softcilk for the IBM Personal Computer December 1983

Vo l u m e 2

Indigo has put together the most versatile expansion product available for the new IBM PC and IBM PC/XT

4 most requested hardware functions

The PC MuitiPak™ includes a serial communications port, a real time clock calendar with a 10 year lithium battery, 0 to 256K memory and optional parallel printer port. The PC MuitiPak™ without the parallel printer port is ideal for users with the IBM monochrome/paraliel printer adapter installed.

Zero memory option

The PC MuitiPak™ is available with no memory installed so you can fiJJ your I / 0 needs today and still have memory expansion capability to an additional 256K for your future needs. This makes the PC MuitiPak™ the perfect mate for the new IBM PC and IBM PC / XT.

4 software packages

The PC MuitiPak™ includes our four most popular software packages, Drive-H™ converts 32K to 320K of extra memory into an ultra -fast drive. Spool-1 1™ utilizes up to 64 K of extra memory as a printer buffer and eliminates valuable time spent waiting on the printer. PrinMt™ prints any IBM text or graphics screen to Epson printers. Color-lt™ prints screens to IDS printers. Color images can be printed on IDS prism printers. These software programs have received critical acclaim in Infoworld, Softalk, PC Age and Creative Computing magazines. Thousands have been sold separately. This $200 retail value is included in the PC MuitiPak™ at no additional charge. DOS 2.0 Compatible.

5 year warranty

$297

* ALL SOFTWARE INCLUDED

• NO INSTALLED MEMORY

64K-S365, 126K S432, l92K’£d99. 256K^565 PARALLEL PORT OPTION ADD 130 64K MEMORY EXPANSION KIT $87

SOFTWARE AVAILABLE SEPARATELY DRiV&rr £59.95, SPOOL4T $44,95

VISA*

Indigo products may Oe found at Compute rLarvJ and other fine stores.

PRINT4T $44,95, COLOR IT $4995

indigo:

Outer And Customer Inqulita call TOLL FREE f PH Q j f"

In Texas Call Collect (713) ^ lU O j O 1 V. I I io, 1 1 i

100 E, NASA Rd. 1t Suit* 106, Wafasler. Texas 77696

“VersaForm saved us hiring two people V

By Ken Silverman,

President, International Datawares, Inc.

My company, International Datawares, is a manufacturer and wholesale distributor of media storage devices for the computer industry. It has a line of over 62 different items dealing with media storage, mailing, shipping and so on.

With more than 3,000 orders a year, the staff was often processing, shipping and invoicing 20 or more orders a day. Getting better operational control of the business, without adding more staff, became my biggest headache.

“It took a tittle searching, but I finally found VersaForm , the business database V

What the business really needed was a powerful database manager that was easy to use. Impossible? Not at all. VersaForm gives our company the power and processing speed of a com¬ puterized database, combined with the simplicity and convenience of using our familiar business forms.

“ Now we process everything that comes in or out of the business with VersaForm V

VersaForm processes and records (and even prints, when necessary) everything that comes in or goes out of the business. Orders. Invoices. Packing Slips. Labels for shipment. The shipment itself. And then, it provides the best thing of all: monthly reports for our accountant!

VersaForm is like an electronic file cabinet that stores all this information, and puts it at my fingertips when I need it! And it’s designed with a non¬ technical user in mind, so we had none of the usual technical database headaches.

“Our accounting fees were cut in half \ • •and the accountant loves it V

Since all the business transactions are recorded with VersaForm, it takes just a little over an hour a month to

pull together every managing report that our CPA needs. Including the Sales Journal, Deposits for the month by day, Receivables Journal, Tax Liability Statement, even the Bank Reconciliation Statement.

This makes the work for our accountant so easy, the fees were cut in half, and his time is put to much more profitable use. (He loves it).

“Our full-time bookkeeper is VersaForm!9

VersaForm does it all now. It locates, controls, and interrelates just about any kind of infor¬ mation. It handles customer orders and inventory. It H

fills out invoices, statements ■ and mailing labels. It prints I reports for the accountant, and does the calculating for these functions auto¬ matically. It even writes out the checks. In fact, it I

handles all the bookkeeping I Sgg so efficiently, we thought

it was about time to start expanding.

“ Welcome to the line, VersaForm!9

There’s no better endorsement we could give than to carry VersaForm as part of the company line. Speaking from experience, VersaForm is the most important database and bookkeeping system a small business can buy. It’s truly in a class of its own.

We’ll deliver VersaForm with a complete 30-day money-back guarantee. It’s available now for just $339.00 for floppy

gdisk system (Reg. $389).

And to make it even easier for you to get started, for a limited time we’ll send you a FREE pre- designed Application Template with your order (worth up to $49.95).

So why wait? You’ve got h|1I nothing to lose, and ^clll :( control of your business * to gain. Fill in the form I r ' ; - Sy ! below right now.

Please send me _ VersaForm Business Database Programs . I under¬

stand 1 may return these materials within 30 days of receipt for a full refund if not completely satisfied.

□ Check or money order enclosed.

□ Charge to my: □ Visa □ MasterCard

Exp. Date _ Card No — - -

□ C.O.D. (Add $10)

ADDRESS (NO BOX NO., PLEASE)

cFtt

Hardware Choices and Cost

□ Apple I! (floppy)

□ Apple II (hard)

□ Apple III (floppy/ hard)

□ IBM PC

□ IBM XT

Template Choices:

□ Invoicing

□ Purchase Order

□ Mailing List

□ Cash Receipts Journal

□ Expense Journal/Distribution

California residents add sales tax. (Please allow 3-4 weeks for deliveiy.)

For ordering or to get more information, mail to: International Datawares, Inc,, 910 George Street, Santa Clara, CA 95050

Or phone: (800) 538-8157 x 934. Inside CA: (800) 672-3470 x 934

softcilk

for the IBM Personal C o m p u t e r

Features

Compaq Plus: Ten Megabytes To Go

The Compaq gets a hard disk.

Mark Kellner . 233

1983 Marketalk Reviews Index . 246

Exec RoseSoft

Eileen and David Rose build macros into micros,

Kevin Goldstein . * . 34

Socha s Toolbox: Save Your Phosphor

A program called Scrnsave takes the heat off your moni¬ tor screen.

John Socha . 80

Holiday Gift Guide

A merry collection of stocking stuffers from accessories to word processing software * . . . . . 97

Junior Debut

After nearly a year of rumors. Big Blue un¬ veils the littlest pc.

John Socha . 45

The Basic/ Assembly Line

A subroutine that enables Basic to catch all filename errors,

Howard Glosser . 54

XT/370 and 3270-PC Unveiled

IBM's new muscle micros deliver mainframe might.

John Dickinson . . . . . . . 77

2

softcilk

Columns
The Basic Solution, by Joe Juhasz * .
Boards and Buses, by Kevin Goldstein	. 262
Comm Lines, by Kevin Goldstein .	. 24

Micro Finance, by Ken Landis . . . . . . 90

Pascal from Begin to End, by Bruce

Webster and Deirdre Wendt . 230

The Printed Word, by John Dickinson 238

The Processed Word, by Terry Tinsley Datz and F. Lloyd Datz . 49

The Profit Plot, by Jack Grushcow . 225

Questions and Answers, by Nancy Andrews . 20

The Right To Assemble, by Ray Duncan . 281

System Notebook, by Alan Boyd . 67

Departments

Bestsellers _ _ _ _

Classified Advertising

Contest . * .

Crosstalk .

Marketalk News .

Marketalk Reviews .

Newspeak .

Tradetalk , * , * v *w - * * < » . .

. * , 287

. 8

. 4

. 10

.... 257 . . ♦ 247 . . . . 269 . . . . 235

Cover illustration by Bryce tee.

	Abacus Associates .	. . . , . 217	Micro Warehouser .	. 20
	ABC Computer Peripherals . .	. 143	Multi -Tech Systems . ,	... 161
	Access Micro . „ . . . . .	_ 1G8	Muse Software .	. ... 127
	Acorn Software .	.... 193	My Supplier .	. . . 106
	Al Design .	.... 141	Network Consulting, Inc, , . . .	159,250
	The Alternate Key . .	... 266	Newburyport Computer
	American Training International . , , 1?	Accessories , „ .
	Ampersand . . . . . . .	. IS	NF Systems Ltd .	,...116
	Ann Arbor Software . .	.... 20 7	Peter Norton .	. , 245
	Applied MicroSystems .	144-145	Oak Tree Computing .	. . , . 164
	AST Research . .	. 6-7,103	Omni International . .	. .... 50
	Atari . . .	. . , 12-13	Omni Software Systems .....	. 77
	Automated Information Systems . „ 157	One Step Software .	. ... 125
	Basic Business Software .	.... 243	Opt-Tech Data Processing _	. 43
	Beaman Porter . . .	.... 278	Orchid Technology .	. , 72-73
	Best Programs .	.... 177	Orion Software .	. . . 101
	Blaise Computing .	... 147	Pacific Info tech Corp . . .	. ... 286
	Bourbakir Inc .	. 283	Palantir Software .	. ... 148
	Bullish Investment Software . .	..... 227	Panama* . . . . . .	, . , , 235
	Busi-Math .... . .	...214	PC-Demo . .	. ... 287 |
	California Design Works .	..... 67	PC+ Products . . . .	, . . . 215
	Cameo Electronics . ,	. 91	PCsoftware . 42,123,288
	Cdex Corporation . „ , „ , . t , , .	. . , . 167	Pegasus . . .	162,259
	Charter Software .	. ... 275	Personal CAD Systems . .	. 87
	Tom Ciulik . .	. ... 102	Photon Software .	. ... 258
	Comark . .	, 10	Potential Software .	. 236
	Comprehensive Software Support , , 21	Prelude Computer Corporation	. , . 260
	Computer Case Company . . .	.... 68	Prentice-Hall, Inc .	136-137
	Computer Creations .	. . . . 139	Professional Computer Store	. ... 213
	Computer Innovations. Jnc, , .	. 70	Professional Software _	. 11
	Computer Inventory		Pryority Software .	. 27
	Control Inc .	..... 85	Pure Data Ltd .	. 93
	Consumers Software, Inc .	_ 115	Pyxel Applications . .	. . , 268
	Contemporary ComputerWear	. . . 252	Qubie Distributing . . .	. ... 237
	Context Management .	. . . . 107	Rana Systems . .	. . 39,61
	Continental Software . , .	. , , , . 53	Read i Ware Systems .	, ... 280
	Curtis Manufacturing	109,165	Reston Publishing . . . .	. 79,199
	Cygnus .	. 96	Rocky Mountain Software
	Cypher . * . . .	. ... 270	Systems . . .	. , , , 271
	Data Base Decisions .	. 74	Rogue River Software .	... 218
	Datamensions . .	. . . , 1S5	RoseS oft .	... 119
	Davidson & Associates . , . „ „ .	, . * . 191	Satellite Software International	.... 19
	Decision Support Software . , .	_ 14	Sate i Software .	. , 170
	Digital Engineering Croup . . .	. ... 179	Sawhney Sof tware .	, ... 155
	Digital Research . .	. 37	Seasoned Systems .	. 32
	Digital Supply . . .	. 23	Security Microsystems
	Distributed Computing Systems ... 69	Consultants . . .	. . . 110
	Earth Data Corporation .....	. .... 26	Siechert k Wood Technical
	Ensign Software . .	. S3	Publications .	... 203
	Europa, Inc. . . .	. ... 247	SJB Distributors . , . . . _ _ _ _ _	... 279
	Financier . , , .	. 65	Small Business Systems Group .	...196
	FlipTrack Learning Systems . .	... 263	Smith Micro Software ........	... 255
	FMJ .	. 78	Softalk . 75,242,256
	FriendlySoft . IS, 120-123	Soft Design . .	... 228
	Funk Software .	. ... 261	Softquest . . .	. 189
	Gourmet Software .	. 39	Softset . . . . . . . . .	.... 31
	HammerLab .	. ... 229	SoftStyle, Inc . 153,222,248
	Harvard Associates .........	. 60	Software Arts .	62-63
	Hauppauge Computer Works .	, ... 223	The Software Guild . „ ,	172-173
	Healthware . .	, ... 251	Software Laboratories .	. . . 129
	Hercules Computer Technology	... 25	Software Link . . . , „ .	, . , . 52
	Hewlett-Packard . .	. . 56-57	Software Products
	High Techniques /Quad ram . .	. , , . 29	International .	. 40-41
	Howard Software Services . . .	Cover 4	Soft Wares And Technologies . .	, . . 220
	Human Systems Dynamics . . .	. 16	Soft Word Systems . ,	, 169
	IBM Persona] Computer .	104-105	SolveWare . .	... 30
	Indigo Data Systems .	Cover 2	Southeastern Software .	. . . 276
	Individual Software .	. 5	Specialty Designs . . .	. . . 262
	Infocom . . . . .	. . 89-90	SSR Corporation	, . . 254
	Innovative Software . . 52, 224, Cover 3	STB Systems . . .	... 38
	Insoft . 112.-	■113.253	Stone fit Associates .	. . . 187
	Integral Quality .	. .. .212	Stratcom Systems . . .	. ... 36
	International Datawares .		Strategic Simulations, Inc .	. * , 175
	The Iron Interface Group _	.... m	Strategic Software Systems ....	. . . 195
	Laboratory Microsystems ....	. ... 277	SubLogic Corporation .	,201
	Lewis Lee Corporation .......	. ... 133	Sundex Software Corp .	... 239
	Lifetree Software . . .	. 33	Symmetric Software .	. . . 234
	LinTek Computer Accessories .	. 84	Systems Management Associates	; . . 273
	MediSoft .	, ... 232	Tailored Data .	, , 22
	Megahaus Corporation	264.265	Tall Tree Systems . .	, . . 274
	Mentor . . . ....	. . 272	Tayco Business Forms ........	...114
	Microcomputer Accessories .	. ~ 48	TG Products .	. . . 209
	Micro Design Intel national	. , . . 151	ThinkTank . . . . .	, , . , 95
	Microlog . . .		3M Company .	. . . 183
		"1	Transtar . . . . .	76,111
	Microsoft . 71,135,249	Virtual Combinatics . .	. . . 204
	Micro-tax . , ♦ .	. . 241	XOR Corporation .	. ... 44

for the IBM Personal Computer December 1983

3

Softalk for the IBM Personal Computer

Editor

Managing Editor Art Director Assisfanf Art Director Associate Editors

News Editor Nrwsptak Editor Editor-at^Large Copy Editor Editorial Coordinator Editorial Assistant Proofreaders Guest Reviewer Contributing Editors Assembly Language Basic

Financial Modeling

Hardware

Investing

Pascal

Printers

Questions and Answers Sj^ecieif Assup irricnts Systems Software Wo rd Process irrg

Art Production

Craig Stinson Michael Tighe Kevin McKeon Tim Durr James Bradbury,

Kevin Goldstein,

Kathy Talley’Jones

Michael Ferris

David Hunter

Jean Varven

Cordell Cooper

Betsy Barnes

Marlene Lunnon

Harry McNeil, Judith Pfeffer

Philip Good

Ray Duncan Joe Juhasz Jack Grushcow Steve Schmitt Ken Landis

Bruce Webster, Detrdre Wendt John Dickinson Nancy Andrews John Socha Alan Boyd

Terry Tinsley Datz and R Lloyd Datz Don Robertson

Ad Production	Michael G. Pender
Art Assistants Softalk Publishing Inc.	Lucas McClure, Nancy Baldwin, Gkrtn Thorne, Dan Winkler, Weldon O. Lewin, Malcolm Rodgers, Ruth Seid
Chairman	John Haller
Publisher	A1 Tcmnmcrvik
Editor-m-Chief	Margot Comstock Tommervik
Senior Art Director	Kurt Wahher
Associate Publisher	Mary Sue Runnel Is
Director of Operations	Three Tyler
Accounting	Evelyn Burke
Accounting Assistants Circulation	Mary Jo Milam, Carla Swanson, Lois Mencsik, Donna Flushman
Trial Subscriptions	Marsha Stewart, Deirdre Booth, Cliff Martinez. Anna Gusland
Paid Subscriptions	Michelle Vigneault- Kirschenbaum, Leticia Garcia, David Kahn, Jan Aguiar, Barbara Naimoti
Dealer Sales	Paltie Lesser, Dan Yoder
Back Issues	Michad Jones
Systems	John Heilman n
Advertising Coordinator	Linda McGuire Carter
Assistant	Cathy Stewart
Advertising Services	Marcia Shepard Hartley G, Lesser Roe Adams III
Regional Editors
West Coast Sales	Mike Antkh Softalk 7250 Laurel Canyon Blvd. North Hollywood CA 91605 (213} 9BG-5074
East Coast Safes	Ian Ross Paul McGinnis Advertising Sales 690 Broadway Massapqqua, NY 11756 (212) 490-1021
Midwest and	Ted Rickard
Rocky Mountain	John Bollweg
Sales	John Ssenkiewicz Kevin Sullivan Mprket/Media Associates 435 Locust Road Wilmette, IL 60091 (312) 251*254)

Composition by Type Works, Pasadena, California. Printing by Volkmuth Printers, Sainl Cloud, Minnesota.

