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Disk 20 News
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______________ISSUE 20_______________
No dead budgies to report this month but lots of news on the SAM
front. Firstly there's been a shake up in the SAM Supplement.
Due to the ever-expanding membership and the time it takes Dave
(the ed) to compile each month's disk full of goodies, he has
made a move that all good managers know well, it's called
DELEGATION.
Ever eager to preach the SAM word, I have taken over the
newshound's job as newshound (how's that for logic?). Dave Hall
has taken over the task of getting new software and hardware
reviewed for the mag, no this doesn't mean that all reviews will
be done by Dave Hall, it means he will GET it reviewed by a
member of his review team. This should free up a bit more of
Dave the ed's time so he can play with his Amiga, err I mean get
on with whatever editors do.
If you have any Items of news that you think might be of some
interest to other members, please send them to me.
Steve Monk 31 Southbourne, Washford Farm, ASHFORD, KENT TN23 2UB
So whats news this month ?
32000 colours on SAM? Yes it's true. The hardware kit that SAMCO
have launched comes with a chip that gives SAM over 32000
colours, and according to SAMCO, pre-sale orders are very good.
If you have not ordered yours yet, it should be available now
with a price tag of £24.99. It is a self-assembly kit that
enables you to build projects to use with SAM in conjuntion with
Adrian Parker's articles on hardware in the SAM Newsdisk. For
those who are not conversant with a soldering iron, SAMCO plan
to release a pre-build version that should retail at around
£29.99. Check with SAMCO for details.
The video digitizer is nearing completion and examples of
digitized screens should be included in the next newsdisk. SAMco
also hope to have a demonstration unit ready for the Birmingham
All Formats show on April 26th in Birmingham.
E.S.I. from Poland who gave us the suprise demo featured in the
January newsdisk have expressed an interest in writing a new art
package for SAM utilising the 32000 colours available using
Kaleidoscope (the official name for the new colour chip). I wish
them every success, as although Flash was good to get started
with, I think we dearly need a new one.
SAMco are to introduce a charge structure for repairing out-of-
warranty sick SAMs, as repairs have now been taken on board by
an in-house engineer. Alan Miles says that they can now offer a
good repair service, prices will be anounced soon.
Colin Mcdonald is working on an adventure writer which will give
you the power to write your own adventures; another application
is the educational aspect where you could teach children how to
respond to certain circumstances i.e "A man has just been run
over, what do you do ?" a) phone an ambulance, b) hit him with a
stick, c) ask him the time. This could be turned into a very
useful teaching tool, a similar sort of program can be
constructed using Flexipage.
SAMs should be available from SAMco in the next week or so,that
is the latest estimate. Alan Miles may soon be making public a
change or two down in SAMland, so pin back your ears and listen
out. One good move is to get SAM made elsewhere, thus leaving
SAMco free to concentrate on support and software development
and sales. Several countries have expressed an interest in
building SAMs for their own markets, which was one of the grass
roots idea's behind the development of SAM, to enable countries
to build a cheap and easy to build computer for their own
markets.
Don't forget, if you are writing a program, or building a piece
of hardware, or have got any news to do with SAM, then please
let me know and I will include it in this section. That's it for
now, so it's over to you Les, to sort the spelling mistakes out.
Bye Bye - Steve.
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P R O - D O S
A 'sort of' review by David Hall
A review of Pro-Dos is difficult since it is a SYSTEM rather
than a program. The sytem is CP/M and with Pro-Dos operating,
the Sam behaves more like a PC.
The first thing to get to grips with, is the fact that once in
CP/M, everything (almost) is different. CP/M stands for CONTROL
PROGRAM for MICROCOMPUTERS, originally created by a Dr. Gary
Kildall in 1973 whilst working as a consultant to the Intel
Corporation. It became the most widely used disc operating
system for the commercial micro-computer world, and so,
thousands of programs were written for it.
With the introduction of the IBM PC, the CP/M market gradually
disappeared but not the software, much of which has passed into
the public domain libraries. Many home micros, and indeed some
Amstrad word processors still support CP/M and so have access to
this pool of commercial grade software. Pro-Dos provides a CP/M
EMULATOR for the Sam, using programs written for all versions of
CP/M upto and including ver2.2. CP/M itself is the property of
Digital Research Inc.
With the pack you receive a manual and two discs. More about the
manual later. First, the BOOT disc; this is fully protected and
cannot be copied, if accidently corrupted or otherwise damaged
this will be replaced by the supplier on receipt of the
original disc. It doesn't matter if you have dos resident, since
once BOOTed by pressing F9, Pro-Dos provides its own operating
system, making no calls to the Sam ROM or Dos.
Once the system is BOOTed you are presented with a message
telling you to insert a CP/M disc and press space. This means
the second SYSTEM disc. There are two distinct catagories of
command, the first is the RESIDENT command. Resident commands
are those which are within the operating system e.g. RENAME,
LOAD, SAVE etc. The second type are the EXTERNAL commands, these
are held in the form of short files on the system disc. They are
loaded as required and must be present to use the system.
External commands include BATCH, COPY, FORMAT etc. and will show
on a DIR of the system disc. Error trapping in Pro-Dos itself is
extensive; entering a command without its parameters will, in
most cases, result in a message prompting the correct format.
