Speaking with George Chambers has always seemed INSTRUCTIVE to me. Guess it’s the facility of the BRITS and the CANUCKS with the Queen’s English, that gives them their entertaining TAKE on the concerns of us provincials.
Anyway, considering the prospects of the Timex-Sinclair, Model 2068, always leads George into a diskussion of menus. Thus, it seems that, after thoroughly plumbing the depths of the machine’s text and graphic capabilities in both basic and code, serious diskussions of system capabilities resolve themselves into comparisons between different menus.
Of course, George and his Toronto Timex-Sinclair User’s Club were long in the supply of outstanding menus. Compare the TTSUC LarKen Disk Library, available from Abed Kahale, our esteemed Editor/Treasurer.
As an early example of eight-bit computer technology on a personal scale, the 2068 is ideal for the manipulation of character strings and word processing. Character strings are convenient for storage and retrieval of text.
Processing of graphical data proves to be a problem for the 2068, in terms of not only time but also space, since it takes only a single byte to specify most characters, whereas 64 pixels are needed to specify the same information graphically.
Hence, the utility of Mega-Hertz cycle times, modem speeds in the scores of Kilo-BAUDs, and Mega-Bytes of RAM.
Notable exceptions and extensions include Bill McKelvey’s fax facility and Stan Lemke’s Pixel Print Professional. Pixel Print is on disks by TTSUC entitled L-10, L-28, and L-37. We are almost through with acceptance testing of ASAPfax hardware/software. And, Interbank Data Base by Larry Crawford on Disk #30 by TTSUC is utterly amazing. Surely, there are others, but that’s about the best, that are available to us, here in Tucson, Arizona. Also, note well, that these excellent extensions of 2068 capabilities to graphical applications incorporate the RAMDISK for both speed and storage.
So, our menus for spreadsheet/modeling/simulation and for telecommunications are either rather static or little used.
We bring this up, because we wish to diskuss several of our other menus, which have seen heavy use during the decade of the 90’s.
We have spent a lot of time and effort on our Word Processing Menu, several years in fact !! It selects from among Bill Jones’ suite of word processors, in support of his Daisy. We will return to the Word Processing menu, since much of it has already been considered over the past three years of ZQA! magazine. But, we start with the TeleCOMM Main Menu.
TeleCom Menu
This is our most heavily used menu, since it supports SOL BBS, and SOL BBS is on-line all the time. Notice, that a PRESS of “2”, “3”, “4”, or “S” READs one of the versions of MaxCom into the Home Bank from Disk Drive A, as can be seen from line #170 on. MaxCom BBS Software is available from RMG at 503-655-7484.
TeleCom Main Menu
******************************************
CATlogs 0
Drives 1
2 BBS -- autonomous
3 BBS -- clocked
4 TERM -- autonomous
5 TERM -- clocked
MessageWritter 6
MSCRIPT 7
8 Disk Manager
9 Quit COPY
a MOVE ramdisk
b Recover CAT
c Steal disk name
d Create/Chng name
Set clock e
A press of “0” generates a CATalog of any Disk Drive, from #0 to #4 as desired. From line #60 can be seen, that we select the desired drive, by executing the routine at line #1000. Then, line #2000 gives us the CAT.
As can be seen from line #70, a PRESS of “1” generates a NEW of any Disk Drive from #0 to #4, as chosen by the routine at line #1000, again. Of course, any AUTOSTART file on the selected drive is thus automatically LOADed.
A PRESS of “7” LOADs Bob Mitchell’s version of Jack Dohany’s MSCRIPT, customized and extended for Larry Kenny’s DOS. Also included are modifications for Bill McKelvey’s ASAPfax facility. So. it’s really loaded! Disk #51 out of the TTSUC LarKen Disk Library contains several versions of MSCRIPT, ready for LKDOS and available from our esteemed Editor/Treasurer, Abed Kahale.
The best way to get ASAPfax for your 2068 is to contact Bill McKelvey via QBOX BBS at 810-254-9878 or SOL BBS at 520-882-0388.