IBM and Personal Computer are trademarks of international Business Machines, Armonk, New York. Compaq is a trademark of Compaq Computer Corpora hon, Houston, Texas,

Softalk for the IBM Personal Computer. Volume 2, Number 7. Copyright © 1983 by Softalk Publishing Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN: 0733-2173. Softalk for the IBM Personal Computer is published monthly by Softalk Publishing Inc., 7250 Laurel Canyon Blvd., North Hollywood, CA 91605; telephone (213} 980-5074. Second-class postage paid at North Hollywood, California, and additional mailing offices.

Postmaster: Send address changes to Softalk /IBM, Box 60, North Hollywood, CA 91603-

Subsmptions; Complimentary trial subscription to all owners of IBM Personal Computers or Compaq computers in the USA, If you own a pc or a Compaq but aren't receiving Softalk for the IBM Personal Computer, send your serial number and mailing address lo SoFtalk/IBM Circulation, Bov 60, North Hollywood, CA 91603. Non-pc-owner subscriptions: $24 per year. Please allow siv to eight weeks for processing. Softalk for the IBM Per¬ sonal Computer is to! ally independent of International Business Machines.

Back issues (from June 1982); $3,

Problems? if you haven't received your Softalk by the fifteenth of the month, or if you have other problems with ^our subscription, Marsha Stewart can help you out. Call (213)

Moving? Send new address and a recent mailing label from your old address to SoftalkdBM Circulation, Bos 60, North Hol¬ lywood, CA 91603; telephone (2)3) 960-5(174 Please allow six to eight weeks for processing.

* -O H T *' * T

This month's contest is simple. Send us your list of sixteen things you can do with a dead computer. Best overall list wins $100 in software. Funniest single item gets $50. No warmed-over cat jokes, please.

Send your entry— along with your name, address, phone, name of nearest dealer, and what of our advertisers' wares you want if you win— to Hello Kitty, Softalk/ IBM, Box 60, North Hollywood, CA 91603. Deadline is January 15, 19B4.

W $ ## ## 0 A? 4

Winners of the last three contests will have extra stuffings for their stockings. Sixteen-year-old David Ting (Colesviile, MD), creator of the fictitious B3-DOS 112.1, has $100 worth of goodies coming to him. His prize package was our top choice in the July des ign-a-s of t wa re - package conte st .

The winner of September's "world's most challenging" crossword puzzle is Rosemary Szyplik (Ontario, CA). She also gets one hundred big ones. (More winners on page 9.)

MicroHard: "We do software the Hard way/

New box

BAS1CAAA

New file

bytes format

Say good-bye to those archaic

days of throwing away 560 every six months for the newest version of DOS, Just to have to buy another version six months later. Now you can own Version 112.1 before IBM has even decided whal to call its next DOS. Just took over some of the features of BS-DOS, If you're worried that your machine cannot handle this animal, you're right. BS-DOS is years ahead of yqur IBM, so we've packed it in a box suitable to put in your freezer to save until you are ready. We even camouflaged it so your spouse won't notice,

Jf the price of DOS keeps rising at the rate it's going now, you could be saving a bundEe for the future. . . as long as you don't eat your investment.

4

softalk for the IBM Personal Computer December 19 S3

Incredible Trainers!

No matter what level IBM Personal Computer training you want, our inter¬ active tutorial software gives you the answers. Easier, faster* smarter.

Take The INSTRUCTOR* for first-time users. PC Magazine called it, “The best , , * introduction to the PC around,” It's #1 because it takes the work out of learning initial PC operations.

And Now! Brand New! Setting a new standard for interactive training, we give you . - .

PROFESSOR DOS,

You've got to see (and hear) it to believe itl Designed for PC users ready to learn higher level PC concepts, including DOS commands.

Professor DOS will challenge you, amuse you, and amaze you.

Both programs use vivid graphic images, creative animation, sound and living color to take you from mystery to mastery of your IBM PC. Each is totally self-paced. And they're “people- literate." So you really do learn.

The most sought-after computer-

individual

| SOFTWARE HNJpQElPQtlA-rED J

24 Spinnaker Place Redwood City, CA 94065 (415) 591-4166

assisted training anywhere. Available at IBM PC dealers and software retailers everywhere, separately or in a tutorial set. Affordable at a suggested list price of ONLY . , ,

$44.95 - The INSTRUCTOR $59.95 — Professor DOS or

$94.95 — Tutorial Set

We've made The INSTRUCTOR and Professor DOS so realistic, you'll agree . , . THEY’RE INCREDIBLE!

Requires MS-DOS » any IBM Personal Computer or Compaq Personal Computer with at least one diskette drive and a monochrome or color display. Phone and dealer inquiries welcome.

Number One Add- On Products for IBM PC

Getting the most out of your personal computer.

AST Research Number One Add-On Prod¬ ucts let you realize the full potential of your IBM PC or PC-XT without wasting valuable slot space. You can take advantage of more of the capabilities IBM designed into the PC while leaving space for future enhancements as they are introduced, by combining your memory and input/ouput requirements on a

SixPakPlus'

ComboPlus

Serial {async) port—. Game adapter port (optional)—. Parallel printer port-i

Serial (async) port

Parallel printer port

Clock calendar with - .

battery backup ’

Clock calendar with battery backup

64K-256K of parity checked memory

64K-384K of parity checked memory. Added to a PC or XT with a fully populated 256K system board, the SixPakPlus can bring the system memory to 640 Kr the maximum addressable user memory.

MP Expansion Memory;

Two serial (async) ports Optional — , Standard

64K-256K of parity-1 checked memory

AST-PCnet

Parallel printer port (optional)

Clock calendar with battery backup

Game adapter port (optional)

CSMA/CD 1 Mbps baseband Local Area Network

Uses standard 75-ohm CATV coaxial cable capable of running up to 7,000 feet Interconnects multiple PC's (57,000 addressable limit)

All PC-compatible disk drives and printers are shareable

Networked access to mainframes via shared AST-3780

Users can execute commands remotely on shared PC File lock-out

DOS 1.1 and DOS 2.0 compatible

MegaPlus II

Two serial (async) ports

Optional - ■ Standard

Parallel printer port (optional)

Game adapter port (optional)

► Clock calendar with battery backup

64K-512K of parity checked memory. The basic card expands to 256 K, and with the MegaPaK extension expands to an additional l28Kor256K of parity checked memory.

Ask for AST Research Number One Add-On Products, available at Compute rland, Entre, Businessland and other computer stores worldwide. For the dealer nearest you, or for complete product information contact AST Research, Inc., (714) 540-1333/863-1333 TELEX 295370 ASTR UR

SixPakPlus

User Memory from 64K-512K — When added to your existing system memory, brings your PC up to its maxim urn of 640 K, You can run larger spreadsheets or create larger in¬ memory databases. You can also use the additional memory along with the supplied AST SuperPak,v software which Includes SuperDrive“ and SuperSpooP,

Serial Ports — Using a modem your PC can communicate with other computers over telephone lines. By connecting a serial printer, you can obtain high quality print output. Other serial devices such as a plotter or mouse may also be connected to a serial port.

Parallel Ports — Used for connecting a parallel printer to your PC for high-speed, draft quality printouts.

Clock Calendar — With the on-board bat¬ tery, the clock-calendar feature automati¬ cally maintains the correct date and time, even when the PC is turned off.

Game Adapter — Allows you to connect an IBM- type joystick to your PC so you can ptay the multitude of arcade quality games. Or you can use the joystick input for other applications by writing your own programs.

Other Communications Products — AST

Research also extends the capabilities of

your IBM PC with mainframe communication products including 3270 SNA and 5251 ter¬ minal emulation* 3760 RJE support, and AST-PCner — the Local Area Network de¬ signed for the IBM PC.

/IS T Quality

All AST Research enhancement products come with the UST'Ptus" — our unsurpassed reputation for quality, reliability, after- the- sale support, and overall design excellence — which give our products the best price/ performance ratio in the industry!

PC net is a registered trademark of Orchid Technologyjnc,

ision Memory

SOFTA1.K CLASSIFIED ADVERTISIM ,

A 1 1 veil I ii re

MAP OF COLOSSAL CAVE

For IBM-PC and other versions of "ORIGINAL"* ADVENTURE GAME. A detailed map of the CO¬ LOSSAL CAVE including travel instructions, trea¬ sure locations and magic words — $6 postpaid. feLUEJACKET SOFTWARE, Dept. ST, Box 13547, St. Petersburg, FL 33733.

B ii > i n e s s

OPTIONS-80: STOCK OPTION

ANALYZER is investor's tool. Puts, Calls, Spreads, in and out. Graphs, tables, print. Disk store. Free brochure. $125. OPTIONS-80, Box 471-B, Concord, MA 01742.

STATISTICAL SYSTEM

Announcing the NUMBER CRUNCHER Statistical System. Integrated database and most statistical procedures. $199. Contact Dr. Jerry L. Hintze, 865 E. 400 North, Kaysvffle, UT 84037; (801) 5460445.

1040PLAN A TAX PLANNING TEMPLATE FOR 1-2-3

Includes tax changes for 1983 and new Alternative Min Tax. Flexible, up to four different alternatives can be computed at once, but easy to use. Follows IRS forms, includes: 1040 schedules, A,B,C, D,E,G,W,SE & forms 2119, 2441, 3468, & 6251. An update, if needed, sold at cost to registered owners in Jan. Req. 256K. $45. William A. Permar CPA, 1125 Sunnyhills Rd., Dept. ST, Oakland, CA 94610.

G rn i’li i i >

COMMODITY TRADERS

Our commodities graphics program displays and prints prices, moving averages and the RSI. A monochrome display, 128K and a dot matrix or daisy wheel printer is required, $50. Sage Systems, Rt. 1 Box 96A, Lovelock, NV 89419.

PC-TITLE/PC-PROJECTOR

Create full color, professional quality text for slides, screen displays, flyers. Produce manual or time-controlled "slide shows" using the IBM PC as an electronic slide projector. Add full graphics with PCcrayon. PC-Title/Projector $49.95. PCcrayon $44.95. Mention this ad and get all 3 programs for $79.90. V1SA/MC. PC Resources, Inc. (408) 243- 4169.

"COMPUTER ART" POSTERS

Use your IBM PC to print striking "computer art" posters up to 2' x 3' in size. Choose from over 20 subjects including the Mona Lisa, Venus DeMilo, Einstein, pets, and more. Requires DOS and any IBM/EPSON Compatible Printer. For a complete package, which includes 3 diskettes, send $28 to: BUDGE & CO., 7926 Willowcrest Road, Salt Lake City, UT 84121.

PCART DISK and BOOK

Interested in using your PC for a nonfigurative geometric artistic experience? Req. Color Bd. & Mon. Try one of many by noted sculptor & educa¬ tor Leroy Lamis. $50.

10 screen 1: key off: els: color 4,1 20 for X = 5 to 100 30 circle (160,100),215,md*2 + l,„5/X 40 circle (160,100),215,md*2 + l,„X,5:next PC ART, 3101 Oak St., Terre Haute, IN 47803.

Hard wa re

VERBATIM DISKS

5 1/4" SSDD $218 /100, MX-80 Cartridge $5, FLIP 'N' FILE (75 capacity) $18.95, GEMINI 10X PRINTER $310. Dealer inquiries invited. Free Bro¬ chure. UNIK Associates, 12545 W. Burleigh, Brookfield, WI 53005; (414) 782-5030.

CLASSY PRINTER COVERS

Tailored cloth, not plastic. Fits Epson, NEC, Ap¬ ple, Smith-Corona, and all similar-sized printers. Specify tan duck with navy trim, blue denim with white, or chestnut suedecloth with chocolate trim. $12.50 includes first-class mail delivery. Money- back guarantee. Discovery Center, Box 289, Ro¬ selle, 1L 60172.

3M SCOTCH DISKETTES $20.95

Authorized 3M distributor. Buy wholesale. 5.25" SS/DD $20.95. DS/DD $29.95. Reinforced hub. Complete price list available. Call (415) 778-2595 or write Argonaut Distributing, 1104 Buchanan Rd. STI, Antioch,. CA 94509. Prompt delivery!

/ / 0 111 (’

THE ULTIMATE HANGMAN

Hangman for the Superintelligent entertains you while challenging your knowledge of esoteric vo¬ cabulary and famous sayings (from Sophocles to Mae West). The computer provides brief clues, but it's still your job to avoid the hangmanl Over 1,000 words and phrases. $15. PC DOS, 64K 80-column display, 1 dd. NORLAND SOFTWARE, 1014A W. Badger Rd., Madison, WI 53713.

HI-RES CARD GAMES FOR IBM

Three Hi-Res color games for IBM PC: Draw Poker, Blackjack , Keno, Gambling Games I, only $35 plus $2 shipping. Anthro-Digital, Inc., Box 1385, Pittsfield, MA 01202. (413) 448-8278.

/ 1 o me /I rca dc

2 FOR THE PRICE OF III

Get 2 great games for the price of one. WORD PROBE is a stimulating word game where players compete *-o uncover the letters of hidden words. MONSTER MATCH is a challenging memory game in which players open doors to match pic¬ tures. But watch out for the monstersl Both for only $19,951 (Req. PC-DOS, 64K, Color Adapter, & 1 disk drive.) GEMINI SOFTWARE, 1336 Ash, Waukegan, 1L 60085.

LJFFDA CHALLENGE GAME

Fun and challenging for the entire family. One to four players. Send $10 plus .50 for 1st class postage to: "LILBIL creations," Box 37073, Bloomington, MN 55431-0073; (612) 941-8392. Satisfaction guar¬ anteed.

Ph I’liea I ions

FREE FREE FREE

BASIC AIDS 2.0 FACT SHEETS and our guide "MAKE YOUR PC PROFITABLE" are sent free to persons who request them. This new release of BA¬ SIC AIDS is the most powerful program DEVEL¬ OPMENT/DOCUMENTATION tool available! Tulsa Computer Consortium, Box 707, Owasso, OK 74055 or call (918) 747-0151.

> e rail e >

SOFTWARE JUNKIE?

RENT today's most popular recreational and edu¬ cational computer software for your IBM personal computer. LOW prices. FREE brochure. The Soft Source-R Inc., Dept. K, Box 2931, Joliet, IL 60434.

5 / rn I i\\y a

PC-CHESS V2.1 $34.95

The professional chess program for any IBM PC with 64K. Attractive graphics board display and game status including move and tournament time. Computer plays at 10 levels and human moves are cursor-controlled. Special features: take back moves, save games as DOS files, setup a special board situation, print list of moves, and replay any or all of game. Send order to:

COURTRIN ENTERPRISES (619) 569-8308 Box 231190 San Diego, CA 92123

LI I i I i 1 1/

EXPAND PROWRITER I-II (NEC 8023)

* PRINT — SCREEN— an assembly language screen dump for text and graphics displays. $35.

* PRINT -CHARACTERS— an assembly lan¬ guage program that allows the user to print any character but printer control codes. $35.

* Prices include an extensive manual (with source code) plus shipping. Programming is not copy pro¬ tected. SOFT & FRIENDLY, R 2, Box 65, Solsberry, IN 47459; (812) 825-7384.

END PRINTER FRUSTRATION

Get in control of your IBM PC Printer SurePrint For a Perfect Print

A simple program for complicated printers.

