[author : Marlin Ouverson] #Edito
Extract : « The kinetic energy which abounds at People’s Computer Company can be dismaying to new-found friends and occasional visitors. Our small offices are charged with dynamics too rarely found in typical business settings. A few steps through our miniature maze of corridors leads the unwary from the home of two international magazines to the seat of PCC’s computer literacy project (ComputerTown, USA!) and to the focus of PCNET’s protocol development. Paths lead in several directions to the realms of marketing, sales, accounting, production and circulation. [...] »
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Extract : « A Flare for FORTH [...]
Regarding the Hazeltine terminal letters in your Jan. 81 issue: Over the last three years, our lab has purchased eight Hazeltine 1500s. [...]
Our console display, like Skjellum’s, is 1K (16 lines by 64 columns) and memory mapped. Scrolling is handled in the customary way: move the last 15 lines up 1 line, blank the last line, write the cursor to its first column. [...]
It is over a year since I have taken word processor in hand and dashed off a letter to my beloved Dr. Dobbs. [...]
Enclosed is a software modification for the CP/M DUMP Utility Program that will greatly enhance the readability. [...]
Please accept the following book review for publication in your magazine. It’s a sad day when a publisher can successfully market high-priced rubbish; more interesting than what it tells us about the author and publisher are its implications about the marketplace. [...] »
[author : Dave Caulkins] #Listing #BASIC #Education #Book
Extract : « [...] A friend of mine at Xerox PARC (John Warnock) first told me about Ms. Potter’s work and also wrote a program for a PDP-11. He found that reading speeds of 1000 words per minute were feasible. Those experiments were preliminary and not closely controlled. In Ms. Potter’s work, the upper limit had appeared to be 720 wpm. The BASIC program given below permits a range of speeds from 225 to 450 wpm; faster implementations are possible but would require machine language for the word-at-a-time display routine.[...] »
[author : Howard W. Whitlock, Jr.] #Microprocessor #MachineCode
Extract : « [...] I have written a simple program that analyzes the Commodore PET’S usage of the 6502 opcodes. I was particularly interested in the frequency of usage of the above type of indirection in this reasonably big piece of software. I had noticed in my own work that the other type of indirection on the 6502, "pre-indexed" indirection, was almost never of use and wondered whether this was just peculiar to my programming habits. The program written merely steps through the BASIC system, from its start at $C000 to its end at $FFFF, avoiding data tables, messages and other non-instructional areas, and counts the number of times each opcode is used. Here is what I find: [...] »
#Book
Extract : « PROGRAMMING TECHNIQUES FOR LEVEL II BASIC By William Barden, Jr. Published by Radio Shack 224 pages, $4.95 [...]
BASIC TECHNIQUES OF COMBINATORIAL THEORY By Daniel I. A. Cohen Published by John Wiley and Sons $20.95 [...]
Godel, Escher, Bach By Douglas R. Hofstadter Published by Random House 777 pages, $8.95 [...] »
[author : Sheldon Softky and Sylvan Rubin] #Listing #BASIC #ArtificialIntelligence
Extract : « [...] ERGO thinks about any kind of information supplied to it, and does deductive and inductive logical analysis of its available data to draw new conclusions not explicitly contained in its original source information, similar to the way a person would do it. As a result, it generally "knows" considerably more than the specific facts given to it. [...] »
[author : Anthony Skjellum] #Software #Listing #Assembly #Office
Extract : « WORD-MASTER is a powerful, screen-oriented text editor which runs under the CP/M operating system. The editor makes use of hardware-dependent features which require system-dependent software routines. The standard package includes such patches for several standard hardware configurations. This article provides the routines necessary to interface the WORD-MASTER to the Compal-80 computer. Similar steps could be used for other computers which use the Polymorphic VTI display. [...] »
[author : Edwin E. Freed] #Listing #Fortran #Programming
Extract : « On a microcomputer, bytes are usually assumed to be 8-bit quantities residing at unique addresses in memory. This is only a special case of a general concept in use on larger computers for some time. Some machines boast instruction sets that support operations on variable-length bytes located at arbitrary positions inside words. [...] »
[author : P. L. Woods] #Listing #Fortran #Programming
Extract : « My original article "Small-C: An Implementor’s Notes and a Bug Corrected" (DDJ #52) was written during the testing stage of the FORTRAN version of the Small-C compiler. This testing was completed at the beginning of November 1980, and I then started to construct a version of the compiler written in Small-C so that I could transfer the compiler across to my home computer system based on a Z-80. [...] »
