIONS -

A PLUG IN REPLACEMENT FOR THE Z-80 CPU CHIP

PROGRAMMABLE INTERRUPT REGISTER

PROGRAM MABLE ALARM REGISTER

NICAD BATTERY BACKUP

COMPLEIE K.I

AIIEMBLED '" IEIIED

'64

N.J. Residents Add 5% Sales Tax

Add $2.00 Postage

Handling

Send Check or Money Order to:

AB COMPUTER

PRODUCTS

P.o. BOX 571 JACKSON, N.J. 08527 (201) 370·9889

MICRO CORNUCOPIA

11740N.W. West Road

Portland, Oregon 97229

503-645-3253

IIDBD DDBRaDD.11

Dec. 1981

The Journal of the Big Board Users

No.3

Editor & Publisher

David J. Thompson

Techriical Editor

Ruth Fredine-Burt

Graphic Design

Sandra Thompson

Typography

Patti Morris

Martin White

Irish Setter

Cover Illustration

Gerald Torrey

Now We're

Rolling!

Supporting two languages: FORTH and C.

Great news folks, we're not going to choose be-

tween Forth and C, we're going to support both. Forth

should be available in ROM by the time you read this.

you can't wait until the fourth issue for the partic-

ulars, send an SASE or call and we'll fill you in. Arne

Henden is now our FORTH columnist and Hampton

Miller has offered to give Arne a hand with the project.

Both are professional FORTHers and both have

FORTH on a PDP-II. In fact, Arne is using FORTH to

control the telescopes at the Goethe'Link Observatory.

Now we need a volunteer or two to do a column on C.

Formatting programs.

We have now received

formatting programs

where X is amazingly large and growing daily. I'm not

complaining, because I know that formatting pro-

grams are not trivial. It's exciting to see the number of

folks really getting into the system. I've tried all the

ones I've received. One reformatted itself when I tried

it, so I'm unable to pass

along. (Perhaps there's jus-

tice in there somewhere.) We'll print several of the

best (see John Jones' new safe version in this issue).

Diagnostics Article.

I didn't get what I wanted from Garland this month.

I had hoped that the folks at ORe would have a

diagnostics article ready for this issue to help those of

you bringing up stubborn boards. However, I suspect

that the response to the

Byte

article still has them a little

overwhelmed.

The 820.

Big Board designer, Jim Ferguson, verified that the

Big Board and the Xerox 820 are, essentially

id~ntical;

except that the 1771 floppy interface on the 820 can talk

to either 5 inch or 8 inch disks.

Goofs

Due to mismanagement on the part of the manage-

ment, we ran out of space in Issue 2 before we ran out

of things we intended to run. So, we didn't get to run

Andrew Beck's article on the reverse video cursor but

we managed to give him credit for the direct input

routine that was actually written by John Jones. We

also failed to run the listing that went with Don Re-

tzlaff's super article on moving software hither and

yon. We're running that listing in this issue.

MICRO CORNUCOPIA is pub-

lished six times a year by Micro Cor-

nucopia of Oregon, 11740 N.W.

West Road, Portland, Oregon

97229.

SUBSCRIPTION RATES:

(",'?

1 yr. (6 issues)

$12.00

1 yr. (Canada)

~ ~"

$15.00

yr.

(other

foreign)~\~b

$20.00

All subscription orders payable in

United States funds only, please.

ADVERTISING RATES: Available

on request.

CHANGE OF ADDRESS:Please

send old label and new address.

SOFnNARE,HARDWARE,AND

BOOK VENDORS: Micro Cornu-

copia is establishing a group of re-

viewers. We would very much like

to review your Big Board compatible

products for Micro

Please send

material to Review Editor, Micro

Cornucopia.

WRITER'S GUIDELINES: All

items should be typed, double-

spaced on white paper or better yet,

on disk. (Your disk will be returned

promptly.) Payment is in contribu-

tor's copies.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Please

sound off.

Bah, Humbug!

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

Micro Cornucopia.

(continued on page

LeHers

and

Letters

Dear Editor,

I am a Big Board owner just trying

to figure out what's going on as I

practice my soldering.

What are the list prices on the

books reviewed? A great volume at

$24.95 isn't as interesting to me as a

good one for $5.95.

The RAM protection circuit is

great! How do I buy a "5 watt PNP"?

Would you consider a $5.00 kit?

I want to use my Big Board as soon

as the solder cools, even before I in-

vest $1500 in discs and CP/M. Is

somebody selling Tiny Basic on a

2716? How about a minimal word

processor or a dumb terminal in

ROM?

On the subject of disk drives, how

about running a score board so folks

could vote on the types of drives

they like and don't like.

(Ed. -And

types of disks they like and don't like.)

When you start on the port

drivers, take it easy. I don't know

the Zilog mnemonics yet. Please use

the comment area to explain what

the instruction is doing. No, it's not

obvious. Be especially careful about

loops. What condition controls the

branching? What bit in what register

does this, and how did

get

changed?

someone out there is doing a lit-

tle custom programming and

EPROM burning, please let me

know.