* Completely Menu-Driven

* Easy-to-Use Outputs

* Excellent Documentation. SurePrint provides printer option control for any PC application, from PC-DOS, BASIC, and directly on-line. Code displays included. Available for IBM, Epson, Oki- data, IDS, C. Itoh, NEC, Anadex, TI, Diablo, Daisywriter and other printer models. Only $35 with one printer (please specify make and model). $15 for each additional printer. (NYS residents add 71/4% sales tax.)

Dickinson Associates Inc.

Box 1358, Melville, NY 11747

SR-LIB LIBRARY MANAGER

SR-LIB creates and modifies library files compati¬ ble with the IBM PC-DOS linker. Libraries allow fast linking and automatic search. $29.95 from Software Research, Box 10004, Austin, TXJ78766.

THE PRINTER MASTER

Simplify your life with this time-saving program, which offers printer mode selection from a menu and control of paper alignment/top of form. Works with every printer in your system. Program ready to control an IBM, Epson, Okidata, C.Itoh, or IDS Prism printer; you can customize for any printer or printer function, or we will do it for you for an additional fee. To order, send $35 plus $2 shipping to: Trilogy Systems, Inc., Box 94006, Des Moines, LA 50394.

8

soltcilk

BASIC DEVELOPMENT SYSTEM

BD5 is a set of BASIC language programming tools co-resident with the interpreter so that all Functions are immediately available within the BASIC envi¬ ronment. Includes Scrolling Keys, Single Step Trace, Cross-Reference, Variable Dump, Super RE- NUM, and utilities for program Compression and Uncompression. 579 plus S3 5&H, Visa/MC ac¬ cepted. SofTool Systems, 89772 E. Hampden Ave., £179, Denver, CO 80231; {303} 793-0145

PCALCULATOR

—Turn Your PC Into a Calculator With Memory — A stand-alone program or merge it into BASIC programs. May be invoked from function keys and has machine code screen save feature. Use with any 80 column display. Send 529,95 to: Lorral Associ¬ ates, Box 562, Apalachin, NY 13732.

THE PROWRITER UTILITIES

'Tpson-Si inula tor" makes your printer fully IBM software compatible without sacrificing perform¬ ance, Enjoy full use of programs like 1-2-3. In¬ cluded is ProSc to print the full IBM character set plushi-res graphics. Menu-driven setup of alt func¬ tions with Proset. Also compatible with the NEC 8023 A printer 3 in 1 . A joy to use at 534.95, CA res + 6%.

COURTRIN ENTERPRISES (619) 569-8308 Box 231190 San Diego, CA 92123

1 V'[» ftl Pro lCj* > i i/y

DILLOWRITER

Easy to use full-screen editor /formatter for the IBM PC. Top, bottom, find, margins, centering, pagination, headers, footers, block operations, etc. $29.95, Software Research, Box 10004, Austin, TX 78766

Softalk/ IBM's classified advertising section offers a considerably less expensive way than display ad¬ vertising to reach tens of thousands of IBM Per¬ sonal Computer owners.

Classified advertising space is available at the rate of $10 per line for the first ten lines, with a five- line minimum. Each line over ten lines is 525 per line. Ad copy should be received no later than the 10th of the second month prior to the cover date of the issue in which you want the ad to appear. Pay¬ ment must accompany ad copy.

The publisher reserves the right to reject any advertising that he feels is not in keeping with the publication's standards.

Heads will be set in 10-point boldface, all capi¬ tals only. Italics are available for body text only; please underline the portions you would like itali¬ cized ,

The body text of the ad will hold roughly 45 characters per line. Spaces between words are counted as one character. Heads will hold roughly 24 characters per line, with spaces between words counted as one character. Please indicate whether you would like the head centered or run into the text.

Please write or call for additional information.

Softalk/IBM Classified Advertising Box 60

North Hollywood, California 91603 Attention: Linda McGuire Carter 213-980-5074

The August one -line-pro gram contest al¬ most put us under. We got so many entries we decided to categorize them in order to choose □ winner. We selected the best program in each of four categories (graphics, humor, games, and "serious"), and then picked the grand prize winner from these four.

In the graphics category, we saw a lot of dazzling abstracts. The most hypnotic one- liner came from Dr. Charles Gaston, of Poughkeepsie, NY:

1 SCREEN 1,0:KEY

OFF:CLS:RANDOMIZE;CL5:2 =37: WHILE Z;C = INT(RND*4):FOR 1-1 TO 6:SOUND 200 + 4ND * 1000,9:LINE- (RND*319,RND*199LC:SOUND Z,0:NEXT:Q=fQ+5 + Z*RND) MOD Z : SOUND Z + Q, 200: PAINT {RND*3I9,RND*199),iNT{RND*4), OSOUND Z,0:]=J4RND/Z:COLOR,

] MOD 2: WEND: END

The entry we liked in the humor category came from Richard Waikel (Fort Wayne, IN), If you know your ASCII, the listing explains itself:

1 CLSTOR X = 1 TO 184: PRINT " Our Data ";:NEXTX:FORX = lTO 1838:Y = 1 + INT(X/80):LOCATE Y,(X MOD m + 1: PRINT " " + CHR${2);: LOCATE Y, SO: PRINT " "-WHILE VAL(MlDS(TlMESy8,l)) = 0: WEND: NEXT X-LOCATE 12,16:PRINT "A little round yellow man just ate ALL Our Data!"

We got a lot of games, including a three- part role-playing game in three lines. A find- the-ship-in-the-grid opus from Andrew Marc Greene (Jamaica Estates, NY) was chosen win¬ ner:

0 RANDOMIZER = INT(RND*21):E=INT (RND* 21): WHILE (N< >G ORE<>H) AND N>-1 AND N(21 AND E>-1 AND E<21:N = N-INT(RND*3-1)*(N<)G):E = E- INTfRND *3-1 ) * { E O H) :INPUT G ,H : PRINT MID5("N S"JSGN(G-N) -h2,l)MIDS(^E WTSGN(H-E) -H2,1):WEND:PRINT MID$("lW^{N=GME=HRl,l)

Here are Greene's instructions:

An enemy ship is hiding in a 20-by-20 area , Your mission is to find and destroy that ship before it escapes * The north-south and east- west axes are numbered from 0 to 20 north¬ ward and eastward; the 0,0 coordinate is in the lower left corner of the grid.

On each turn, you shoot a location given by north and east coordinates . The computer calculates damage to the enemy ship , accord¬ ing to the following table :

North	East	Damage
Wrong	Wrong	None
Wrong	Right	5hip can move only north/south on next turn.
Right	Wrong	Ship can move only east/west on next turn ,
Right	Right	Ship is destroyed; you win.

After each shot you get a short intelligence report telling you the position of the enemy relative to your shot. Then the enemy ship ei¬ ther moves in one of the eight basic direc- tions-N, NW, H SW, 5, 5E , E, andNE^orit stands still After it moves , you get another chance to shoot.

If the enemy sneaks out of the area , you lose. The computer will add an L to its intelli¬ gence report , informing you of your demo¬ tion. If you blow up the ship , the computer skips a line and says W, Basics prompt means the game is over.

In the serious vein, Dave Parker (Saratoga, CA) submitted an JJhonest-to-goodness, full- function" word processor:

1 JS = SPACE$f40):DEF SEG = &H B000FRINT STRINGS - N = 0),12):N = 1:LINE INPUT MS: IF MS = "save" THEN INPUT "Name -";F$:LOCATE CSR LIN-2: PRINT jS: PRINT J$:BSAVE FS + ", WF", 0, &H1000RUN ELSE IF MS — "load" THEN INPUT "Name -;FS:BLOAD FS + ".WP",0:GOTO 1 ELSE 1

Parkers instructions:

As is, the program works with the graphics adapter Change &hb800 to &hb000 for mono¬ chrome,

In Basic , in eighty-column text mode , pref¬ erably with the key display off , type run to start. To create a new file , simply start typing and editing on the blank screen. To save your text , get to the beginning ofet new line and type save (no capital letters), The computer will prompt for a filename. Enter an eight-charac¬ ter root name; an extension of ,WP will be added, the file will be saved , and the program will restart. To load an old file made by this program , type load on a new line and enter the files root name at the prompt. To print a file , press shift-printscreen with the text on-screen

And the Winner Is. , ,

In the judges humble opinions, the big $100 winner is Dr. Gaston, for his angular abstract.

Congratulations to David, Charles, and Rosemary: our thanks to the one-liner run¬ ners-up and all the other one-line program¬ mers . A

for the IBM. Personal Computer December 1983

9

Tommy* bas

In the October 1983 "Crosstalk" there was a description of the program Tommy, bas, For some reason I was not able to find the part of the program that came after line ]40, Would you please send me a copy of the entire listing?

Rons Lambing, Wilknar, MN for those to/io wrote or called in about Tom¬ my, bus for were just wondering about it)fthe program is all there, but the references in the letter were incorrect. It runs as printed.

Help for the Handicapped In recent months many magazines devoted to personal computers have printed letters from handicapped persons struggling with key¬ boards, Our problem {l myself am disabled) is that we can only press one key at a time be¬ cause of our physical limitations* Any multi¬ key combination, such as control-break, is impossible.

A solution to this problem is now available to pc users. RoseSoft has produced a special version of their keyboard enhancer, ProKey which "remembers" the control* altr and cap

shift keys until after the subsequent (nonshift) key is struck. Thus, any multikey combination can be expressed as a sequential series of single keystrokes,

ProKey provides an elegant solution to a problem that has plagued disabled computer users for years. It can be obtained from Rose- Soft, Box 45808, Seattle, WA 98105.

Mike Falconer, Madison, WI

A Bigger, Better BSCBA5 The BSCBas program presented in the Novem¬ ber issue can be changed slightly to increase its utility, particularly for users who like to keep commonly used routines as completed ,bas files using preassigned targe tine numbers. These files are then merged into a program un¬ der development or into an existing program that is being modified but for which no ,bsc source hie exists*

Change line 270 of BSCBas.bas from 270 UNECTR = ID

to

270 INPUT "Starting line number: " ;

LINECTR

Note: Minimum order 20 Diskettes (2 Holiday Packs),

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in

This is one more question (the third) for the user to answer, but it adds some utility that the published version did not have. Incidentally, if references are included in a .bsc source file to absolute line numbers, the BSCBas process leaves them alone and does not treat them as names. For example, gosub 60000 will remain unchanged in the output .bas tile. This allows convenient (but dangerous and hard-to-docu- ment) reference to preprocessed routines that will later be merged into the run-time .has file.

Mark Gardner, Glendale, CA

Port of Los Angeles

Can readers who have used or developed purchasing software for the IBM Personal Computer tell us about their experiences? They'd be giving all of us a big help, especially first-time pc users. We wonder what pitfalls, obstacles, and barriers others have succeeded in overcoming. We in the Offices of the Purchasing Officer for the Port of Los Angeles got our WordStar to print only after having a glitch modified so it would work on our partic- ular printer (the NEC Spinwriter 7710), We also have dBase IP

J. K. Drummond

Purchasing Administrative Assistant

Port of Los Angeles

Beginning Address of Basic's Data Segment In the September 1983 issue of Softaik there was an answer given in "Questions and An¬ swers” describing a method to determine the value for the beginning address of Basics data segment. A short machine-language routine was called from Basic and the value for Basic's data segment (DS) was returned via a variable labied I % r

While this method will work, there is a po¬ tential pitfall with monochrome monitors* The memory location used to store the machine language was ROOO hex. This is the screen buffer location for monochrome displays, If the program described is run on a mono¬ chrome screen, the even bytes of the machine language code (bytes 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10r 12, and 14, which in the code given are hex values 55, E5r 76, 50, D8, 04, 5D, and 02) will be written to the screen, while the odd bytes will attempt to set the attribute byte for each even location (two bytes determine each screen location; the first byte is the character and the second is the attribute).

The attribute byte determines whether the foreground and background are black or white, blinking or not, reverse video or under¬ line, The characters in the code that are written will be undecipherable ASCII characters, with some characters blinking. The code will be written on the first line occupying the first eight character positions* This is a dangerous place to store data If a print to this location or a screen scroll occurs between the time the code

SDftalk for flif IBM Personal Computer December 1983

An Industry First in Word Processing Software:

MfordPlus-PC featuring the BOSf» , Word processing so smart it can even spell 300,000 words.

Meet the BOSS. WordPIus-PC's incredible new Built-in On-line Spelling System.

WORD PROCESSING AND SPELLING COMBINED:

WordPlus-PC featuring the 'BOSS ' is a whole new technology in word processing software. Finally the most powerful word processing capabilities have been combined with a built-in electronic spelling system which not only checks your spelling but also corrects your spelling.

The "BOSS”, an acronym for Built-in On-line Spelling System, eliminates embarrassing spelling errors in your letters and stops time consuming trips to the dictionary.

But WordPlus-PC featuring The "BOSS” will do far more than just check and correct your spelling. It s been designed to be exceptionally easy to use and yet contain all the powerful features you expect and more. Like built-in mail merge for personalized form letters, invoice generation and the ability to merge information cre¬ ated by most other popular programs such as l -2-3™ and dBASE 11T And if you have a question, just press the HELP key to get back on track.

You can also print bar graphs and other charts,* * easi ly move columns, scroll horizontally execute global search and replace, boilerplate text and even print proportionally spaced on selected printers. And WordPlus-PC is compatible with virtually all popular letter-quality and dot matrix printers.

'With 90,000 4- word standard dictionary and ability for a user to add over 10,000 ' custom ' words.

HERE’S HOW THE BOSS WORKS FOR YOU:

IT CHECKS

At the touch of a button, virtually any¬ time during typing or after the creation of a document The "BOSS” locates and highlights misspelled words on your screen. The "BOSS” can even check the spelling of a word directly after it's been typed in.

IT SUGGESTS

Thattfc gnu Far un	ar i uteres P 1,1^— Pf c	tt in tfardPli	ns-PC Fe
dtfoiitjp fur Word	r Un- rv s|
Mufrr other word	protestor
iuloitaUcelly cd ncn mmvm a	erects *n nd »l$ fr	1 > let hun Z) techno	togic
Misspell ing, H	offers an	3) too lino	logii*
cor rent spelling	of that	4) techiuj	logics
Von dan’ t wen h	Live to iyr	5) tedmi	cal
n usher of gciur s	election,	j lil techiii	tally

When a word is misspelled, the user can ask The "BOSS” for suggestions as to how to correctly spell the word. With only one keystroke. The "BOSS' will display in a dynamic on-screen window, up to eight spelling suggestions in fhe order of proba¬ ble phonetic correctness.

IT CORRECTS

Thniifi you Acronym Jr MtiKc fit .her	for your i ir Word!1 Ins . utifd pro i	int trust hi HorrirJiis-K ;-TCJ ^ new Built- hi On-lint ;ecsnrr dhsoliitEi. The DOS!
ailtWiAt 1 C-!	illy corrcr	its any i^isspal lings. Thii
MEM tcClmtl	)itiyy§.riid i	its f ppnv Professional Sufi*
pisspem i ii*{p it uffers ah option that iisv; tin
correct sf	mil Jog uf	that word - in order of pi
you don' i	even have	to type in the word that »
1 lumber of your selection, Ann the KiE^pcHea l
And The	"BOSS'	Aufo Correct feature

enables users to "fix" these misspelled words directly m text with a single key¬ stroke, The BOSS” is a total spelling sys¬ tem that Checks, Suggests, and Corrects your Spelling, All built-in.

THE TOTAL WORD PROCESSING SOLUTION - PLUS ALL THE HELP YOU’LL NEED,

With over 70,000 word processors in use worldwide. Professional Software, Inc, has designed WordPlus-PC to con¬ tain all the powerful features you expect — and to be the easiest word processor to use anywhere. But there will always be questions. That's why

Professional Software has an entire bank of nation-wide TOLL FREE customer HELP lines to support our registered users. This service is avail¬ able at Ho Charge during the 90 days following the receipt of your registered users card.

Demand to see the BOSS in person

Visit your local professional computer dealer or call us toll free for the dealer nearest you. Once you witness the BOS5 in action, you'll see that all other word processors have become totally obsolete.