A PRESS of “8” brings up JFORM by Jack, which enables convenient access to his DFM. We thus gain a vast array of commonly used LKDOS utilities : NAME a disk, FORMAT a disk, CATalog a disk, FULLCAT a disk, BACKUP JFORM, LOAD a file, RENAME a file, ERASE a file, BATCH ERASE, MOVE a file, BATCH MOVE, and BACKUP DFM. You can get JFORM and DFM from RMG at 503-655-7484.
10 CLEAR [illegible]
20 PAPER 0: BORDER 0: INK 8: CLS : PRINT PAPER 1; INK 7;" TeleCOMM Main Menu [illegible]******************************"
30 PRINT 'TAB 5; PAPER 2; INK 7;"CATalogs 0"' PAPER 0;TAB 7; PAPER 2;"Drives 1"; PAPER 0''TAB 14; PAPER 3;2,"BBS--autonomous"; PAPER 0'TAB 14; PAPER 3;3,"BBS--clocked"; PAPER 0'TAB 14; PAPER 3;4,"TERM--autonomous"; PAPER 0'TAB 14; PAPER 3;5,"TERM--clocked"; PAPER 4; INK 0''"messageWRITER 6"' PAPER 0;TAB 6; PAPER 4;"Mscript 7"; PAPER 0''TAB 14; PAPER 5;8,"DISC managers"; PAPER 0'TAB 14; PAPER 5;9,"quik COPY"; PAPER 0'TAB 14; PAPER 5;"a","MOVE ramdisc"; PAPER 0'TAB 14; PAPER 5;"b","recover CAT"; PAPER 0'TAB 14; PAPER 5;"c","STEAL disc NAME"; PAPER 0'TAB 14; PAPER 5;"d","CREATE/CHNG NAME"; PAPER 0''TAB 4; PAPER 6;"SET clock e"
40 PRINT #RND;TAB VAL "10"; FLASH SGN PI;"PRESS 0-e"
50 PAUSE 0: LET a$=INKEY$: RANDOMIZE USR CODE "d": GO TO VAL "4": PAPER 7
60 IF a$="0" THEN GO SUB VAL "1000": CLS : GO SUB VAL "2000": GO TO VAL "20"
70 IF a$="1" THEN GO SUB VAL "1000": RANDOMIZE USR CODE "d": NEW
80 IF a$="a" THEN RANDOMIZE USR CODE "d": LOAD "rdbkup.B1"
90 IF a$="6" THEN RANDOMIZE USR CODE "d": LOAD "SeqPar.B6"
100 IF a$="9" THEN RANDOMIZE USR CODE "d": LOAD "lk2cy.BL"
110 IF a$="7" THEN RANDOMIZE USR CODE "d": LOAD "ms5d.BT"
120 IF a$="8" THEN RANDOMIZE USR CODE "d": LOAD "JFORM.BL"
130 IF a$="b" THEN RANDOMIZE USR CODE "d": LOAD "RECCAT.B1"
140 IF a$="c" THEN RANDOMIZE USR CODE "d": LOAD "THIEF.B1"
150 IF a$="d" THEN RANDOMIZE USR CODE "d": LOAD "DSKNAM.B1"
160 IF a$="e" THEN RANDOMIZE USR CODE "d": LOAD "SETCLK.CD"CODE : RANDOMIZE USR VAL "64000": GO TO VAL "20"
170 RANDOMIZE USR CODE "d": GO TO PI
180 IF a$="2" THEN RANDOMIZE USR CODE "d": LOAD "MaxCOM.BX"
190 IF a$="3" THEN RANDOMIZE USR CODE "d": LOAD "MaxCOM.BT"
200 IF a$="4" THEN RANDOMIZE USR CODE "d": LOAD "TERMax.BX"
210 IF a$="5" THEN RANDOMIZE USR CODE "d": LOAD "TERMax.BT"
500 GO TO VAL "50"
1000 CLS : PRINT AT VAL "10",VAL "8";"Which Drive ??": PRINT #RND;AT SGN PI,VAL "4";"PRESS 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 !": PAUSE NOT PI: LET d=CODE INKEY$-CODE "0": RANDOMIZE USR CODE "d": GO TO d: RETURN
2000 RANDOMIZE USR CODE "d": CAT "",: PAUSE NOT PI: RETURN
9998 CLEAR 30000: RANDOMIZE USR CODE "f": RUN