Discs must be FORMATed to a CP/M standard, giving a slightly
lower storage capacity than Sam. The standard used makes Pro-Dos
compatible with other systems, making the transfer of programs
easier. The disc drives follow (actually preceed) the PC
tradition of lettered drives. On a single drive machine, drive 1
will be drive A, you will also have a large ramdisc, this will
be drive B. On a two disc machine the two floppy drives are A
and B with the ramdisc being drive C. A 256K machine will have a
ramdisc of 124K capacity, a 512K machine a 380K capacity.
It is convenient to think of the ramdisc as behaving rather
like a temporary hard disc, so the first thing to do is, (with
the system disc in drive A), type -
COPY *.* B: (single drive Sam)
or
COPY *.* C: (double drive Sam)
COPY is an external command which is loaded from the system
disc then copies itself and all the other files on the disc into
the ramdisc. On completion of the copy you are then returned to
the system. Next type -
B: (single drive Sam)
or
C: (double drive Sam)
This will make the ramdisc the default drive. Accessing the
external commands, now held in the ramdisc, is almost
instantaneous. The other drives are then accessed by using the
command with the drive letter and a colon e.g. LOAD A:ZDE16
(ZDE16 is a word processor). Note the space between the load and
the A:.
All the files for a given program e.g Perfcalc - an excellent
spreadsheet, can also be copied into the ramdisc and operated
from there. In which case, the fact that different program files
are being used to perform their special task, will be totally
transparent to the user. Files being saved out onto disc by
preceding the filename with the drive letter and a colon.
PC users will find the syntax quite familiar, new users will no
doubt find the difference between CP/M and the Sam operating
systems a little harder. However it is well worth the effort,
this is an excellent emulation of CP/M. Entry into the system is
a little cumbersome owing to the separate BOOT and SYSTEM discs
although many operations can be made simpler by producing small
BATCH files. These are small files produced in a word processor
such as ZDE16 and saved with the extension .BAT. For instance;
COPY A:*.* C:
PALETTE 0,119
C:
this file if saved as SETUP.BAT onto the system disc, then
when the system has been booted from scratch, with the system
disc in drive A, is called by -
BATCH SETUP
File SETUP is loaded and each line is acted on just as if you
were typing them singly and will result, on a two drive machine,
in all the files on the system disc being copied into the
ramdisc, the paper and pen colours changed and finally drive
C is made the default drive.
Text or document files can be sent to the printer using the
command TYPE followed by CNTRL P e.g. TYPE A:READ.ME +CNTRL P.
If you don't use the control P then the files are sent to the
screen only. CTRL P toggles echo to printer, one press = on, the
next off. A number of other functions can also be performed
using CNTRL + key, for instance CNTRL + R recalls the last
command into the prompt line.
Pro-Dos is a means to an end, that end being access to the wide
range of PD software available to CP/M. Most programs will need
some slight modification to run on Sam, but compilation discs at
PD prices, already set up to run on SAM+Pro-Dos are now
available.
These PD discs contain programs by classification, e.g. text
processing, languages, comms etc. The material is archived, This
means that all the files for a given program are compressed and
saved as one library. This gives a disc considerably more
storage capacity. Of course, the library file will have to be
un-archived onto another disc before it can be used. Each PD
disc carries a utility which will both archive and and
un-archive.
The PD disc available on special offer at purchase time gives a
wide selection of program types such as monitor, word processor,
games, file utilities and so on. Excellent value for money! Most
software is accompanied by a .DOC file which, when printed out
gives you a manual for that program. Very handy;(Sam programmers
please note). The manuals are of variable standard, some being
large and very helpful, others being little more than program
notes.
As stated before, Pro-Dos is a system rather than a program and
as such gives an added world for the Sam to explore and use.
Adding CP/M capability effectively gives the Sam a software
library running into many hundreds of potentially useful
programs, all available at modest (even by Sam standard) prices.
Graphics are however poor or non existent, so don't expect
fantastic arcade extravaganzas. Adventures though, are pretty
good (so far).
The manual makes learning Pro-Dos reasonably easy, though it
does tend to assume that the user has some familiarity with
CP/M, or at least a PC. The technical information at the back of
the manual will help users to modify and install CP/M programs,
but will require some careful study. The various commands are
covered in reasonable manner, system error messages are given
adequate coverage. Since CP/M programs are normally written in
code, programmers will need to access other books on CP/M to
find adequate information for their needs. The appendices give
the terminal escape codes, system calls and memory usage
information.
Languages are available on one of the PD discs (Basic, Forth,
Lisp etc ).
CONCLUSIONS:-
This is a product well worth having, giving as it does, access
to a large range of both PD and professional standard software.
Like a good tool, it will require a bit of practice to get the
best value from it. Running with an 80 column display, a careful
choice of paper and pen colours is required when using a TV. The
price of £31 including P&P and the intro PD disc may seem a bit
high, but is in fact very good value and cheap in the real world
of powerful programs. It should come fairly high up on any
serious users shopping list.
Niggles : I would have prefered:-
The system files to load into the ramdisc at boot time, though
you do need them on a copiable disc. The ramdisc always to be
disc C:
Note :
At least seven PD compilations are available at present, price
£2 each. These may be the subject of later reviews. Let us know
YOUR 'wants'!!
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