Demand to see the “BOSS” today! Call us toll free, 1-800-343-4074.

Professional Software, Inc.

51 Fremont Street, Needham, MA 02194 Telephone (617) 444-5224 Telex 951579 Now Available for IBM-PC and Compatibles, DEC Rainbow, Tl Professional, and Victor 9000. Dealer, distributor, OEM manufacturer, and international inquiries are invited.

WordPlus-PC and The BOKr are trademarks of Professional Software, Inc.

-2-3 is a trademark of Lotus Dcvelo(mcnt Corp,. dBASE II is a trademark of Ashton-Tate. Speciftea lions arc subject to change without notice.

WordPlus-PC was designed and written by Andres ELscallon. ■ ' With IBM dot matrix and Diablo 630 EC5 printer, bar graphs and other tha ris can be printed inside text-

Now the excitement of original arcade graphics and sound effects comes home to your computer

Introducing ATARISOFT™ A new source for computer software.

If you own a Commodore VIC 2D or 64, a Texas Instruments 99/4A, an IBM or an Apple II, you can play the original arcade hits,

DONKEY KONG by Nintendo, CENTIPEDE™ PAC-MAN, DEFENDER, ROBOTRDN: 20B4, STARGATE and DIG DUG. CDn the Tl 99/4A you can also play Protector II, Shamus, Picnic Paranoia and Super Storm.)

So, start playing the original hits on your computer

Dnly from ATARISOFT Some games also available on ColecoVision and Intellivision.

ATARISOFT

Now your computer fits the arcade hits.

DONKEY KONG. Mario and NINTENDO are trademarks and © Nintendo 1SB1, 1983. FftOM AN and characters are trademarks of Bally Midway Mfg. Co. subltcensed to Atari, Inc. by Namco- Amerrca, Inc. DEFENDER is a trademark of Williams Electronics. Inc . manufactured under license from Williams Electronics, Inc. ROBOTRDN: £084 is a trademark and © Of Williams 1902, manu¬ factured under license from Williams Electronics. Inc. STARGATE is a trademark and © of Williams 1981. manufactured under license from Wiliams Electronics. Inc. DIG DUG is created and designed bylMamcoLtd. manufactured under license by Atari, Inc. Trade¬ marks and © Nsmcc 1982. PROTECTOR II is a trademark of Syn¬ apse Software Corporation, manufactured under license by Atari. Inc. SHAMUS is a trademark of Synapse Software Corporation, manufactured under license by Atari, Inc PICNIC PARANOIA is a trademark of Synapse Software Corporation, manufactured by Atari, Inc. SUPER STORM is engineered and designed by Synapse Software Corporation, manufactured under license by Atari, Inc. ATARISOFT'1' products ere manufactured by Aten. Inc. for use on the above referenced machines and are not made, licensed or approved by the manufacturers of these machines. COMMODORE 64, VIC 20. TEXAS INSTRUMENTS 99/4A. IBM, APPLE. COLE¬ COVISION and INTELLIVISION are respectively trademarks of Commodore Electronics Limited, Texes Instruments, International Business Machines Core.. Apple Computer Inc.. Coleco Industries. Inc. and Mattel, Inc. A ©Warner Communications Company. ©1SB3 Atari, Inc. All rights reserved.

Complete this coupon and well keep you up to date on the newest hits from ATARISOFT™

Address

City

State

Zip

Telephone

PRODUCT OWNED: (Check onei

| | TI-99/4A n Commodore Vic 20

| | IBM PC Q Intellivision

|~| Commodore 64 Q Apple II | | ColecoVision Q Other

Mail to;

Atari, Inc., P.D. 8ox 2943,

So, San Francisco, CA 94080. asm 19

Do you want the #1 Seller or the

#1 Financial

I \ F<eau°22t-'—^

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MONEY MAGAZINE - Nov. 1982

“Among bookkeeping programs, earns high marks and is easy to use."

CREATIVE COMPUTING - Jan. 1983

"77?e documentation is thorough, easily read, and complete."

" The program is so easy to use that rarely will reference have to be made to the manual. " <%C*

SOFTALK - Jan. 1982 t \$V«'

"For the home user (and perhaps iri^Mn^Oss complex small business), the best package we evaluated was Th£tegQ$$fNTANT by Decision Support Software ."

"The ACCOUNTANT does, make financial management a simple and straightforward

INFOWORLD - Jan. 3/10, 1983

"Complete flexible financial data base package for the home user."

"... exceptionally fast. . . . highly recommend.”

The ACCOUNTANT

Finance Data Base System™

Decision Support Software Inc.

1300 Vincent Place, McLean, VA 22101 * (703) 442-7900 • Orders Only: (BOO) 368-2022

Aitn4fl:w IBM1*. VisiCalc,M, The Home Accountant11* are trademarks of Ai^ki IBM L'lbrOuip and Continental Software rcspcciivciv

is written and time the routine is called. A print command will overwrite the code and a scroll command will erase it.

Fortunately there is another and simpler method to determine Basic's data segment. On page 3-22 of the Technical Reference manual, it is stated that Basic's segment address is stored in absolute memory location 510 and 511. The following one-line Basic statement will print this value:

10 DEF SEG = 0 : J% = 256 * PEEK(&H511)

+ PEEK(&H510) : PRINT HEX$(J%)

This is the same value returned by 1% in "Questions and Answers." The def seg — 0 is to get to absolute memory 0, and the arithme¬ tic converts hex numbers to decimal.

John J. Byrne, New Canaan, CT

Rounding Bug

Bernard Robinson's "How to Get 'Round the Rounding Bug" (August 1983) is a case of the cure being worse than the disease. I'm referring to the defined function FnEmd, which is intro¬ duced on page 96.

When the most significant digit to be rounded off is exactly five, FnEmd behaves as advertised: It rounds the preceding digit, if odd, up to the next even digit; otherwise it truncates. The problem arises when the num¬ ber to be rounded already has the desired num¬ ber of decimal places.

Example: Divide 100 by 8 and ask FnEmd to round the result to one decimal place; you'll get back 12.6. Or square 3.5 and round to two decimals and you'll get 12.26. In general, if you ask FnEmd to round to K places a number that already has exactly K places, it will always in¬ crement the final significant digit when the last digit is odd.

The algorithm is well suited to pocket cal¬ culators because no one in his or her right mind would round a two-place number to two deci¬ mals. The computer, of course, will blithely go ahead and do so, thereby creating the most in¬ sidious bug of them all— the kind that looks plausible.

How about it, guys? A little more care, please?

John van Laer, New York, NY

Good Screen, No Dump I am writing about "From Screen to Dump in Almost 60 Flat" (July 1983). I have entered the subroutine and the graphics image program. I've also checked to make sure there are no er¬ rors and have run both the subroutine and the program.

The graphics image is, to say the least, im¬ pressive, but when it is done the printer doesn't print it. I have a pc, a color /graphics card, and an Epson MX-80 with Graftrax-Plus. The Ba¬ sic subroutine is saved under the name HRSD and when run saves the subroutine under

14

softcilk for the IBM Personal Computer December 1983

FriendlyWare

PC INTRODUCTORY SET MASTER DISKETTE No.1

9) Mastermind

10) Nevada Dice

11) Killer Maze

12) Sea Battle

13) Boggy Marsh

14) Hangman

15) Tic Tac Toe

16) Home Vision

17) Home Hearing

1) History and introduction to Computers

2) Operating Systems

3) Languages

4) Screen Prompts

5) Memory and Storage

6) Files, Fields, Records

7) Helpful DOS Commands

8) Anatomy of a Program

FriendlyWare

PC INTRODUCTORY SET MASTER DISKETTE No.2

1) Wildcatter

2) You Draw It

3) Peg Leap

4) Dominoes

8) PC Golf

9) Head Coach Blackjack

11) Othello

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Dumpscm. When the time comes to run the subroutine, the disk is accessed but the access is not terminated. It continually runs the drive. Control-break does nothing to stop this, Could you please help me solve my problem? I am anxious to use this screen dump,

Jeff Elder Ames, IA

Peop/e ujit/i /ess than 96K must make the fol¬ lowing changes to the programs to call the Du mpsc rnma ch in e- Ian gu age subrou tine . This comtnand should be given when the DOS prompt appears on the screen :

A) BASIC A /M : &H8000

This command reserves a 4K area of space for the machine language subroutine ,

A warning IBM publishes in the Basic man¬ ual is that bload does not perform an address - range check . Since the bload command was trying to load the memory-image file outside the available memory range , the command could never be completed and the disk drive ran continually. The def seg in line 20 and the bload in line 30 should be changed for the ma¬ chine language program to be loaded correctly and executed in machines with less than 96K<

Below is the complete Fast draw program ,

10 SCREEN 2,0,0

11 DEF SEG = &HB800

12 BLOAD "PICTURE"

20 DEF SEG = &HFE0 30 BLOAD

"DUMPSCRN",0 40 WIDTH "LPT1:",255 60 SUBRT % = 0 70 CALL SUBRT% 80 END

' hi-res graphics ' addrs of graphics buffer

' load hi-res picture

' decimal location 65024

' toad machine lang* prog.

' set printer width

Christopher j. Lindell, Cot a faille, IA

Sony Profed Monitor

1 read with great interest the letter from Dr Malladi Subbaiah (August 1983) regarding problems connecting a Sony Profeel monitor to his pc. i just connected a Sony Monitor KX- 1211HG to my pc without any problems. Some of your readers may not realize that Sony has an RGB interface for the pc.

The Sony monitor and interface require no special wiring. The interface plugs directly into the monitor and the color/graphics card,

Stephen Sarhad, San Rafael, CA

In Search of the Basic Shell Command Having read the problems expressed by John Mastronardo (Questions and Answers, Octo¬ ber 1983), 1 thought readers might be inter¬ ested in a means of exiting from Basic for the purpose of executing DOS commands using the elusive she// command. It can be done sim¬ ply by telling Basic where to resume processing when it has finished the DOS activities*

The following example should solve the problem:

70 JOBS - "DIR" : GOSUB 950 80 — 940 'other Basic statements 950 '

960 DEF SEG r A = PEEK(&H30) : B =

PEEK(&H31) 'get offset to start of program

970 SHELL JOBS "execute DOS command 980 DEF SEG : POKE &H30,A : POKE

&H31,B "restore offset to start of program 990 RETURN

Terry Chisholm, Cincinnati, OH Assembling Life

I read Robert Fruit s article and studied his Pas¬ cal version of "The Game of Life" (September 1983), I found it very interesting and informa¬ tive. Although I do not have a Pascal compiler, 1 am now learning assembly language, I de¬ cided to use your program as an outline and convert it to assembly language. While writing the program, some questions arose on the rules of the game.

The way I believe the program works is that it checks each cell one at a time and imme¬ diately turns the cell off or on. This of course affects the results in the next cell over. Shouldn't the computer really check all the cells within the matrix first, save the results, and then place all the results of the new genera¬ tion in the matrix at once?

The patterns in my assembled version of Life do not seem to act the same as they should according to the article in the December 1982 issue of Softalk ("The Game of Life," by For¬ rest Johnson), It was assembled using Chasm from Freeware, Any suggestions would be ap¬ preciated,

Marc Melcher, Mount Kisco, NY Mr Melchers letter clearly shows why he is having problems understanding how Life han¬ dles the lives evaluation. That aspect of the program was not explained in my article. The table of life values is the three-dimensional ar¬ ray POSjO. .51,0. .26,1' ■ 2} . The cell in the array directly corresponds with the life values seen on the monitor display The 50 cells high are in the dimension 0..51 (the extra cells at 0 and 51 are for the life-evaluation formula and are al¬ ways zero). The 25 cells wide are in the dimen¬ sion 0 . .26, and the two life tables are the dimension 1..2.

When / first worked on Life l had the same problem that Marc had — that is. when a life is bom or dies it affects the evaluationof nearby cells. The solution i$ to do the ei^aluation on the current life-values table and to store the re¬ sults on the future life-values table, As the fu¬ ture life-values table is written , the image on the monitor screen is also written.

There are two places to look in the program to see the handling of the two life-values ta¬

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bles. Before looking you must understand that there are two variables used to point to the two life-values tables, W and Z. W points to the current life-value table, and Z points to the fu¬ ture life-value table.

The first place to look is at the last seven lines of the program— that is, where the W variable is defined. As the program starts, W is set tol(Zisnot set at this time). The for state¬ ment four lines from the program end has the W variable count from 1 to 2. Then the goto statement that follows the for statement cre¬ ates an infinite loop, so W keeps counting 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2. . ..

The second place to look is the first state¬ ment in the procedure check. The procedure check is found in the last column of the pro¬ gram listing near the top of the page. That first statement is Z : — W MOD 2 + 1;. This state¬ ment is using modulo arithmetic on the varia¬ ble W. For those unfamiliar with modulo arithmetic, IBM's Basic manual is a good place to find it. If W = 1, then mod 2 will give the result 1, and if W — 2, then the results are 0. Looking at that statement , it shows that Z is always set to 1 or 2 and its value is the opposite of the W variable. The W variable is used in the procedures TOGGLE, SET— UP, and the function LIVE. The Z variable is found only in the procedure check.

If Life had been properly documented,

Marc probably would not have had any prob¬ lems understanding how the program worked. Proper documentation would have shown the uses for the variables and what each procedure and function did. Without the documentation he had to guess, and when he didn't catch the three-dimensional array POS, the way the program operates became a mystery.

Robert Fruit, Hinsdale, IL

REM, He Said

I learned a great deal of very helpful informa¬ tion about menu-driven programs in the excel¬ lent article, "Whats on Your pc Menu7" by Dian Girard (October 1983).

However, when trying to apply it I found an error that will affect anyone trying to use it with DOS 1.1, which a high percentage of your readers have. For DOS 1.1, program line 210 should be changed from

210 PRINT #1, "ECHO now exiting to DOS. Goodbye from your friendly IBM Basic!"

to read:

210 PRINT #1, "REM now exiting to DOS. Goodbye from your friendly IBM Basic!"

The rem statement replaces echo. Other¬ wise, when exiting to DOS as you return to the initial batch file and Runit.bat is called, you get the following error message:

A>Bad command or filename

Echo functions as a comment statement in DOS 2.0 but not 1.1. This minor change will prevent the program from continually generat¬ ing an irritating error message every time you exit to DOS 1.1. 1 hope this will be helpful to your DOS 1.1 readers.

Stephan J. Waszack, M.D., Seattle, WA

Stripped-Down Softalk Please leave all cartoons, contests, games, and cute but irrelevant photos out of Softalk for the IBM Personal Computer. I subscribe to your magazine solely for technical information and detailed product reviews.

Information on hardware products, com¬ pilers, programming utilities, operating sys¬ tems, detailed (especially comparative) product reviews, interfacing, and configura¬ tion for new add-ons are all extremely valu¬ able. I'd like to hear more about power protection, hard disks, and the Sritek supple¬ mentary processor boards.

I see little value in interviews and less in narrative descriptions of what most readers will recognize as routine applications of the pc or computers in general.

Please don't pad Softalk; we don't need an¬ other thick magazine. The information is far more important than the weight of the paper.

Jeffrey M, Speiser, San Diego, CA A

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or the last few months we've had questions and am swers about the she// command, a command that theoretically enables one to execute a DOS command from Basic. The general consensus was that while it looked like a nifty command, it appeared to be incompletely implemented and documented; in most situations it appeared not to work.

This month we offer the following letter from Robert B, Relf in Bothell, Washington, explaining what can be done to get shell to work in some situations. Thanks for sharing this information with us, Robert!

/ first saw reference to shell jn yout column, and /, too, was excited about the prospect of making use of DOS from within a Basic program. I had just subscribed to CompuServe and so l asked members of the IBM SlGr and the y set me straight on shell.

How would you like to call any DOS function from within a Btisic program? How about using type to send an ASCII file to the printer or the screen? Would you like to make use of pipes and filters to sort the output of dir to a file? Format? Chkdsk? Copy?

The ANsmer to your prayers lies in some additional peeks and pokes. Evidently , u>hen the DOS function called by shell is performed, it

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causes Basic to lose track of where your program is in memory This information is stored in two bytes at &H30 and &H31 (def seg — Ok Before using the shell statement t you nuist peek at the values in these two locations and store them in two variables , Immediately upon re¬ turning to Basic , poke these values into their original locations and your program can then go merrily on its way.