9999 CLEAR 30000: RANDOMIZE USR CODE "d": SAVE "Menu.B1" LINE PIA PRESS of “9” brings up Richard Hurd’s lk2cy, for hyperrapid disk copies among drives 0, 1, 2, and 3. Routine lk2cy is up from TTSUC Disk #2 by George Chambers, available from Abed. We note, that hyperrapid disk copy facilities are completed amongst ALL the Disk Drives #0, #1, #2, #3, and #4, by PRESSing “a”, as follows:
A PRESS of “a” brings up rdbkup by Richard Hurd, for hyperrapid backup and/or restoring between RAMDISK and Disk Drives #0, #1, #2, or #3. Now, rdbkup is ONLY from Disk #33 by Chambers & Mitchell of the TTSUC LarKen Disk Library, available from Abed.
A PRESS of “b” brings up RECCAT from out of the DUS ensemble of LKDOS utilities by Kris Boisvert. It performs a hyperrapid recovery of a corrupted CATalog, by READing what’s still on the rest of the disk. The drives go from #0 to #3, and one can easily corrupt the entire disk, in the case of the attempted recovery of a badly contaminated disk. So, be careful when using RECCAT at the very first sign of CATalog problems! The DUS disk is available from F. W. Computing.
A PRESS of “c” brings on Thief out of DUS, which enables one to COPY the name field of one disk onto that of another disk. This is useful, when the name field is long and the source disk is bad, for but one example.
A PRESS of “d” brings up DSKNAM, another of Kris’s routines out of DUS, to permit the modification and/or update of an existing name field on disks in drives from #0 to #3.
Lastly, a PRESS of “e” READs Jack’s on-line clock, by LOADing software from RAMDISK. This also permits resetting and/or reformatting the clock. Call Jack Dohany at [phone number omitted], and ask about the Dallas SmartWatch for 2068/Spectrum!
As a tradeoff between speed at the keyboard and limited storage space on RAMDISK, we CODEd the menu image INLINE at lines #20, #30. and #40 along with options #0 and #1 at lines #60 and #70, respectively; we READ options #2, #3, #4, and #5 from Disk Drive A; and. everything else is LOADed from RAMDISK. A review of the CATalogs for RAMDISK and for DD#3 show how the software is stored.
Again, get in touch with Frank Davis for DUS.
TELECOMM PROGRAMS AUTOSTART 002 LISTfl.B1 001 MaxCOM.BT 004 MaxCOM.BX 004 MaxCOM.C1 002 MaxXXX.BT 004 Maxbbs.C1 002 TERMax.BT 004 TERMax.BX 004 TERMXX.BT 004 SETCLK.CD 001 Comand.CT 001 Files.CT 002 NewUsr.CT 001 NotUsr.CT 001 LogonA.CT 001 ADVA.A$ 002 FILES.A$ 002 AUTOSTART 002 GENER.A$ 002 USER.CT 001 rdbkup.B1 001 Name.CT 001 Sysop.A$ 002 ms5d.BT 001 ms5d.CT 002 DFM.B2 001 DFMCD.C2 001 email.CT 001 MaxCOM.C1 002 testr.A$ 002 Helpme.CT 001 story.A$ 002 Header.CT 001 GAMES.CT 003 RECCAT.CL 001 cat.C1 001 lk2cy.BL 001 Hcode.Cl 001 JFORM.BL 001 RECCAT.B1 001 THIEF.B1 001 DSKNAM.B1 001 SeqPar.B6 001
Note: Type-in program listings on this website use ZMAKEBAS notation for graphics characters.