LARKEN Disk Interface

A few months ago, Larry Kenny of LARKEN ELECTRONICS called us to let us know about his new disk interface. We talked for a while and decided we’d give it a try. Boy, this has to be the best thing that ever happened to the TS2068. The interface is fast, reliable and quite inexpensive.

The system costs $119.95 (US) and includes 1 disk interface and 1 LKDOS cartridge. This cartridge contains the DOS (Disk Operating System) for the LARKEN interface, it also contains some EXTENDED-BASIC commands that will be talked about later.

The system is so easy to use, well, if you can use the cassette I/O commands you can sure use the DOS commands… all you have to do is put a USR 100 call just before the I/O command! Ie: RANDOMIZE USR 100: LOAD “PROGRM.B1”. Note that also the name length is changed, it is now only 6 characters long and you must put a “.” and a “B” for BASIC programs, a “C” for CODES and an “A” for STRING or NUMBER arrays. The “1” can be any character but a “^” (power sign, under letter h), but always a “$” for string arrays. Other than these few modifications, the rest is exactly the same. Well, not totally the same… A program of 32K loaded from tape takes about 3 mins to load, from disk it takes less than 4 seconds (without the access time). Now that’s fast!!!

The interface can control up to 4 disk drives from 3″ to 5 1/4″ double or quad denstiy. It measures about 2″ high by 7″ long, the cartridge fits just right in the cartridge dock. One great feature on the interface is the KEMPSTON compatible joystick port. This will allow you to play Spectrum games on your TS2068. By the way you can also order the Spectrum rom on the cartridge for an extra $20 (US).

The cartridge is also available for other interfaces such as AERCO, RAMEX and OLIGER. With this cartridge all 4 systems are compatible together! That was a stroke of genius!!!

One other great feature on the interface is the NMI-SAVE push button. This button allows you to save virtually any software to disk, even those unbreakable Spectrum games! This button also allows you to save screens taken while running programs.

Let’s talk about the EX-BASIC commands. Well, there are 9 of them. These are:

USR 100: DRAW w,h,p This will create a box filled with a selected pattern.

USR 100: CIRCLE x,y,p This will fill a certain area with a selected pattern.

USR 100: INK x This will automatically change the INK color of the whole screen.

USR 100: PAPER x This will automatically change the PAPER color of the whole screen.

USR 100: POKE a,b This does a double poke for 16 bit numbers.

USR 100: OPEN #n,”device” This is used to turn on display devices such as windows (3 max) and AERCO type print driver.

USR 100: CLOSE #n This turns off above devices.

USR 100: INPUT #(window)… This will initialise the position, size and color of the windows.

USR 100: CLEAR (window) This will clear the windows (CLS).

These new commands have a lot of potential and they are all yours to play with!

The system comes with a nice, easy to understand operating manual. It’s short but quite precise and gives you examples on how to use the system and EX-BASIC commands. The system also comes with some software (disk or tape, call Larry for more details) containing a COPY, MOVE, RENAME and FORMAT utilities to start on the right track.

For the price, reliability and speed of this system, it’s a MUST!!!

Before you decide on buying one of these, you should contact Larry Kenny either by letter or by calling him (address and phone number are given earlier in article) just to get more information.