It is possible that a DOS function that uses a lot of memory may step too heavily on Basics toes and cause n crash , so experiment with the specific function and be sure to save your program before you run it.

I have found that if you are using a display page ['screen, apage, v- page) other thajt 0 on fhe color/ graphics adapter screen output from the DOS function wilt not he printed correctly , and when you are re¬ turned to Basic the display page will have defaulted to 0 . The solution is to set the display page to 0, use the shell command , then return to the previous display page.

Here is a short listing that demonstrates how to use the shell com- mand:

10 INPUT "ENTER ANYTHING YOU WOULD ENTER AT THE DOS PROMPT", SHELS

20 DEE SEC: A = PEEK(&H30) : B = PEEK(&H31) [ get offset to start of program

30 SHELL SHELS 'execute DOS command

40 DEF SEC : POKE &H30,A : POKE &H31,B 'restore offset to start of program

50 PRINT " YOU ARE BACK IN BASIC 60 GOTO 10

We also got a cautionary phone call about the shell command from Paul Hoffman of Proper Software. He claims that what the command does is trash the beginning of the data segment— but not in any predict¬ able way. So. . .experiment and use s/ieJ/ at your own risk,

Q* l have had some problems loading and calling a machine lan- * guage subroutine loaded into a Basic array. When I simply bioacted the code into the top of Basic's memory there was no problem, so I know the code is okay. However, when I tried the following, it didn't work; it froze the system or just didn t perform correctly:

1000 DIM A%(300): FOR 1=0 TO 299: A%{\\ = 0: NEXT i 2000 PLACE = VARPTR( A%(0))

3000 BLOAD "FILENAME, OB}", PLACE 4000 5BRT = PLACE 5000 CALL SBRT(K)

{Sbrt is the subroutine whose code is in the file "filename. obj" J

I wrote a smaller test program in Basic and tried again and had suc¬ cess by letting Place = varptr(A%(10)), but this wouldn't work in my longer program, I also tried adding various def segs, but that didn't help. 1 printed the array A% after step 3000, and things seem okay as far as the loading is concerned Mark Bridge r

A Your problem occurs because you declare a new scalar varia- * bk after you've allocated space for your array and used the unrpfr command. What this does is change the location of the array, so when Sbrt is called, its no longer where you expect it.

You can correct *th is by declaring or initializing all your variables before the varptr statement. If, for example, you added the line:

1500 SBRT = 0

to allocate space for the variable Sbrt before varptr, you would avoid the problem.

Ql have recently become interested in assembly language pro- * gramming, I would like to know where I can find a descrip¬ tion of interrupts for BIOS and DOS, what they do, and how to use them, I have the Technical Reference manual but have been unable to find anything about interrupts except for what is in the BIOS listing in

20

SOftDlk for the IBM Personal Computer December 1933

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Appendix A, which explains only some of the BIOS interrupts and none of the DOS interrupts. I am especially curious about INT 21, the DOS function call, which 1 have seen referred to often but never have had explained.

David Meyer

A You asked the right question! Leo Scanlon's book, IBM PC • and XT Assembly Language, a Guide /cu JYugrflmmm, is the resource you need, and it's excerpted in this issue (page 44),

Q+ Ive enjoyed Sqfrttlks series on how Basic stores numbers, * variables, and programs. I've been studying them, but there is still one thing I cant figure out: Where does it store them!

I was hoping you'd explain how to peek at an address from Basic, then how to decipher which location the contents of that address point to.

Betsy Simnacher

A# First of all you need to determine where you want to peek.

• Table 2 of the July article (p. 38) gives the locations of Basic s pointers, What you do first is peek at the contents of the pointer loca¬ tion; then you use what you find there as the address to peek at parts of Basic— variables, code, Basic's stack, or whatever.

For example, let s suppose we want to look at the start of the simple variables. Table 2 tells us that &H358 and &H35° are the pointer to the start of the simple variables. These two addresses form a two -byte number that represents the address at which the simple variable storage begins. To read that two-byte number we do the following:

PEEK (&H358) + 256 * PEEK (&H359)

&H359 holds the high-order byte of this two-byte number so we have

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to multiply the value at that address by 256 before adding it to the value at &H35S, in order to convert the pointer to a decimal number Now if wre print the result of this peek and then peek at the address this state¬ ment produces, we should see our Basic program s first simple variable. Here is a short program to do this:

10 DEF 5EG 'set the segment to 0

20 X = PEEK (&H358) + 256 * PEEK (&H359) 'to read the

pointer

30 PRINT X 'the location of the first simple variable 40 PRINT PEEK(X)

To read any of the other pointers shown in table 2, substitute the appropriate numbers for &H358 and &H359 in line 20.

Q+ 1 have written many programs to plot data in high-resolution

4 graphics mode but have been unable to print out these plots on my printer. Are there any programs or commands available to print out the high-resolution screen?

William J. Stoeffel

A In the July issue of Soffcr/k, the article "From Screen to Dump # in Almost 60 Flat" presented a high-resolution screen dump program. You can get a copy of the article and type in the program yourself or, to receive a disk with the program on it, send eight dollars to:

Softalk Dumpscm Box 60

North Hollywood, CA 91603

Qt I have two questions for you, First( is there any reference * source for the use and abuse of the officially "unused'J (read: unpublished) pc X 2T interrupts? Jn particular I'm curious about the purpose of function 01CH, which is called from the utility Chkdsk.com. It's a disk-oriented interrupt that appears to do some checking of the file allocation table.

My second question is, what does DOS do when it exits a program back to the system? 1 know that INT 2GH is called, which in turn calls three other system interrupts for cleanup work. What I really want to know is how to intercept the usual return to DOS and redirect it to a .com program Tve written and saved with INT 27Hr I'm writing a com¬ mand shell and want to intercept DOS at the last possible moment. There's very little information on this in the Technical Reference man¬ ual, Any ideas?

Steve Manes

Function IB and 1C are identical . Both contain the return ad- • dress of the file allocation table. They really don't do any checking of the FAT. It's up to the program to use this address and do its own checking. You're right; there is little information about this.

There are two ways you can intercept the usual return to DOS and redirect it to another program. The first is to use DOS interrupt IB, This enables you to load and execute your second program from your H rs t — - and then have control return to your first program.

The second way is to change the terminate address stored in the program segment prefix. This is the address used by interrupt 20 to clean everything up (see page E-8 of the DOS 2,0 manual). You could change this address to the starting address of your next program. The terminate address is four bytes long (segment plus offset), and you can change St in the program segment prefix (psp) or change the interrupt 22 vector. At offset 26H in the program segment prefix there is a sixteen-bit segment pointer to the psp of the parent process. Save the current value of this and change it to point to the psp of your next program. Then when your second program is finished, you will need to do your own cleanup. Restore the psp pointer so it points to the program segment prefix of the parent process and restore the interrupt 22 vector A

SOftGlk for the IBM Personal Computer December 1933

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COMM LINES

Jurchasing a mo¬ dem can be haz¬ ardous to your pocketbook, In¬ stalling it can be hazardous to your sanity* This month, we'll examine some of the issues in¬ volved in mating a modem to your pc and then getting the whole shebang on-line with a re¬ mote station.

Since any modem is designed to connect a digital computer to an analog phone line, it fol¬ lows that modems must have two interfaces; a digital one that connects to the computer and an analog one that connects to the phone line. From a user's point of view, the analog inter¬ face is far easier to deal with than the digital interface*

In the early medieval days of computers, the omniscient Ms. Bell deemed it an absolute no-no to connect any type of "foreign" equip¬ ment directly to a Bell phone line. (The word foreign was Bell's term, used to denote, rather pejoratively, non-Bell equipment.) Home com¬

Plugging In

puters were, of course, virtually unknown then (except to those odd souls who managed to sneak a PDP-11 into their attics); so at first nobody considered it particularly outrageous that you had to contact the telephone business office before you could connect a modem to your phone line.

If you called the business office they would send out a serviceman, who would proceed to install what was probably the most useless piece of telecommunications equipment in the world; a DAA, or direct access arrangement. The DAA connected to the phone line; you, the subscriber, connected your modem to the DAA. The phone company's rationale for the DAA was that it was necessary to protect Bell's apparently delicate lines from damage caused by incorrectly designed foreign equipment.

Fortunately for us, one of the first things the phone company lost on the long road from monopoly to competitive enterprise was the privilege of being able to require a DAA. The Federal Communications Commission has de-

by Kevin Goldstein

rided that as long as equipment conforms to its (the FCCs) rules, it may be connected directly to the phone line*

That FCC decision was the first element that simplified connecting a modem to a tele¬ phone line; the introduction of the modular phone jack was the second. Since most houses are by now wired for the small modular jack known as the RJllC, connecting a telephone is as simple as plugging in a light; modems con¬ nect the same way phones do, using the same jacks and cables* So all you have to do to con¬ nect your modem to the phone line is unplug a phone and plug in the modem* If you need a phone cable, you can simply Steal one from the unused phone*

In fact, any of the plugs, sockets, or equip¬ ment used to connect your phone can also be used to connect your modem. If you're short a phone socket, it's perfectly legal to purchase a two-into-one phone jack, normally meant for connecting two phones to one jack; in this case, simply substitute a modem for the second phone.

Before you traipse on down to your local Radio Shack to purchase a two*into-one jack, though, take a good look at the back of your modem (or wherever the connectors are; that's usually the back) . If you see two phone sockets rather than one, the modem itself is effectively giving you a two-into-one jack. If you've got a modem with two sockets and you want to con¬ nect both the modem and the telephone to the same wall socket, first unplug the phone cable right at the phone and then plug the free end into one of the phone sockets on the back of the modem (it will probably be marked some¬ thing like line). Now, using the cable that came with the modem, connect one end into the other socket on the back of the modem (proba¬ bly labeled phone) and the other end into the telephone itself. You can now use both the phone and modem as if they were plugged into two independent wall sockets.

Incidentally, the fact that the two sockets on the back of the modem are labeled line and phone might lead you to believe they are in

2*

SOftalk for the IBM Personal Computer December 1983

HERCULES is the only graphics card that can run

1-2-3 on IBM’s monochrome display

And that’s just for starters.

You don’t have a Hercules Graphics Card? Then unfortunately you won’t be able to run 1-2-3, including all its graphics, on IBM’s monochrome display. And you’ll miss out on all the other reasons why there are more Hercules Graphics Cards producing more high resolution graphics than any other add-on card for the IBM PC.

But don’t take just our word for it. If you need con¬ vincing, remember that most of the IBM PCs at Lotus'" are running Hercules Graphics Cards. And the authors of 1-2-3 know a good card when they see one. Or consider that the Hercules Graphics Card is widely used at Rockwell,

Mass Mutual, and Carnegie Mellon. They couldn’t all be wrong, could they?

At $499, we think the Hercules Graphics Card offers the best price/performance ratio of any graphics card avail¬ able today. As you can tell, plenty of users agree with us.

Call or write for our free information kit. You’ll see why the first graphics card for the IBM PC is still the best.

; 2550 Ninth St., Suite 210, Berkeley, California 94710. Telephone: (415) 540-6000.

Hercules. We’re strong on graphics.

■&1983 Hercules Computer Technology.

The Hercules Graphics Card offers 720x348 graphics resolution on IBM's monochrome display, compatibility with text mode software, a parallel printer port, software to use BASIC’s graphics and a two year warranty. A graphics subroutine library with screen dump is available separately for $50. Graphics software that is compatible with the IBM color graphics card but does not have a Hercules compatible version will not run on the Hercules Graphics Card. Foreign Distributors: Reflejo'U.K.; Computer 2000/W Germany: EdisofPFranoe. Hercules Graphics Card is a trademark of Hercules Computer Technology, IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines. 1-2-3 and Loins are trademarks of Lotus Development-

MicroGANTT'" XT makes project scheduling

this easy...

Finally there is a fully interactive Critical Path program that allows novice or experienced computer users to derive a professional quality project plan, in just minutes. As you describe the work, MicroGANTT automatically displays the schedule of events graphically. Single keystrokes change the display from Gantt chart to time summary to financial summary. Carry up to 100 tasks in a single project. Incorporate that project as a task in an even larger project. The possibilities are endless! Change any variable entered at any time and see the entire projection recalculated, instantly. Project files can be used again and again. Simply alter the begin date, time scale, work week, worker dedication, or any factor, and the new schedule and critical path will appear immediately. No rekeying of data.

Run MicroGANTT XT on your fixed or floppy disk system and turn your IBM PC or XT compatible system into a powerful and versatile work management station. With MicroGANTT XT, it’s a piece of cake!

Program and Documentation: $395 Earth Data Corporation

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(C) 1983 Earth Data Corp.

some way different* And theoretically they could be; the modem could include circuitry for disconnecting the phone when the modem was in use, for example. In general, however, that will not be the case; most, though not all, of todays modems simply connect the two plugs in parallel “-meaning the two plugs are electrically identical. Just to be on the safe side, however, if the sockets are labeled, connect ac¬ cording to the labels.

That pretty much takes care of the first of the two modem interfaces, the phone -line con¬ nection. The other interface, the connection to the computer, is not quite so simple.

With the exception of those modems pack¬ aged as cards that plug directly into a pc ex¬ pansion slot, almost all modems connect to your pc via a standard interface known as El A RS-232C, usually simply called an R5-232 in¬ terface. (The El A stands for Electronics indus¬ try Association, the professional association that promulgates the standard*)

RS-232 is a low-level standard, which means it specifies only the mechanical and elec¬ trical interconnection and says nothing about the actual data that can go on an RS-232 line. RS-232 knows nothing of bits, bytes, data tim¬ ing, ASCII, EBCDIC, et cetera. All the stan¬ dard does is define a mechanical interface (the physical plug and socket, and which signals

appear on which pins of the socket) and the electrical interface “that is, what the voltage levels must be.

Mechanically, the RS-232 interface specifies a twenty-five- pin, rectangular connector, (Ru¬ mor has it that the long and thin rectangular shape was chosen simply to frustrate hobby¬ ists, since its virtually impossible to cut a dean, thin, rectangular hole in a chassis without spe¬ cial equipment.) The connectors on both the back of the modem and the pc should be fe¬ males, meaning the cable you want to connect the modem to the pc should have male plugs on each end. (just to be on the safe side, check this detail before you purchase your cable. If you don't see any gold or silver metal pins, you're looking at a female connector.) The connectors go under the more or less universal part number of DB-25; so if you decide to make your own cables, you should get the right thing if you ask for two DB-25 male con¬ nectors.

If making your own cable sounds like a real pain in the neck, it is— and this column is cer¬ tainly not recommending it; pay the fifty-five bucks and get a professionally made cable that will (probably) work. {Before you buy a cable, make sure your modem manufacturer didn't supply a cable gratis with the modem.) On the other hand, if you stay involved with comput¬

ers long enough, the day will come when you discover the need for a cable that your local computer store doesn't seem to have. This col¬ umn will discuss just how that situation might arise and give you the facts necessary to deal with it. Let's start by taking a closer look at the RS-232 plug.

One of the thing? the RS-232 standard does is assign a unique function to each of the twenty-five pins of the standard DB-25 con¬ nector If that sounds like a lot of signals just to connect a modem to a computer, well, it is; and in simple situations such as connecting low- to medium-speed asynchronous modems, most of those lines aren't used.

In the simplest case, only three of the twenty-five pins of the RS-232 connector are necessary to connect your modem to your pc. You can probably imagine what rwo of those lines must be; transmitted data and received data. The other fine is the ground line; as you may recall from an earlier column on circuit basics, a ground line is needed as a return path for the electrons running around an electrical circuit. In this case, as in many cases in com¬ puter circuitry, a single ground line is shared by many otherwise independent circuits.

The RS-232 standard assigns transmitted data to pin 2 of the connector, received data to pin 3, and ground to pin 7* (There are actually

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SOftolk for the IBM Personal Computer December 1983

two ground pins, one called signal ground, the other chassis ground. Chassis ground is more or less the equivalent of the third wire in a grounded electrical plug; the RS-232 chassis ground is on pin 1. Signal ground on pin 7 is the line of interest to us.)

