Notes

I have had a number of inquiries both by phone and by letter about various T/S questions. All prompted by CRAGIST being listed in Computer Shopper in the User’s Groups and now in Computer Buyer’s Guide Users Group column.

I moved my computer gear back into my corner of the basement prior to Masako’s (my wife) return May 9th from her visit to Japan. During the move a homemade disk drive power supply failed. Since an IBMer at the Collins Inventory Disposal Store had a drive supply checker I had him test some 63.5 watt power supplies and picked out two the cleaner ones for my stack of 4 full height 5 1/4 disk drives which tower 14 inches high. Counting up from the bottom they are drive 0 a 40 track, drive 1 drive 2 an 80 track and drive 3 an 80 track, drive 2 an 80 track and drive 3 a 40 track. Of course Tandisk is drive 4. I also had a disk drive controller to disk drive cable problem and at present I only have two drives I can use at any one time. Thus at present I am using drives 2 and 3.

Like a kid that had never swam. and has watched others dive off the high board I am forever getting into deep water. I am now trying to get into EPROM programming and have been accumulating parts to build a stand alone programmer/copier that an electronics magazine had an article on. Luckily there is a circuit board and the author did change the procedure to eliminate a pair of special thumb wheel switches to use a hex key pad. And it uses a series of specially made personality sockets to be able to do different EPROMs. But last week I got part of an EPROM programmer and the part that is missing is the board with the sockets for the EPROMs and the manual. The company is still in existence but the bad news is that they are no longer making EPROM programmers. However, when I called maybe an 900 number I was informed that maybe they could supply a schematic. Even in my limited knowledge of digital electronics that would be help. The maybe did not yield either a schematic or a manual. When I get back to the project I can combine the two concepts if I do not get furthur information on the PRO-LOG unit. It was built by PRO-LOG CORPORATION and it is model # M900 PROM PROGRAMMER. It has both a serial keypad plus and a parallel interface. A hex keypad plus some other switches and a bank of 7 segment led readouts. In the cavity where the missing board the cavity pin goes are three sockets, one is a 9 pin and the four pin line, is connected to the transformer with the five pin line not used. The other two sockets are 25 pin and without a complete disassembly of the unit it information is impossible to trace then. Any information at all would be welcome. I know where I can get a manual for a PRO-LOG M980 but it may not be applicable to this model.

I received a disk and new manual for MSCRIPT V5.5 from Jack Dohany this last week (April). He has produced some more changes/improvements to MSCRIPT and I haven’t “driven” it yet to see if I like it or not. It. is supposed to be set up for my printer but I will will do all I would like to since there are see, I doubt if it a couple of things that the printer will not do like backspace for one. Jack must have used my my request for filing system which was to put my request for the printer update with the data on the printer I sent in a pile and then letting it get buried. It surfaced ard he sert it out. And all this time I thought that he and Larry Kenny was busy on a project together and that was why the delay. Jack will be at:
JACK DOHANY
435 Woodward Way
Athens, GA 30606
(424) 543-5309 until mid-July and then he will be at his regular address of:
JACK DOHANY
390 Rutherford
Redwood City, CA 94061
(415) 367-7781

Jack is introducing a new wordprocessor that will work on the T/S 2068 with the Spectrum EPROM. However, according to the literature it is very particular about the type of printer EPSON and an EPROM which is a 32k one to replace both the T/S 2068 ROM and also provide the Spectrum ROM and that would be controlled by a switch on the back of the computer. The T/S 2068 replacement corrects the errors in the original ROM. If interested be best to get the exact information from Jack.

My work in documenting Mike LeDuc’s kite/computer/camera project is progressing slowly. I have read a copy of Mike’s article that is to appear in a future issue of an international Kite Flyer’s magazine. Since it is in a kite magazine it is heavy on the kite flying information. A whole new world of terminology. As I present the information I will present it to show the prototype (what he built) and what he would build if he did it over again. The project is an outgrowth of a project when he was in college and that project controlled stage lights for a production. With most of the development already done it was easier to change to controlling a kite. Some of the changes were made since what was the state of the art back then has now produced bigger and faster memory chips. I will try to include as much variety of memory methods as I can to allow one to use whatever are available.

Issue 2 of the SNUG newsletter has arrived and it is full of thought provoking ideas. Without listing the ideas I guess that the best feedback would for every SNUG member to take each idea and make a list of pros and cons on each idea. You know what I mean- that is a wonderful idea but? I firmly believe that is what is causing so much delay on getting going. Have you ever tried to do something for a group of people without alienating at least one? And to top if off most of the doers are still in the work force and I often wonder how they ever find time to do anything for SNUG.