Tom Mason

Professional Engineer

2402 Audubon Rd

Akron, OH 44320

ably the ultimate in non-critical applica-

tions, if it is PNP, if it works and if it

looks even vaguely like the illustration

then it will do fine. If the iialesman really

insists on a device number, you can tell

him you want an MJE2901.

has a

, gain of

25, 60

V breakdown, and is rated

for

amps and

watts. It is incredible

overkill but it should be available for a

couple of bucks just about anywhere.

As for basic in ROM, we will have

something more interesting as soon as

Rob gets through putting FORTH in

three 2716s for the Big Board.

Editor's note:

"Using CP/M" sells for

$8.95.

"The

CP/M Handbook" sells for

$8.95.

"Os-

borne

User Guide" sells for

$12.95.

By the way, when Sig Peterson got his

copy of the first iss(-le he mentioned that

the RAM protection circuit looked a little

familiar.

should have, he designed it.

Thanks, Sig.

The PNP power transistor for the

RAM protection circuit came out of a Ra-

dio Shack PNP power transistor pack.

You know, one of those

for

$1.99

bub-

ble packs. None of them were marked.

, Like I mentioned in the artiCle, it is prob- '

Dear Editor,

Thank you very much for helping

me debug my system. After building

the Big Board, testing memory,

booting up CP/M, everything

seemed to work beautifully. But

then things started going wrong.

Adventure would just stop, 1'd tell it

to "GO" and

would ask

"WHERE?" One by one, my utili-

ties gave BDOS or CRC errors which

makes them unusable. How would I

ever find the trouble? Then, near the

end of August MICRO CORNUCO-

PIA arrived!!! Your article, "Power

to the Big Board" said:

"If

the 24V

supply is flaky, the drive will gener-

ate CRC errors."

The first thing I spotted was'loose

,bolts on top of the 12,000 uF capaci-

tor. Also, the supply had no large

cap following the regulator to pro-

vide instant current. So I added

, 3,000 up. there.

don't believe I'd

buy another power supply made by

Sunny International.

looks like it

was built in somebodts garage.)

Anyway, the CRC errors are gone,

Hooray and thanks for the tip. Hope

I can return

t~e

fayor some day. '

Joseph C. Kish

758 Yucca Ridge Ln

San Marcos, CA 92069

Dear Editor,

appears that I am about to con-

clude an agreement with a major

software distributor. They will be-

come the exclusive distributdrs for

Timin FORTH products for CP /M af-

ter Jan

So, the best I can do is offer, until

Jan. 1, Timin FORTH for the Big

Board for $75.00.

will be identical

with Timin FORTH release 3 except

it will not include the CP/M utility

package. (This package is only need-

ed for special applications.) The vis-

ual editor will be setup for the Big

Board and included on the disk.

Terms for ordering:

a. Money order or check with the

order.

b. Purchaser pays the postage

(usually $2.00).

c. . Californians add $4.50 sales tax.

d. I will take no action until I re-

ceive 10 orders.

I don't receive

10 orders by Jan. 1, all the money

will be refunded.

I will keep the technical hotline

open as usual for these purchasers. I

warrant the product to be bug-free

and will supply free bug fixes if nec-

essary.

Mitchell E. Timin

9575 Genesee Ave Suite E2

San Diego, CA 92121

Editor's note:

"Sig Peterson, a long time friend and

first-rate

Z80

designer, first turned me

on to the strange problems caused by an

inadequate

+24

V supply. And since he

is a Big Board owner and subscriber, I'll

hereby pass along your thanks to him.

Note from the FORTH editor:

We are publishitig Dr. Timin's letter

now to ensure that, Big Board owners

have time to take advantage of this excel-

lent offer. Timin gives you fast I/O, a

thoroughly debugged system, and a

, hotline. However, you also havt; several

oth er options. ,

Laboratory microsystems produces

Fig Forth running under CP/M for $50

but with relatively slow I/O. Forth in

. ROMs will be available in a few months

for about $60. and a stand-alone Fig

FORTH optimized for the Big Board

, with full floating point including tran-

scendental functions will be available in

the spring for around $75.00.

The choice is yours. If you have ques-

tions call me.

Arne Hen den

301-552-1295

Micro Cornucopia, Number 3, December 1981

and Letters to the Editor

Dear Editor,

Some comments about the Crowe

Assembler.

compiles CBIOS

you

delete all "-$" (it handles relative

jumps without the -$ suffix, ed.) and

replace all multi-byte and multi-

word DEFS with single-byte and

single-word definitions. Perhaps is

would be a good idea to distribute a

version of the CBIOS that would be

compatible with this assembler.

you get an overflow in a .RES.

pseudo-op, Croweasm gives you a

warning but compiles fine. You will

get this warning when you compile

BIAS EQU . RES. «MSIZE-

20)*1024)-200H. Note that the -200H

is HEX, the "H" was left out in issue

#2.