And of course you know what transmitted data means: data transmitted from the modem to the computer. Or. ♦ *no, maybe it's data transmitted from the computer to the modem. Hmmm. Seems there's a little ambiguity here, doesn't it?

That "little" ambiguity has probably been the cause of more confusion and problems than any other single aspect of the modem- computer connection. While on the surface the problem looks absolutely trivial (how many times have you heard that before?), in actual¬ ity it's important enough to warrant special at¬ tention.

In order to overcome the ambiguity raised by signal direction — who's transmitting on what line and who's receiving on. that same line— the RS-232 interface defines two broad classifications of equipment: data terminal equipment , or DTE, and data communications equipment , or DCE. DTE in general refers to

the computer or data processing equipment; DCE refers to the telecommunications gear. Thus your pc is considered data terminal equipment, while your modem is considered data communications equipment. In the nor¬ mal state of affairs, the RS-232 interface is used to connect a DTE at one end to a DCE at the other, (Are you totally confused yet? If not, hang in there.)

Data terminal equipment transmits its data on pin 2 of the RS-232 connector and receives its data on pin 3. Data communications equip¬ ment receives its data over pin 2— the same line the DTE is transmitting on— and transmits its data over pin 3, the same line the DTE is receiving from. Now since your pc is considered a DTE and your modem a DCE, they can be connected to each other simply by connecting pin 2 from the pc's RS-232 connector (transmit data of DTE) to pin 2 of the modem (receive data for DCE), and pin 3 of the pc's RS-232 connector to pin 3 of the modem (receive data of a DTE to transmit data of a DCE). That's convenient since it results in a straight cable, meaning pin 2 goes to pin 2 and pin 3 goes to

m

pin 3, (Signal grounds, pin 7, are always con¬ nected together. If your communications chan¬ nel is acting as if it has just dropped acid and you have ruled out software as the likely cul¬ prit, the next thing to check for is a missing or intermittent connection of the ground line, pin 7.) Indeed, for some modems, that simple three- wire cable is all that's necessary.

Up to now, we've assumed we re connect¬ ing a modem to a computer. In technical jar¬ gon, that means we're connecting a DTE to a DCE; since that is the configuration for which the RS-232 standard was defined, such a con¬ nection presents us with no special problems (at least not yet).

But now suppose for a minute we've just bought a second computer on sale. At the time, it looked like a good deal. The computer had everything we were looking for in a sec¬ ond computer, and it even came with an RS- 232 port, which gave us a convenient way to pass data between it and our pc*

Right now we think maybe we've figured out why the computer was so cheap- The RS- 232 interface doesn't work, so God only knows what else is broken. Oh, it'll run the self-test okay, but connect it to the computer

via the RS-232 port and nada. Won't even beep.

But hang on. Before we go blaming the sec¬ ond computer, let's take a closer look at the RS-232 connection.

Right off, the first question we've got to ask ourselves is this: Is it even legal to connect a pc directly to another computer via an RS-232 line? Doesn t the RS-232 interface require a modem?

No. No, no, no, no, and no. Just as the RS- 232 interface knows nothing about the type of data going across it — bits, bytes, ASCII, EBC¬ DIC, 300 baud, 1200 baud, or 45.5 baud— it also doesn't know or care what type of equip¬ ment it is connected to, as long as that equip¬ ment s interface conforms to the RS-232 standard.

Which leaves us with two possibilities. Ei¬ ther our new computer's interface doesn't con¬ form to the RS-232 standard or it's got a bum interface port.

By now maybe you've figured out just what's going on here. A computer is always configured as data communications equip¬

ment, meaning it will transmit data on pin 2 and receive data on pin 3. Connecting one computer to another via an RS-232 interface and two modems (one at each end) is normally no problem, since the presence of the modems takes care of the fact that both computers want to transmit data on the same line. When we tossed the modems out of this particular inter¬ face, we were left with two pieces of gear that were both configured as data terminal equip¬ ment; that meant both computers were trying to transmit data over the same line (pin 2) and both were trying to receive over the same line (pin 3). That's like two people talking at each other with neither listening, or two people lis¬ tening to each other when neither is saying any¬ thing*

The most obvious way around the problem is simply to stick the modems back into the equation. That, however, is both abysmally expensive and utterly unnecessary. All that's required is to pull the wires off pins 2 and 3 at one (either one, but only one) of the connec¬ tors and reverse them. Then computer As transmit data on line 2 becomes computer B's receive data on line 3, and the whole problem is resolved.

Of course, computers are not the only pieces of equipment considered to be DTEs. Printers are also likely to be configured as DTEs; so if you have a printer that connects to your computer via an RS-232 interface, you might find it necessary to pull the same trick.

Unfortunately, there are no hard and fast rules determining whether a particular piece of equipment should be configured as DTE or DCE, except that computers are almost always DTEs and modems are always DCEs. Know¬ ing what you now know, however, you should be able to check the manual that comes with the equipment (the list of specifications at the back is frequently a good place to start) for an indication of whether you'll need to reverse the transmit and receive data lines.

Up to this point, our discussion of the RS- 232 interface has been limited to a simple three- wire implementation, which indeed is sufficient for many modems that do not use handshaking protocols. And therein lies the topic of next month's installment, which will also have us looking at the other twenty-two of the RS-232 lines. A

SOftGlk for the IBM Personal Computer December 1983

True or False:

You Can Now Run Apple

Software in Your IBM PC.

l A True. Introducing Quadlink by Quadram. The revolu¬ tionary enhancement board that turns your IBM Personal Computer into an Apple- compatible system.

Quadlink. Simply plug it inside your PC. press a few keys, and instantly run virtually any Apple software package available.

Quadlink greatly enhances your PC’s capabilities.

fci True. Quadlink gives you ' access to the largest software library ever written. Business, educational, and entertain¬ ment packages. Software for any professional or home use. This means your PC can now do more than ever before.

With Quadlink, there’s no diskette reformatting needed.

Cl True again. With Quadlink you’ll never have to worry about "compatibility." Just put your Apple diskette in the PC drive and watch it go. Its that easy. Like having an Apple computer inside

V°ur T’k

QUADLINK “BY QUADRAM

And every Quadlink comes with that traditional Quadram Quality built right in.

Cl Absolutely true.

Quadlink is available only at authorized full-service Quadram dealers.

J True. So visit the Quadram dealer nearest you today and ask to see Quadlink in action. And while you're there ask about our full line of IBM PC enhancements. Including the popular six-function Quadboard!" You'll agree: when it comes to quality engineering and dependable performance, Quadram passes the test.

In more ways than ever before.

quadram rash

CORPORATION k|Wf\

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(4Q4J 923 -6066 t TWX 010 765 4915 (QUADRAM foCRSj

AVAILABLE AT AUTHORIZED FULL SERVICE QUADRAM DEALERS WORLDWIDE

® Copyright 1983 Quadram Corporation All rights reserved

Apple and the Apple logo are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc.

IBM and the IBM logo are registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation,

- u: Dr — : DT	ml At
	•a \»	m		i
“V » » m	§L-.4i		' *■

THE

A .

you are in me- dium-resolution graphics mode on the IBM Personal Com¬ puter, all printing defaults to color 3 in which' ever palette youTe currently using. Color 3 is white in palette 0 and yellow in palette 1. The Basic poke statement offers you a way to cre¬ ate colored text easily by means of the print statement. (See line 1060 in this month's pro¬ gram.)

The print statement in medium-resolution graphics limits you to forty characters per screen line. At times it would be nice to be able to display more than forty columns of text on a line. There isn't any simple poke that permits this, but the Basic get and pat statements do provide a way to display two different sizes of text on the same screens.

Get and Put, To refresh your memory, gef takes a graphics image from the screen and stores it in a Basic array variable. Put can dis¬ play a graphics image from a Basic array varia¬ ble that previously had been saved by means of the get statement. The fact that hi- res graph-

BASIC SOLUTION

by Joe Juhasz

Mixing Text with Put and Get

ics saved by the get statement can be displayed in medium-resolution graphics mode means that it is possible to mix two text sizes on the screen* As a side benefit, the text so mingled appears in an attractive ticker-tape format.

Our program this month is in two parts. The first creates an array containing graphics images of all the characters in all three colors in both forty- and eighty-column sizes. This ar¬ ray is frsaoed to disk for future use.

The example stores ninety-six characters (ASCII 32 through 127) in three colors in large

size and in one color in small size. Thus there needs to be room for 4 * 96, or 384, characters in Save. array!. Each character requires sixteen bytes of storage. Each element in Save. array I is four bytes, so we will need four elements in Save, array! to store each character. The di¬ mension statement at line 1010 gives Save. ar¬ ray! enough room for all the characters.

1010 DIM SAVE . ARRAY (383 , 4 )

Part 2 of the program brings in the previ¬ ously bsave d image and uses it to display text at various sizes and colors.

10 H

15'

20 H

25'

30 J

35 f

40 r

45 '

50'

55'

60'

65'

70

100

110

* * + * * * + k * * ■k * * * * * * * * * * *

*--- The following program will create a BLGADable image * — on disk. This BLOADable imago can be used to display * — text in different colors and sizes in medium nr high * — resolution graphics modes on the IBM Personal Computer.

The program also contains code that can be used to display the text in various sizes and positions.

by: JOSEPH JUHASZ

— * * * — * * +

— * * k

— * * * — * * *

— * * k

— * + * - * * *

* * * ■""" * + *

DEFINT A-Z

'***-- Ask CREATE or USE ---* * * CLEAR: CL5: WIDTH 80

Seven Ware, for the 8087

Friendly — Powerful — Fully Documented — Available NOW

Test 87

Verifies correct installation and performance of BOB? Co-Processor,

Intro 87

Gives you an interactive tour of 8087 capabilities. Compares 8087 to 8088 for speed, precision and range.

MM W O ^ Extends IBM Macro Assembler to include BQ87 instruction set.

iyiclCLflD © m Uses Intel standard mnemonics, fully supported by DOS 2,0 "Debug",

DAnifilAtl^afflAn Explains all B087 functions, with examples and application notes. l/OvlIllldllCllIOIl Usable at any level of experience, fully integrable with IBM Macro Assembler.

Seven Ware software package, including all three programs & documentation $109 ; with 8087 chip, $309

Send check or money order to:

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P.O. Box 1246, Dept. K Redondo Beach, CA 90278 (213) 5434242

VISA/MC Accepted. Dealer inquiries invited, Calif, residents add 6Yz% tax.

Intel, 8087 and 8088 are trademarks of Intel Corporation. 8087 mnemonics used by permission of Intel Corporation, copyright 1981. IBM is a registered trademark of IBM Corporation, SevenWare, Test 87, Intro 87, MacLib 87, SolveWare, and the SolveWare logo are trademarks of SolveWare.

30

SOFtCllk for the IBM. Personal Computer December 1953

Business Communications Software

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Select Text With Math Function

Saleset File

Filing and Ulord Processing in One Outstanding Package!

SRLESET is just uuhat its name implies-a set of integrated programs designed to make your sales efforts more efficient.

FOR THE IBM AND COMPATIBLE PERSONAL COMPUTERS

SRLESET contains three ports: o filing system, a revolutionary word processor, and a printing program that can Insert file information anywhere within a text.

Cut uour office work in half.

the real benefit of 5RL£5€T is that it al lotus you to spend more time selling. By swiftly integrating your customer file with a powerful word processor, you con produce personal¬ ized form letters in less than o minute. Vou can contact new prospects, stay in touch with existing accounts, or prepare contracts and proposals. SRl€5€T will

even calculate bids and add up your improved sales figures!

Speed and Simplicity,

It's frustrating to spend lots of your valuable time and concentration learning o new software program. SflL€S€T Is easy, cosy, easy to and incredibly fast to operate, of your office work can be done chasing the night's cobwebs with morning cup of coffee. The rest

day can then be spent pursuing the leads you've created with your sales letters.

No Competition.

5RL6S6T is new. In the avalanche of software products on the market today, it's easy to get confused by all the promises. Remember that your idea of simplicity and function is pro¬ bably very different than that of the overage computer programmer.

Nothing on the market today can match the power, speed, and simplicity

of sflieser;

Suggested retail pricer $£95.00

MLE^Ei

by ^Otl3cL

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'SALESEf and Ifie suffix are trademarks of SOFTSET, Inc * 19B3 SOFTSET, Inc

Stroke The Dvorak

When you use Ihe right tool for the job , w is satisfying. You and tl work together You get the job done right, and you feel a sense of achievement.

But the wrong tool works against you. You manage to get things done, but it's uphill all the way. You're left frustrated and tired.

Today's standard key layout is deliberately hard to use. Devised to keep 19lhcentury mechanical machines from jamming, it constantly works against you.

The result — fatigue and errors.

What s the right tool for com¬ municating with your PC? The Dvorak keyboard. Its natural key layout works with you, giving you the feel of ease and comfort. Your personal productivity rises.

SuieStroke is the total Dvorak key¬ board solution for the IBM PC. More than a key-mapper, SureSlroke powers you as you leam the Dvorak layout. Harnesses your unconscious resources. Gets you up to speed fast.

Get SureSlroke. And stroke the Dvorak — today.

SureSlroke includes

* key-mapping software *

* press-on letters for keys *

* audio cassette *

* learning software *

* complete manual *

SureSlroke for IBM PC with PGDOS, £49.95 U.S. plus $3,95 shipping. Send your name, address. Visa or Mastercard number and expiration date tor compary check) to: Seasoned Systems, Inc,

Box 3036

Chapel Hill, NC 27515 or call 800/334-5531, toll-free.

In NC. 919/967-5818

SEASONED SB SYSTEMS

BM! is a irademni+t yf [nlemaiionaj Business Machines Cnrp

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PRINT "ENTER: 1 - To create and save bload image 'PCXTEXTB5V' on default drive r PRINT ' 2 - To load & test bload image"

PRINT ' 3 - To exit to B ASICA '

INPUT ANSS

IF ANS5< MV OR ANSS ) * *3" THEN BEEP: GOTO 140 ON VAUANSS) GOSUB 1000,2000,200 GOTO 100 CLS: END

' * * * — create and save BLOAD image — * * *

DIM SAVE. ARRAY I (383,4) '“Dimension array to be bsaved

DIM ARRAY! (4) '-Dimension array to be used for GETs

'* *— first get all LARGE (medium res) characters — * it

SCREEN 1,0 '-Place into medium res graphics mode

FOR KOLOR = 1 TO 3 -Cycle thru the 3 colors

DEF SEG: POKE &H4E,KOLQR -Set PRINTs to use KOLOR CLS '-Start with a CL 5

' * *— Print and save all characters from ASCII 32 to 127 — * *

FOR 1=32 TO 127

LPOS = (KOLOR — 1 ) * 96 +■ (1-32)

LOCATE 1,1: PRINT CHRS(l)

GET (0,0) ^ (7, 7), ARRAY!

FOR J = 0 TO 4

SAVE. ARRAY HLPGSJ) = ARRAYRJ)

NEXTJ NEXT I

* - - - - - - -

NEXT KOLOR

' * ft—————— - - — - -

'-Calculate offset Into array '-Print character in top left corner '-GET character into ARRAY! '“Save into SAVE. ARRAY!

'** * — Now get SMALL (high res) characters — * * *

SCREEN 2,0 '-Place into high res graphics mode

CLS '-Start with a CLS

'* *— Print and save all characters from ASCII 32 to 127 — * *

FOR 1 = 32 TO 127

LPOS = (KOLOR — 1)* 96 + (1-32)

LOCATE 1,1: PRINT CHRS(l)

GET (0,0) — (7,7), ARRAY!

FOR J = 0 TO 4

5AVE.ARRAYHI. PGS, j) — ARRAY! (I)

NEXTJ NEXT 1

-Calculate offset into array '“Print character in top left corner -GET character into ARRAY! '-Save into SAVE. ARRAY!

