--- title: "From the Chairman’s Desk" type: "article" slug: "from-the-chairmans-desk-3" url: "http://localhost/article/from-the-chairmans-desk-3/" markdown_url: "http://localhost/article/from-the-chairmans-desk-3.md" published_at: "2020-10-27T17:15:41+00:00" modified_at: "2026-10-22T23:43:35+00:00" featured_image: url: "http://localhost/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/20230809-041332.jpg" excerpt: "The summer blahs have got me. And the frustration in waiting for Congress to act plus the problems of the flooding in other parts of the country. And while there is a lot of flooding the local area is too dry and the grass is browning out. But none of this is T/S related so…" indiv: - name: "Donald Lambert" slug: "donald-lambert" taxonomy: "indiv" url: "http://localhost/indiv/donald-lambert/" publication: "ZXir QLive Alive" publication_r: id: 10286 title: "ZXir QLive Alive!" type: "periodical" url: "http://localhost/periodical/zxir-qlive-alive/" authors: "Donald Lambert" volume: "3" issue: "3" issues_articles: - id: 26811 title: "ZXir QLive Alive! v3 n3" type: "issue" url: "http://localhost/issue/zxir-qlive-alive-v3-n3/" pages: "3-4" pubdate: "Fall 1993" archive_link: false volumeissue: "v3n3" --- # From the Chairman’s Desk The summer blahs have got me. And the frustration in waiting for Congress to act plus the problems of the flooding in other parts of the country. And while there is a lot of flooding the local area is too dry and the grass is browning out. But none of this is T/S related so on we go. My adventures with trying to get a 3.5 drive to work properly was a hard fast trip down a side road. It turned out the drive was doing what it was supposed to do. The drive turned out to be a single sided 180K 3.5 drive which means it is a 40 track drive. I thought that all 3.5 drives were 80 track. But I did find a place that does not overcharge to work on drives and when I send in some other drives I will report on what happens. And if you have several drives of the same make, model, etc that do not work they will try to combine the drives to get one or more working drives. I will keep you posted. Another adventure was with getting a Spectrum disk menu loader working. I was sent the disk in April and while I had the disk from the TTSUC library I could not get it to work with the T/S 2068 that had a Russell EPROM installed internally. I finally decided that either the EPROM or else the computer is not working properly since it is erratic with disk drives regardless of whether the Spectrum ROM is used. And with my eyesight being just less than what I feel is safe to use to solder (cataracts) I twisted Bob Swoger’s arm to get him to put a Spectrum EPROM on a Larken Dock Board. So on the week that the Board arrived back in my computer room I again tried to fix the Spectrum disk. But in the process I expected to have to install the MENU program on the disk so I had the HELP files from the MENU disk from the TTSUC Library disk #L-25 printed out and there was a paragraph: “The Spectrum and TS 2068 menus also differ in a couple of ways. The Spectrum menu has a block of programming at line 9000 which will cause the Computer to switch to the Spectrum mode, if the AUTOSTART happens to commence from the TS 2068 mode. To make use of this feature you must save the menu to disk by a GOTO 9000.” However, line 9000 on the disk in question is: ``` 9000 CLEAR 27550: RESTORE 9030 ``` And line 9030 is: ``` 9030 DATA 205,102,0,62,3,211,244,201,0,0,0, ``` And not being a programmer I have no idea what is going on. But being a key puncher I gleaned the fact that if I turn on the computer while holding down the ENTER key all by itself then the AUTOSTART would start to LOAD and while doing so it would automatically kick the computer into the Spectrum mode. In the real world I found that the disk had the AUTOSTART MENU load program corrupt. I got out the my WORKING copy of the disk and it too was corrupt. But the MASTER COPY was not. So now knowing that I had a working copy I copied the MASTER disk to my WORKING copy plus to the corrupted disk sent to me plus an extra one to send back just in case. And all copies did LOAD the MENU from holding down the ENTER key only and the Spectrum games did run afterwards. I used COPYII.B1 on the D. U. S. Version 4.0 disk written by Kristian Bosivert to copy the disk. For those not familiar with the disk or the Larken 2068 disk initerface COPYII.B1 will copy a disk starting with track 0 (and include the original disk’s title) and copy the disk 5 tracks at a time as it FORMATs the disk. And when done it will report if there is a bad disk in the destination drive. It is nice since you can do other things while the computer is copying. So in a letter to Bob Swoger I mentioned how the computer could call up the MENU and POKE to Spectrum mode and he called to verify since he had not heard of that before. I am hoping that this will cause Bob to write an article explaining it. I admit that I am one that does not understand a lot of the documentation that is provided with software and hardware. And Bob chides me about not reading the manuals. I contend that reading the manuals should not be necessary, that the proper instructions should be on the screen. However, I can also see that that can cause many extra hours of programming and in some cases the program would be far too big for the memory available. There are a lot of good programs that I have not used simply because that I do not understand how to use them. Also, and this is not the programmer’s fault the program is using a media (like spreadsheeting) that I do not understand either. But I am not drifting without learning. I do use programs that not long ago that I avoided since I did not understand them. Sometimes using an unrelated program will give me insight into another program. And I have noted that if you were to give 100 programmers software that they had to use that soon you would have many different versions that were customized for their particular requirements. For an example take a look at all the versions of TASWORD II and MSCRIPT. But back to the Spectrum EPROM, I believe that it could be installed in a dock board, for those that do not have the Larken interface, and would operate just as well. But I have no positive knowledge of such. If anyone has knowledge of such an arrangement let me know how it is done so that I can pass the word on to others. I had no idea when I started to get this newsletter together just what I would have to make up the issue. But in looking at the FORMAT newsletters that were given to me at the Fest I saw an article that I typed in that should interest anyone with printers that use nylon ribbons. At least it has more information that I thought available. 0/0 Don Lambert Timex/Sinclair NorthAmerican User Group