[author : John Hatfield] #SoftwareDistribution
Extract : « Published by CLOAD Box 1267 Goleta, CA 93017 Price: $ 42/year
CLOAD Magazine is a monthly offering costing $42 per year. Sounds like a lot of money for a magazine, however what you get is a cassette tape with 4 to 6 pre-recorded, debugged and tested programs for your level I or level II TRS-80. Not too shabby for only $3.50 per cassette! [...] »
[author : Steven Wexler] #Software #Review #Programming
Extract : « Published by Howe Software 14 Lexington Road New City, NY 10956 Price: $39.95
MON 3 is a powerful monitor designed for the TRS-80 Lv.2 with at least 16K memory. The program carries out many different tasks; it is in effect several programs inside of one program. [...] »
[author : Marcia Kalish] #Software #Review
Extract : « Published by SJW, Inc. P.O. Box 438 Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006 Price: $19.95
Disk Keyplus is a very powerful, underpriced multi-purpose TRS-80 integrated utility package with excellent documentation — a must buy! A 16K cassette version, without the disk-based utilities is also available for $14.95. [...] »
[author : Ronald L. Nicol] #Software #Review #Programming
Extract : « Published by Microsoft 10800 N. E. 8th Bellevue, WA 98004 Price: $29.95
As an avid assembly language programmer, I have found the Microsoft Editor/Assembler Plus to be invaluable. It is a cassette-based, assembly language development system and is orders of magnitude superior to Radio Shack’s Editor Assembler. Prior to my experience with this particular software, I had occasion to use Radio Shack’s Editor Assembler and Apparat’s Disk Editor Assembler and even though I have a disk system I much prefer the Editor/Assembler Plus to the others. [...] »
[author : Thomas W. Cage] #Listing #BASIC #OperatingSystem
Extract : « [...] Load an unaltered copy of the standard N*DOS 5.1DQ at the new address that you want, load BASIC, load DOSMOVER, and type RUN. The prompt will ask for the starting address of the new version of DOS. The runtime after you type <CR> will be about two minutes and thirty-seven seconds. When the done message is printed out, type BYE. Create a disk file twelve sectors long and save the new version of N*DOS. [...] »
[author : Dannie E. Davis] #Electronic #Display
Extract : « Examination of the character generation process in the VDM-1 manual led to a clear definition of what would have to be done to give the underline effect. The ninth row of dots (figure one) of the character would be inverted if D7 (the eighth bit of the ASCII character being formed) was high. Armed with this specification, an examination of the VDM-1 schematic led me to believe that a few cut-and-bypass changes, and the addition of an IC to decode the ninth row of dots, would allow this improvement. [...] »
[author : Michael Hightower and Peter B. Maggs] #Electronic #Interface #Listing #Assembly #Audio
Extract : « The TRS-80 Synthesizer compares favorably in price ($399), quality of speech, and ease of use with other synthesizers. Sales and service for the synthesizer are widely available and software for it is beginning to appear. The main drawback to date has been the fact that it could only be used with TRS-80 computers. This article will show how to interface the synthesizer to the S-100 bus and to the Exidy Sorcerer bus, and also will describe general principles applicable to interfacing the syntheiszer to any microcomputer. (All the computers we have used to date have clocks that run at approximately 2 megahertz. There may be timing problems in using our circuitry on other computers.) The interface requires only wires and connectors; the total cost should be from zero to thirty dollars depending upon what is available in your scrap box. The only labor required is soldering three dozen connections. [...] »
#TradeAndLaws #Book #Network #Electronic #Computer #Event
Extract : « Get Rich Quick - Become a Software Vendor... Texas Instruments took a lot of knocks for not providing applications software for their 99/4 Home Computer. The company got the point, and is responding vigorously. [...]
An organization called The American Microcomputer Association [...] is compiling a directory of microcomputer consultants. [...]
The erstwhile Journal of Design Automation and Fault Tolerant Computing has decked itself out with a new title. It is now the Journal of Digital Systems [...]
Buy an ADA Manual [...]
or One on FORTH [...]
Talk to a Publisher’s Computer. Note another entry in your little black book of CBB phone numbers. McGraw-Hill Book Company has initiated a computer bulletin board. [...]
Buy a Bunch of CP/M Software [...]
Learn to Make Circuit Boards [...]
Connect Them With Impossible Cable [...]
Control 64 Voltages at Once [...]
Talk a Little Faster [...]
Get an LSI-11 for Less [...]
The 5th International Conference on Software Engineering will be held March 9-12, 1981 at the Town and Country Hotel, San Diego. [...] »
#Network
Extract : « A computerized bulletin board works just like an ordinary bulletin board system except that instead of paper and thumbtacks it uses a terminal, a computer, and the dial-up tele-phone network. [...] »