-**

* * * — Save images to diskette «“* * *

DEF SEG: ADR! = VARPTR( SAVE. ARRAY! (0,0)) ' Get address DEF SEG: BSAVE *PCxtext.b&v',ADR!,7693 '-Save image RETURN

'* * *— Bload image and test results—* * *

DIM ARRAY! (4), SAVE.ARRAYI(383,4)

DEF SEG: ADR! = VaRPTR( SAVE. ARRAY !fO,0)J DEF SEC: BLOAD *FCxtext.bsv',ADRJ

SCREEN 1,0 '-Place in medium res

' * * * — Test results — * * *

CLS

LOCATE 1,1: PRINT ''ENTER: character string to display r INPUT ANSS

FOR KOLOR = 1 TO 4 -Show in 3 colors and tiny

X = 0: Y = 100+ (KOLOR *10) '-Set X,Y location to display

FOR 1 = 1 TO LEN(ANSS) '-Cycle thru each letter of string

ICHARS = MIDS( ANSS, 1,1 ) ' Get the next letter

ICHAR= ASC(ICHARS) '-Get ascii value

LPOS = (KOLOR— 1) *96 + (ICHAR— 32) '-Determine position in array FOR J — 0 TO 4 '-Put it into a single dimension array

ARRAY!(J) = SAVE. ARRAY! (I.POS J)

NEXT J

PUT (X,Y),ARRAY!,PSET '-Put the character on the screen

IF KOLOR ( >4 THEN X = X + 8 ELSE X = X + 4 '-Increment X for next character NEXT 1 '-Next character

NEXT KOLOR '-Next kolor

LOCATE 24,1; PRINT Press any key to continue IF INKEYS - " GOTO 2216 RETURN

32

softolk for the IBM Personal Computer December 1983

LIFETREE SOFTWARE

creators of

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Everything's

Up

ProKey

Nestled among the disparate melange of pizza joints, tiny restaurants, and fraternity houses surrounding the University of

Washington is a grand old six-floor Victorian apartment building called the Wilsonian. Its el¬ egance faded though not vanquished by the years, the building looks as displaced as a proper English gent in a trendy disco.

While the Wilsonian might seem out of place in a university district, David Rose, co¬ founder (with his wife Eileen) of RoseSoft, seems perfectly at home here. Indeed, with his reserved, polite manner, perfectly groomed good looks, and flawless attire— his tie is still snug around his neck, although it is quite late on a Friday— young Rose would look quite correct sipping Earl Grey in a British tearoom.

But David is neither British nor terribly young, and RoseSoft— the company Eileen and David run from two apartments on the top floor of this unlikely building— is anything but staid. In just over a year, RoseSoft has grown from nothing to a mill ion- dollar company with a staff of ten, and the growth curve isn't even tapering off yet. The firm's phenomenal growth has come on the strength of just one product, ProKey, a piece of software so inno¬ vative and useful that it took the pc market by storm when it was introduced in November 1982,

Such growth didn't occur by accident. While some companies are the lucky babies of chance encounters, it's clear from what the Roses say that RoseSoft was a thoroughly planned child.

The planning behind RoseSoft actually goes back to 1978, when David Rose decided it was time to move on from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the prestigious research institution associated with Cal Tech. Save for a couple of

softolk

minor interruptions, Rose worked at JPL from 1962 to 1978. If you've ever wondered about the people who perform the incredibly com¬ plex calculations required to put a spacecraft into orbit, wonder no longer: David Rose was once one of them. From orbit determination. Rose moved into telecommunications, which turned out to be a problem so big that the pro¬ grams couldn't fit into the low-powered com¬ puters of that era.

'They needed somebody who understood the innards of the computer," Rose explains, "so that parts of a large program could be swapped in and out/' In other words, Rose started working with operating systems*

'That was about the time operating systems were being invented," Rose says, "and I got drafted to do work on that. I became sort of a de facto specialist in operating systems. From that followed a very natural progression to working on the interface between man and the computer/'.

It's impossible to talk to either of the Roses for very long without that word "interface" coming up; it's a key concept in almost all of the work David Rose has done in his extensive career in computers.

Rose left JPL briefly to work in manage¬ ment at a custom software house, but he re¬ turned in 1972, this time as a manager. First he supervised the group doing the trajectory pro¬ gramming for Viking, then he managed the mission control software project for Voyager (which, incidentally, is still operational).

By this time it was clear that Rose's princi¬ pal interest was in the interface between people and computers. As a manager. Rose had a highly practical motivation to tackle that par¬ ticular subject* As he explains it, "By then I had a whole lot of people working for me, on a whole lot of different computers and projects, ranging from technical people whose comput¬ ers were digesting navigational problems to managers using computers to solve work-flow problems* To get the most out of my people, the efficiency of people using computers be¬ came my full-time occupation for the last few years I was at JPL. And of course the element

RoseSoft co founders Eileen Rose (facing page) and David Rose (right) have built a million- dollar company on the success o/ProKey,

by Kevin Goldstein

3^

for the IB hi Personal Computer December J9S3

that's absolutely critical to that efficiency is the in an -machine interface/'

Toward the end of his time at JFL, Rose notes, a lot of work was being done on the problem of interfacing microcomputers with mainframes. As part of the man-machine in¬ terface, he found himself working extensively with both computer languages and graphics, two areas that have remained his abiding interests.

But a big change was in store for Rose; He was about to enter into that most sacred of American institutions, coupledomhood. (Mar¬ riage came two years later.) The lady's name was Eileen, and her almost regal bearing and equally reserved manner make her seem a per¬ fect match for David. He met her at Cal Tech, where she was doing research in neurophysi¬ ology.

Eileen picks up the history:

"I was getting tired of academics, and David was getting tired of the bureaucracy at JPL, so we decided to look for a career change," she says. They did the only natural thing for any couple contemplating a major life-shaking career change; They went skiing in Utah.

"It took a long time to decide what to do," David says, which is no surprise, considering all the skiing they had to do. In any case, there followed a rather checkered series of moves, which saw the couple first working at the Uni¬ versity of Utah — he networking microcompu¬ ters, she doing research with artificial organs — touring Mexico, then checking out the Philippines as a prelude to accepting an offer from the Peace Corps,

RoseSoft is guided by (left to right) Eileen Rose, president, Barham Birds*?//, director of marketing, and David Rose , manager of product planning.

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soft Oik for the IBM Personal Computer December 1933

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The target machine had to have a little memory to bum.

"But the tropics were hot;" David notes, almost as if he had thought they could go skiing around the equator. Which probably explains why, after a thorough search of all likely cities, the Roses decided to settle in Seattle, with its mean temperature of about 55 degrees. Like almost every other important thing the Roses did, the move was care¬ fully planned,

"We knew by then that we wanted to start a business and that it would probably have something to do with personal computers/' Rose explains. "So we wanted to find a good city to live in, and it had to have a good community for computers.

We had certain criteria that a city had to meet, and we also had to like it, of course. Seattle was the first city that filled the bill. Or maybe," he concedes, "it was just the last place we looked, and we were tired of traveling." In any case, that's how RoseSoft ended up in Seattle,

From August 1981, when they

arrived in Seattle, until January 1982, the couple was essentially look' ing for a way to do business in that city. Both were tired of large institu¬ tions and bureaucracy, so while it was only logical to use their long professional careers in computers and management as the underpin¬ ning for a new venture, it was probably just as logical that the comput¬ ers would have to be as small and personal as possible — personal computers, of course. Various business ideas were considered and dis¬ carded; likewise, a search for business partners came to naught.

"We derided to just go it alone," David recalls. The two formed ProSoft, Interchanging the name to RoseSoft because of a conflict with an existing company. The "Pro" in the name was meant to signify both their extensive professional experience and their dedication to offering products of professional quality.

A big company approach to small-computer software is not the only thing that makes RoseSoft stand out among the legions of high- tech companies surrounding the personal computer. RoseSoft is also one of the few microcomputer companies headed by a woman. When ProSoft/ RoseSoft was incorporated, Eileen was named president, David manager of product planning. Though they decide together the direction the company will take, daily management of the company is handled by Eileen.

But back to the story. The pc had just come out. While evaluating what specific area to go into, the Roses decided their target machine would be the newly introduced IBM pc. That decision came at Christ¬ mas 1981; the Roses went out and bought their first pc almost the same day.

But why the pc?

"Not," says David, "because it was obvious that the pc was headed toward being an all-time bestseller." According to David, the problem with all personal computers up to that point was lack of memory. With its sixteen-bit architecture allowing for a half-megabyte or more of memory, "the pc looked to be the first personal computer with the power to support the kind of programs 1 wanted to do,"

The kind of programs he wanted to do were co-processes— that is, programs that, although small, had to be constantly resident in mem¬ ory in order to carry out their job of expediting man-machine commu¬ nications. And while the programs themselves might be rather compact, the fact that they remained in memory meant that any ma¬ chine at which they were targeted had to have at least a little memory to bum.

"Memory is the most precious resource,'1 David states softly, recall¬ ing one of the time-honored laws of computer science: Programs ex¬ pand to fill the space available to them.

At this point in their history, the Roses had a city, a company, a computer on which to run their product. . but no product. Two other

goals still had to be met: First, David had to learn the machine, inside and out; and second, because of the scarcity at that time of program¬ ming tools for the pc, he needed to write some of his own development tools. There followed, in quick succession, an editor, a macro proces¬ sor, and a print spooler

"These were not products," David is careful to explain, "nor were they intended to be. They were first learning tools, and then develop¬ ment tools," With the exception of some time- and space -critical code written in assembler, these initial exercises were programmed in Pascal.

With these background projects out of the way, the Roses started getting serious about evaluating projects. As you'd expect from any company owned by two people as meticulous as David and Eileen Rose, RoseSoft's first product was very well planned— far more the product of perspiration than of inspiration (although the latter seems to have played a supporting role, at least).

Eileen, the apparent marketing maven for RoseSoft, takes over and reels off criteria that the company's first product had to meet: It had to be innovative, easy to use, and useful over a wide range of applica¬ tions: and the development costs had to be reasonable. A macro proc¬ essor fit the bill.

"Macros are a form of computer language," David says, "and were one of the things I had worked on extensively for NASA, So it was only natural that a macro processor would be one of the ideas that were put up against those criteria,"

The macro processor won out over the other candidates, and Pro- Key was born. In the personal computer market, it was an exception¬ ally innovative idea. Nothing like it was then available for any personal computer. Which was both good and bad.

"Of all of our criteria," Eileen says, "the innovative one was proba¬ bly misguided." She explains that the "problem" with ProKey is that,

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SOftOlk for the IBM Personal Computer December 2985

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because it is so unique, it requires a major educational effort, RoseSoft ran into problems on this score in the same way VisiCorp ran into problems when it first brought out VisiCalc: People were saying, "What's a spreadsheet?" Eileen observes that the educational job is pro¬ portionately bigger for a small company than for, say a Microsoft, The problem was exacerbated by the fact that ProKey is frequently billed as a keyboard enhancer. While that is certainly one of its func¬ tions, such a name fails totally to take into account its much more pow¬ erful capabilities as a macro processor, "Software enhancer" is the descriptive name that Eileen pre¬ fers, a term that is indeed more in¬ dicative of what the Roses see as ProKeys central purpose; making other software easier to use,

David Rose started writing Pro- Key itself only six months after his Krst look at a pc, in June 1982, Ac¬ cording to Eileen, it didn't take long to complete, A prototype version was completed in July and a final version in August. Some informal market testing took place at the Seattle IBM users' group in August, "Alan Buyd started the pc users' group here in Seattle," David ex¬ plains, "and one of the most heartening things happened when we showed it at one of their meetings: Out of a group of thirty people, twenty bought it on the spot." Since even then it was priced at fifty dollars, the Roses considered that a very good omen.

Although the unique nature of ProKey tended to stall early sales to unsophisticated users— they had to leam what software was, before they could think about enhancing it— it helped immensely when it came to publicizing the product. All the major pc magazines ran major reviews of ProKey a fact that caused sales to jump right from the be¬ ginning. But Eileen feels that in general ProKey sales will tend to lag behind pc sales, since new users need to find their way around the ma¬ chine before they're likely to see the need for ProKey.

Not that the Roses are resting on laurels, ProKey 3,0, the newest version, should be out by the time you read this article, and if you ply David with a few dark beers you might even get a whiff of some excit¬ ing and entirely new products,

ProKey 3.0 , for example, has a lot of new features. One of those new features allows you to redefine virtually any key in any shift state, effectively allowing you to scramble your keys around as desired; Rose suggests that you might even want to move your key tops around. If you're wondering if this will allow you to put the left shift key back where it belongs— yes, you can; ProKey 3.0 will let you swap it with the backslash or, for that matter, any other key. As you would expect from a company that specializes in the man-machine interface, repro¬ gramming the keyboard is easy: The screen simultaneously displays before and after pictures of the keyboard, so you know where you are. The newest version of ProKey also has the ability to redefine a key without losing the definition assigned to it by a program. For example, in Lotus's J-2-3 you would be able to move the cursor functions from the keypad to the pc's function keys and still easily access origi¬

nal function key assignments.

Another new feature of ProKey 3.0, one that will be of special value to handicapped persons, is optional sequential shift: Hit the shift key release it, and the next key you hit will be shifted. Sequential shift works with any of the shift keys, including control and alt, and the sequential shifts are cumulative; hitting and releasing control, then alt, and then delete will reset the pc, for example.

Since the goal the Roses have set for their company is the develop¬ ment uf products that ease the man-machine interlace, it s not surpris¬ ing that ProKey 3.0 includes an improved user interface. ''We found that the cursor status display that we were using, though well liked by experienced users, was too terse for beginners/' he explains. "So 3,0,has

a status window that tells you what's going on all the time; it can of course, be turned off." And ProKey 3.0 also allows bigger buffers and variable buffer size, since a few zealous users started overflowing the apparently not so ample 4 K buffer a vail able with earlier versions. With 3,0 they can ooze all the way out to 64K.

DOS 2.0 includes what is known as the ANSI escape sequence, which allows, to a limited degree, some reprogramming of the key¬ board. Docs David feel this will affect sales of ProKcyl

"DOS doesn't actually offer macros," he responds. "All it really lets you do is string expansions, It doesn't offer variable fields, and it doesn't have the ability tor one string to refer to anolher. The capabili¬ ties are really quite elementary."

David thinks that while some users might say, "Why should I spend a hundred dollars when I already have ANSI?", ProKey \ s many extra capabilities will probably hold that segment of the market to well be¬ low 10 percent. He bases his estimate on the fact that, while newer and less sophisticated users might initially opt for ANSI over ProKey , "new users don't stay new users very long/' That supports exactly the same point Eileen made earlier: It may take a while for a new user to learn the machine, but after he does he's liable to want to mnve up to ProKey.

And what of those new products that came up while the beer was going down? All that can be said is that they will all be oriented toward improving the user interface, since that is where David believes the greatest progress is taking place. You can pretty much figure out for yourself what areas RoseSoft's products might cover: voice recogni¬ tion. telecommunications, graphics. There are mice running all over the RoseSofl digs. Think of products that extend the basic idea ol Pro- Key to other areas and you're liable to know RoseSnft s next product before the Roses do. a

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* Sort ascending or descending on up to nine fields

* Ten input files may be sorted or merged at one time » Handles variable and fixed length records

* Supports all common data types

* Fiiestze limited only by your disk space

* Dynamically allocates memory and work tiles

* Output file can be full records, keys or pointers

* Can be run from Keyboard or as a batch command

* Can be called as a BASIC subroutine

* Easy to use. includes on-line help feature

* Full documentation — sized like your PC manuals

* $75 —VISA, M/C, Check, Money Order, COD, or PO

Ouantity discounts available

To order or to receive additional information write or call

OPT-TECH DATA PROCESSING

P O. Box 2167 Humble. Texas 77347 (713) 454-7428

Requires PC-DOS. 48K and One Disk Drive

"New products. . . will be oriented toward improving user interface."

SOftolk for the IBM Personal Computer December 1933

43

FIRST CLASS SOFTWARE

I I

THAT TAKES YOU SOMEWHERE AND GIVES YOU SOMETHING SPECIAL

Wf *2.0

AGENT 2.0 A crisis, real or imagined? A spy, ours or theirs? A file, fact or fiction? You must decide.

bU

THOTH

Action List Data Base Manager

THOTH Once advisor to the gods of Ancient Egypt. Now yours. The action list data base manager.

C TOOLS

C TOOLS A collection of our most useful C routines. Add flavor to your C programming and save time too.

