Comments about one of the programs that I have used.
If you have a virgin copy of D.U. S. do not ever remove the write protect sticker. Any dedicating to the programs should be done on a copy disk. Get the copy done first, copy by any means the program COPYII. B1 and then dedicate that copy. When the program COPYII.B1 is LOADed it will halt with a line or two of programming and a warning of some kind. EDIT the line and between the quotes of the A$ enter the letter given that applies to your disk interface. Run the cursor over to get in between the quotes in LET A$=””. Use only capitals and if you have a pure Larken interface use an “L”, if a Larken on an AERCO interface use an “A”, if a Larken on a RAMEX interface use an “R” and if a Larken on an Oliger interface use an “O”. It must be an upper case letter. And then RUN 9999 and that will automatically (you must mot write protect the disk till this is done) SAVE that to disk. This is what the program will display on the screen till it is dedicated:
9910>LET a$="": IF a$="" THEN PRINT AT VAL "5",NOT PI; "THIS PROGRAM MUST BE CUSTOMIZED!""": BEEP VAL ".25",NOT PI BEEP VAL ".25",NOT PI: LIST VAL "9910": STOP
9920 PRINT #VAL "4": LOAD "COPYII.C"+A$CODE : RUN VAL "5"
9999 RANDOMIZE USR VAL "100": SAVE "COPYII.B1" LINE VAL "9990"Now run the program and it will ask you for the original drive number, then the number of copies to be made and finally the drive the copy will be made in. The drives must be the same number of tracks both 40 track or both 80 track (size of the disk is immaterial) and both have the same number of sides or at least the target disk needs to have the same or more sides than the original. Now with a working COPYII.B1 program you are ready to copy the master disk. COPYII.B1 will copy the original disk exactly as it is on the disk, same number of sides, same disk title and same number of tracks plus the same head step rate. And it does it at the rate of 5 tracks at a time and then as it SAVEs to the target disk it FORMATs the disk. And it will report if the disk has something wrong with it. If the copy work ends with a notice BAD DISK it is bad and try again. In either case (good disk – it doesn’t say good but if a bad disk it does say BAD) you will be asked ANOTHER? if so press “Y” and it will have you set up for the next copying routine. As it copies it will tell you how many tracks and sides the disk has plus head speed.
When I send a disk to Bob Swoger I use COPYII.B1 to make up the disk for me from a master disk I made back when. The reason for this is that Bob uses a single sided drive and only 40 tracks but he requires a head step rate of 30. COPYII.B1 does all that so that I don’t have to worry about getting all the current information on the disk and since LogiCalll is on the disk that also is there ready to use.
When you use the full disk you will find that it will load by pressing ENTER and powering up the computer. The screen will clear and then the first display will be on the screen. If you wait a while then it will progress to the menu display, but if you hit enter when the first display is shown it will immediately go to the menu. The menu will not display all the programs, use the up and down arrow keys to get the other titles. Then enter the letter for the one that you want and that program will be LOADed into the computer. The letters that you ENTER will not change as the titles scroll up or down but the computer knows what you want.
I had a disk that the Oliger disk interface quit at about the tenth or twelfth track. Now I could FORMAT that with FORMAT.B1 (Has to be customized) on the Larken disk interface and that will report how many bad bytes. But still it can end up with a problem. So after Formatting with FORMAT.B1 I used MAPOUT.B1. MAPOUT.B1 will go through a disk and map out the bad blocks so that you never need worry about a failed program from a block with a bad byte. I have added the screen displays for the various above programs:
This shows the result of Formatting with bad bytes.
FORMAT DISK
WRITTEN BY KRIS BOISVERT
1989 BYTE POWER
FORMATTING DISK IN DRIVE 0
2 SIDES, 43 TRACKS, 6 ms
FORMATING COMPLETED...
256000 BYTES IN BAD BLOCKS
409600 BYTES AVAILABLE ON DISK
And this is the result of using MAPOUT.B1 with LogiCall installed on the above disk:
Disk Name : Lambert 11 27 1993 L.B1 001 AUTOSTART 001 LarKen LKDOS ©1986 Track/Side 043/002 Total Files 002 Free Blocks 076
And since the drive call-out on MAPOUT.B1 lists the drives as 0-4 then apparently it will work with RAMDISK.
Conclusion: If you have the Larken disk interface then this is a must have disk. The other must have is George Chambers’ utility disk of TTSUC Library Disk #1. (also ZQA! PD Lib. Disk #9) What one disk won’t do the other will very likely do. In addition there is provision on the D.U. S. disk to convert the menu load program to your own use. And an important factor is that the D.U. S. disk is almost so user friendly so that the manual is not required for every program. 0/0
Note: D.U.S. is a Public Domain disk. Page 2, § 4 of the manual reads:-
D.U.S. is Public Domain, this means you may freely distribute it to any LarKen LK-DOS user so long as no charge is made for the package other than the cost of the media and/or time. Also, you must distribute exact copies of the disk(s), no program should be altered in anyway without first consulting me. etc.
Kiristian Boisvert
How about it Don, can we add it to our P D Library? Abed