I think that exchanging programs

written in C is an excellent idea.

Jan-Henrik Johansson

"11124 Saffold Way

Reston, VA 22090

Editor's note:

For those of you who are interested,

the original monitor and BIOS were as-

sembled with the

Sales assembler.

One local Big Board owner purchased

the

Sales assembler from Jade Com-

puter Products.

came on a double den-

sity disk (which he can't read) and when

he asked them about it, they said that

was the only way it was available.

now he

also using the Crowe assembler

to do his BIOS mods. (His attitude to-

ward the

Sales assembler is a bit

jaded right now.)

Jade Computer Products

4901

Rosecrans

Hawthorne, CA 90250

Dear Editor,

I was delighted when I received

your first issue. In fact, I meant to

write and say "Nice Job!" but some-

how didn't get around to it.

Now that issue #2 is out, it's time

to sharpen my pencil and tell you

what I think of your publication.

Here goes:

My main impression is that it's

very professional. I especially like its

somewhat folksy, informal flavor.

Layout is attractive and easy to read.

Since your main focus is the Big

Board, 1'd suggest "a standard box,

maybe on page two, that says what a

Big Board is and where to get it.

Without it, the new reader might be

very confused.

Your article on supporting a lan-

guage is most interesting. My opin-

ion is that FORTH should definitely

not be the selection. (FORTH is not

really a modern high-level language

by any stretch of the imagination.)

Both Pascal and C meet the criteria

you mentioned in the article. One

strong argument for C is UNIX. I

firmly believe that UNIX will be THE

operating system 'on the soon to ar-

rive flood of high performance per-

sonal computers. In the near future

most serious users will own a per-

sonal computer with a million bytes

of RAM and a 16 or 32 bit processor

(like the 68000). "

Wi th that sort of processing

power, a system with the limitations

CP/M

simply won't survive. Sure,

64K Z80 systems will be around for a

long long time but when

full-

blown 68000 system with a megaby-

te of RAM is available for $2,000,

we'll all start using UNIX or one of

its imitators.

As you know, C is the language

that UNIX (and all its related appli-

cations software) was written in.

This all seems like a compelling

argument for adopting C as your

"most favored" language. (But since

we are the developers of the

CW/C

compiler, I guess this whole line of

reasoning is predictable.)

Again, good luck with your ven-

ture. I don't own a Big Board, but I

still very much enjoy your maga-

zine.

Ron Jeffries

The Code Works

Box

550

Goleta, CA 93116

As for UNIX,

know what you mean.

am using a' UNIX-like set of tools on my

system now (called UNICA) and now

that

have them,

wonder how

got

along without them. On the other hand,

stands very well on its own merits. For

applications ranging from simple ma-

chine control to business and scientific

programs,

is hard to beat. Plus,

has

had a standard pretty much from the be-

ginning which has gone a long way to-

ward making the source code transport-

able.

I've also noticed that a surprising

number of the heavy FORTHers I've

met, are either into

as their second lan-

guage or are very interested in

it.

(The

reverse hasn't necessarily been true.) Al-

though they are implemented quite dif-

ferently, both languages provide the pro-

grammer easy access to the hardware.

Dear Editor,

The conversion to double density

requires several modifications, both

to the hardware and to the software.

1. The system must be running reli-

ably at 4 MHz.

2. The Western Digital 1771 chip

must be replaced by either the West-

ern Digital 1791 or better the 1795

chip set.

3. The monitor has to be changed

(we are using two EPROMs).

4. The bios has to be able to deblock

the larger sectors to CP

1M's

128 byte

sectors.

5. The floppies have to be formatted

for D-Density.

6. A new type Sysgen is requIred.

4 MHz modification.

you are having trouble making

other 4 MHz modifications work, try

the following:

Change the crystal from 20 Mhz to

16 MHz. Remove and discard U 97.

Change U 77 from 74LS04 to 7404.

"Cut trace from U 96 pin 4, and cut

trace from U 76 pin 4 and 5 then con-

nect U 76 pin 3 to trace from pin 4,

and connect U 76 pin 4 to trace from

pin 5. Run jumper from U 96 pin 5 to

U 97 pin 8, run jumper from junction

of R 38

R 40 ( pin 9 of U 77) to U 96

pin 5, and run jumper from U 96 pin

4 to U 97 pin 9.

(continued next page)

Editor's note:

Thanks for thekind comments, Ron.

Regarding information about the Big

Board, we've had an amazing number of

questions about the system from folks

who see the magazine but who aren't fa-

miliar with the system.

Jim Tanner

will be runninghis famous "Everything

he could cram into a single pagt: ad" ad,

beginning in issue #4.

Micro Cornucopia, NU:mber 3, December 1981

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