[author : Marlin Ouverson] #Edito
Extract : « No, this month’s feature article is not about speech problems on Broadway. When the stage was first set for LISP to run on micros, it was inevitable that artificial intelligence would soon make an entrance. In his article, author Nicol explains how an actor, or object-oriented, language works, and how a program written in it can "learn." [...] »
TABLE OF CONTENTS
#Mathematics #OtherMagazine #Electronic #Audio
Extract : « Octametry [...]
And Furthermore...
While browsing through back issues of that excellent journal, Software, Practice and Experience [...] "A Fast Approximation to the SIN Function." [...]
Touching on Tones (cheap way to decode standard touch-tone signals) [...]
Radio Amateur's Handbook [...]
Radio-Electronics magazine [...] »
[author : Dave Cortesi] #Printer #Memory #Networks
Extract : « An Extraordinary Offer (Applied Computing, modification kits mounted inside the printers) [...]
An Extraordinary Board (512K bytes of RAM on a single board to fit the HP 9845 desktop computer) [...]
A Significant Step (communications multiplexer, ARCNET) [...]
Z89 Times 6 = Z90 (double-density double-sided drives for the Z89 and 64KB of RAM) [...]
D & W Digital (S-100 board, TMS 9914, a chip that handles the 488 protocol) [...]
Lots of Dots Okidata (dot-graphics option for their Microline 82, 83, and 84 printers) [...]
Apple Upgrades (Orange Micro, smart printer interface card for the Apple, The Grappler) [...]
Computer Data Services (ROM card, 32KB RAM card) [...]
Yet Another XDIR (diskette of CP/M 2 utilities from Elliam Associates) (TCL Software, good selection of CP/M applications) [...]
BASIC, BASIC, and C (BPS listing formatter for Microsoft BASIC) (Allen Ashley extended COMSTAR compiler for North Star BASIC) (JMI memory-resident executive for programs in C) [...]
tutorial and conference to be held by Walter Zintz’ UniOps (C and Unix) [...]
Info for Entrepreneurs [...]
Software Wanted: How and Where to Sell Your Programs from Battery Lane Publications [...]
Hewlett-Packard, like TI and Atari, has realized the value of third-party software [...]
Computer Information Systems (two mailing lists on Apple II diskettes) [...]
Transdata Network Telecommunications (on-line "The equivalent of 50,000 pages of literature on hardware and software." [...] »
[author : Ronald L. Nicol] #Listing #Lisp #ArtificialIntelligence #Book
Extract : « Complexity is the superposition of simplicity; it is the reduction of this complexity to its basis in simplicity that is the goal of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Even though the field of AI is a tree of many branches, virtually all in the field speak LISP, a list processing language. LISP allows fluent use of property lists, a data structure for storing information. Actor languages, also known as object-oriented languages, are eloquently written in LISP.
Actor languages are languages in which objects communicate by the sending and receiving of messages. Each actor is a member of a class, and that class may be a member of a superclass, and so on. If an object receives a message to which it does not know how to respond, this message is passed on to that actor’s class, and so on, until an actor is called which can respond.
LISP was developed in the early 1960’s by John McCarthy as a recursive, list-processing language. The language has two types of objects, atoms and lists. [...] »
[author : James Laurino] #Listing #Assembly #Memory #Diagnostic
Extract : « This paper addresses the problem of showing that a microcomputer memory is functioning properly. Virtually every microcomputer user is faced with this problem sooner or later, and my experience indicates that few users have a good solution available. I will describe a simple and powerful basic test program which I adapted from a memory chip tester. I have used various forms of this program successfully for several years on several systems. [...] »
[author : Gary R Novosielski] #Listing #Assembly #Printer #Interface
Extract : « The Epson MX-80 printer is certainly one of the better printer values on the market for the small system user. I feel safe in saying so because it’s also one of the hottest selling. But no hardware is perfect, and the MX-80 has a few peculiarities worth talking about. No, not just talking about, doing something about, because by using a simple software driver, and by taking advantage of the built-in logic of the printer, it can be made substantially more versatile. [...] »
[author : Alan Bomberger] #Electronic #Interface #Printer #Listing #Assembly #Experience
Extract : « I would like to share my recent experience connecting an MX80 printer to the parallel port of my North Star computer. A conversation with the North Star "hotline" reaffirmed my belief that the "load" pulse available on the spare pin of the parallel interface was too short to serve as an output strobe for the MX80 printer. The PO (parallel out) flag is the wrong polarity to serve as an output strobe so I was left with either a software solution or a hardware modification. The software solution suggested by North Star involved using the high order bit of the output byte as the output strobe. To output to the printer, three OUT 0 instructions are issued. The first is with the high order bit on, the second with the high order bit off, and the third with it on again. If the high order bit from the parallel interface is wired to the MX80 data strobe and the high order bit of the MX80 data lines is tied to ground, the result is correct operation of the printer. [...] »
[author : J. E. Hendrix] #Listing #C #Programming
Extract : « For those who are already using small-c, here are some patches to the expression analyzer. In its original form, small-c doesn’t always properly scale values involved in address arithmetic. [...] »
[author : John B. Palmer] #Listing #Assembly #BASIC #Programming
Extract : « Have you ever wanted a simple way to relocate an 8080 assembly code program into the top of the TPA in CP/M? Have you ever written a BASIC program that requires some machine code hidden in dumb DATA statements? There is a better way.
Why would anybody want to use assembly code and BASIC together to solve a problem? Well, there really are a few places where that seems to be the right approach. Let me give an example based on a real experience. [...] »