Portfolio Manager

BLU CHIP PORTFOLIO MANAGER Your broker on a disk. Tracks your portfolio. A data base for investors-with spread¬ sheet capabilities.

M Si

EVQ

EDO Think straight but think fast. The game of many strategies where no strategy is sacred.

ST.-

mem*

LYTB't

WALL

ST. HIPPOLYTE’S WALL The challenge of the wall. Colorful. Ever- changing. Complex. Will you survive?

CORPORATION

Ask for Xor products at fine Computer Stores .

5421 OPPORTUNITY COURT

MINNETONKA, MN 55343 (61 2 ) 938-0005

by John Sacha

BM DELIVERS !

After Prolonged Labor, Junior

Arrives ; Won 't Be Home 'til January

IT

- •

ng flv

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10:00 a.m., November 1, at the IBM Corporate Gallery of Science in New York City. People are milling around and waiting. Rumor has it that an Associated Press reporter is already inside. Around the corner, a television crew passes the time. A photographer and some re¬ porters chat. And wait. At the New York Stock Exchange, inves¬ tors and speculators are waiting.

At 47th Street Photo, not far from the IBM Gallery of Science, shelves are empty. They too await. Finally IBM opens the door and takes off the shell.

50 ft tl Ik for the IBM Personal Computer December J9&3

THE NEW ARRIVAL

The Peanut, officially monikered the' IBM PC Junior, is here at last. But don't rush out to buy one. Although PCjrs will be on display in stores by December, they won't be sold until the "first quarter of '84."

IBM announced two versions of the PCjr: an entry model priced at $669 and an expanded model to go for $1,269. You can upgrade the entry model to the expanded model by adding a disk drive ($480) and a 64K memory and display expansion board ($140).

The entry model is very similar to the cassette version of the PC introduced by IBM two years ago. While IBM never sold cables for the cassette port on the PC, they'll sell them for the PCjr. Clearly IBM plans to support the home (nondisk) market for the PCjr. To this end, IBM has added slots for two plug-in ROM cartridges similar to the car¬ tridges found on such game computers as the Commodore VIC-20.The PCjr looks to be a very good game computer, in addition to being a junior PC.

Like the PC, the PCjr has an 8088 microprocessor, 64K of RAM, and Cassette Basic in ROM. The Expanded PCjr sports 128K of RAM and a single half-height, 5 1 /4-inch double-sided floppy disk drive.

IBM PCjr COMPONENTS

System Unit

Size: width 13.9 inches, depth 11.4 inches, height 3.8 inches; weight 9 lbs. (with disk drive), 6 lbs. (without disk drive).

Power: 33 watts at 120 VAC, 60Hz; external transformer, weight 2 lbs, 13 oz.

Noise: very quiet (no fan).

Processor: Intel 8088, 4.77 MHz.

Memory: 64K ROM, containing Cassette Basic, ROM BIOS, and Diagnostics; 64K RAM (entry model), 128K RAM (expanded model).

Connections : External sound, RS-232C serial port (needs adapter cable), cassette recorder (needs cables), internal modem (optional), light pen, RGB monitor (needs adapter cable), composite monitor, RF modulator (external, optional), keyboard (optional cable), two joysticks, expansion bus.

Keyboard

Length: 13.45 inches, depth 6.61 inches, height 1.02 inches; weight 25 oz. with batteries; 62 keys, with key combinations for all IBM PC keys; infrared link, 20 feet line-of-sight, or 6-foot cord.

Operating System

PC-DOS 2.1, same as PC-DOS 2.0, but with additions for new hardware on PCjr.

Disk Drive

5 1/4-inch, half-height, double-sided, floppy disk, compatible with IBM PC.

Display Modes

Entry model: 160 by 200 dots, 16 colors; 320 by 200 dots, 4 colors; 40 by 25 text.

Expanded model: entry-level display modes plus 320 by 200 dots, 16 colors, and 80 by 25 text.

Sound

With external amplifier or TV — 3 independent voices plus white noise, 16 volume levels (28 dB range on each); internal pc-compati- ble speaker (one voice).

Warranty 12 months.

Running under PC-DOS 2.1, the Expanded PCjr uses exactly the same disks as the PC and PC-XT. This means many software packages de¬ signed for the PC will run without change on the Expanded PCjr. Al¬ ready such software packages as the Multiplan spreadsheet and the PFS:File database run on the PCjr.

To the PC, the PCjr adds a number of new features, some transpar¬ ent to application programs, others not.

The Display. An enhanced color /graphics adapter is built in to the system board. The entry model can use the forty-column text and 320- by-200-dot graphics modes (but not the eighty-column text mode) found on the PC, as well as a new 160-by-200-dot sixteen-color mode. For eighty-column text you'll need to buy the 64K memory and display expansion board, which also adds other new features to the graphics display. The Expanded PCjr has all the display modes found on the PC plus three additional graphics modes: 160 by 200 dots, sixteen colors; 320 by 200 dots, sixteen colors (1); and 640 by 200 dots, four colors.

These colors are not fixed. The PCjr contains a color map that se¬ lects any of sixteen colors for the display. That means that in the four- color mode you can pick any four of sixteen; you can even have all four colors be the same. Just program the color map for the combination of your choice. The PC was constrained to a pair of fixed four-color pa¬ lettes, and the colors for these palettes weren't well chosen. There's no such limitation on the Junior.

On the PC, information for the graphics display is stored in 16K of memory beginning at location B8000 hex. This is and isn't the case on the PCjr. Many of the new display modes use 32K of memory, yet the PCjr has no memory actually residing at B8000. Instead IBM maps the Junior's display memory into its system memory. Details on this feature at the time of the announcement were scant, yet enticing.

It seems that display memory can begin at any 16K boundary of the 64K or 128K system memory. This means graphics programs can use more than one page of screen memory at a time, although doing so would reduce the amount of memory available for programs. For car¬ tridge games, such consumption of system memory would cause no difficulty, because the program would be stored in the cartridge ROM, not in system memory. But for large DOS programs, this mapping of display memory into system RAM could pose problems. We'll know more in December, when IBM is scheduled to release the Junior's Tech¬ nical Reference manual.

The PCjr won't be sold with a video display, but you can use the IBM Color Display — or any other RGB monitor — with the help of an optional adapter cord. Other cords are available for a composite moni¬ tor — most black-and-white monitors are composite monitors— or for an RF modulator. The modulator, which sends the display and sound to a normal television, is also available from IBM.

Look Ma, No Cords. Junior's keyboard has absolutely no cords. In fact, there are no physical connections between the PCjr and its key¬ board. How's that? The keyboard uses an infrared link. It sends out bursts of infrared light to the system box. The keyboard can be up to twenty feet away from the PCjr and still work, provided the PCjr can "see" the keyboard. If you have more than one PCjr in a room, each machine will need an optional six-foot keyboard cable. Batteries in the keyboard should last for several months of normal use.

PCjr's keyboard is somewhat smaller than the PC's and seems more like a toy than a tool. Yet, although the layout of the keyboard is very different, the same keys are there. Some of the keys, like scroll lock, are well hidden. Below the keys are small green labels with such words as Scroll Lock and Break. To "reach" these keys, you must hold down a key on the right side of the keyboard that acts as a function shift, much like the alt key on a PC. Despite these differences in the keyboard, the PCjr still reads the same scan codes. Even software that works directly with the hardware, as many games do, will find no difference between the PC's keyboard and PCjr's.

Astounding Sound! The PCjr has two separate sources of sound.

46

softcilk

Hiding under the power supply is a very small speaker that mimics the PCs speaker; this will make any program designed to use the PCs sound feel right at home. Then there's the PCjr's advanced sound system *

The advanced sound system pipes its music and sound effects to the outside world through the speaker on a television set (with the help of an RF modulator) or to an external amplifier, such as the one on your stereo. And with three independent voices and noise, you can make some very rich sound effects. Each of the four sounds (three pitched voices and the white noise source) has a sixteen-level (twenty-eight- decibel) electronic volume control. This sound generator will be very popular with game designers and players.

Games on display at the IBM Gallery of Science were barely hinting at the possibilities. One program played the William Tell Overture with three voices — very charming. Another program produced realistic- sounding explosions; you can't do that with a stock PC*

Joysticks* The requisite adapter for two joysticks with buttons is built into the system board of the PQr. And the optional joystick, sold by IBM, looks suspiciously like the Kraft joystick, even down to the switch to turn the spring tension on and off. This should be a very popular addition for game players.

ROM Cartridges* Several games are already available for the PC jr in ROM form. These ROM cartridges can contain programs up to 64K or, with two cartridges, 123K in length. This is enough room for some very sophisticated programs.

One ROM cartridge extends the power of Basic in the entry model PCjr. Some of the programs announced as available for the PCjr re¬ quire both this Basic cartridge and DOS 2.1, so it seems that cartridges can be used with DOS programs. What does this mean? It means that cartridges may soon appear for programs such as VisiCalc or Word¬ Star: the cartridge format would leave the 128K of system RAM free for user data.

The sky's the limit when outside vendors bring their imagination to bear on the PCjr. But what about expansion in other places?

Bringing Up junior. At the announcement, IBM was very quiet about the expandability of the PC/r, but expandable it is. Inside the Juniors compact system unit are three sockets for expansion boards (see photos, page 48). Unfortunately these three are spoken for already

The leftmost socket is for the aforementioned 64K memory and dis¬ play expansion board. Although the socket is spoken for, just wait for Quadram and other board companies to get their hands on the PQr, They may find ways to stuff additional functions onto this board. There's certainly room for more functions.

To its right is another socket reserved for a 300-baud modem built by "an unspecified manufacturer/' IBM was proudly showing the inte¬ rior of a PC/requipped with the modem board, and small, white fetters on the side of this board read "Novation, " which, coincidentally, is the name of a well-known modem manufacturer.

Finally the rightmost slot contains the disk controller found in the Expanded PCjr.

for the IBM Personal Computer December 1933

Ttic views of the inner peanut; the entry model , left, and the expanded model . Note the three s/ofs in the entry model (they're obscured by the disk

controller in the extended model). The Junior uses an external tmnsfurmcr, so there's no bulky pouter supply inside; there's also no fan and no 8087 socket.

Is that it? Nope, If you look carefully at the inside view of the Entry PC frt as shown in the photos on this page, you'll see a connector on the right side, near the cartridge slots. The right side of the Junior has a removable plastic panel where modules can be attached . These mod¬ ules are small, metal boxes that plug into the side. At present, IBM offers only the parallel printer adapter. But who knows wbat else may become available? Moreover, there s a second connector on the right side of the parallel printer module, which suggests the possibility of piggybacked add-ons.

Expect board manufacturers to add more power to the PCjr by building add-on modules. Since all the same signals appear on the mod¬ ule connector, plus a few more, there won t be anything holding back board manufacturers. The PC/r really is expandable, What's the limit? The power supply. But, of course, modules could have their own power supplies. The next several months will be very interesting. Who will be the first to offer a multifunction card for the Junior?

Odds and Ends. Also included in the PC/r is a serial port with some rather odd specs. The serial port in the PC can send and receive at rates up to 9600 baud. Don t laugh now— the PCjr can send at 4600 baud and receive at 1200. No, that's not a misprint. They saved some cir¬ cuitry by building a serial port with those specs. The send rate of 4800 baud is convenient for a serial printer, while 1200 baud is enough for a fast modem. After all, most people can't read fast enough to keep up with 1200 baud (120 characters per second, or about fifteen hundred words per minute). This serial port acts as the PC/Vs Com2.

With all the improvements and changes in the PC/r, IBM has strived to keep hardware compatibility with a stock PC. In the case of the keyboard, the signals are very different. Infrared signals travel from the keyboard to the system box where they send an interrupt to the 8068 s nonmaskable interrupt line. Each keypress on the PCjr sends a short series of pulses (up to eleven) to the 8088, and each of these pulses interrupts the 8086 The new ROM BIOS routines decode these pulse groups and convert them into the proper scan code. Then, to provide compatibility with the PC, the Junior puts the scan code into an I/O port located at 60 hex, so any software written to read the PC hardware directly will function identically on the PC/r, This should give you an idea of the lengths IBM ivent to just to preserve compatibility.

How is the PCjr junior to the PC? Mainly in terms of expandability and keyboard. The Junior lacks the PC's expansion slots, and although it has as much room for expansion through the expansion modules, these modules will be expensive, because they must be in metal cases. And the keyboard, on first appearance, seems inadequate for profes¬ sional use. Well know for sure If that's the case after we've put some mileage on one.

Aside from these two complaints, the PC/r looks very strong. As long as you don't mind giving up the sharp- charactered monochrome display, the PCjr should prove a very satisfactory home machine. Bet¬ ter than an Apple II or lie. The Apple II is the best computer for game lovers. That should change as game writers begin to tap the added power of a PCjr.

And if you just want to take some work home. Junior has the PC's disk format and operating system. It suffers merely from stunted mem¬ ory growth— and that only for now, ±

48

soFtalk

by Terry Tinsley Datz and T Lloyd Datz

eachText 5000 , PeachTrees inte¬ grated software package, sounds too good to be true: a combination word proc¬ essor, spelling checker, on-line thesaurus, mail¬ ing list program, and spreadsheet for less than $400, What's the catch, you ask?

The catch is that, taken individually, none of these programs shines bright. In fact, if you do full-time word processing, Poach Text will probably disappoint you with the way it han¬ dles text entry and on-screen formatting. But, if you're looking for an inexpensive means of using the pc for a variety of applications, you'll find that PeachText 5000 can do just about eve¬ rything but pay your bills — and for that you can add one of Peachtree's accounting programs.

Overall Design. PeachText 5000 belongs to Peachtree's Office Productivity Scries, a group of programs that can share data. In addition to the five programs that come with Peach Text 5000 , you can add a telecommunications pack¬ age, a scheduling program, and a project man¬ agement system as options. As a bonus, for only $10 PeachText 5000 customers can pur¬ chase Peachtree's Access Pakt a program that links the Productivity Series to Peachtree's ac- c oun t ing p ack a ges .

The word processing program— logically enough, called PeachText^ is PeachText 5000 s core, (Or, should we say, the pit?) You can gain access to the thesaurus directly from Peach- Text's editor, while you select the spelling checker, list manager, and spreadsheet from the program's main menu. Unless you have a hard disk, switching between programs usu¬ ally requires swapping disks, since the pro¬ grams are supplied on separate floppies.

PeachText Word Processor. PeachText is a spin-off of Magic Wand, one of the original word processors written for the CP/M operat¬ ing system. When Peachtree modified Peach¬ Text for the IBM, they created two versions. One was redesigned specifically for the pc and is now sold under the IBM logo. The second version, the one included with Peach Text 5000, differs only slightly, mainly because its in¬

PeachText 5000

tended to work with some of the pc look- alikes. As a result, it lacks IBM-spetifics like the handy screen indicators that tell you when you've engaged the caps lock or num lock key and it doesn't support the IBM dot-matrix printer's expanded character fonts. Otherwise, the two versions differ only in that the one dis¬ tributed by IBM has flashier screens and sells for considerably more.

Text Entry and Editing, When you enter the editing mode, the program shows a status screen that lists the name of the file you're edit¬ ing, the amount of memory available (ex¬ pressed both in total characters and as a percentage of memory used), the document type (text or program), current tab settings, and the line width of the screen display. You then press return to get to the text entry screen.

The text entry screen isn't just unclut¬ tered — it s completely bare, without even the customary ruler or status line to guide you. Navigating through your document without knowing the page, line, or column position of the cursor can be a challenge— like sailing across the Atlantic without a sextant.

Controlling the cursor isn't much easier. Not only are your options limited, but, other than the arrow keys (which perform as you'd expect), the key choices don't make sense. The page up, page down, and end keys aren't used at all, while the home key does triple duty, tak¬ ing you to the beginning of the current line with the first press, and back and forth be¬ tween the top and bottom of the screen with succeeding presses. Control-T and control- B take you to the beginning and end of the docu¬ ment, and FI and F2 control vertical scrolling by line and by the screen. Unfortunately, that's all there is. Moving by word, sentence, or par¬ agraph, not to mention jumping to a specific page number, just isn't possible. Of course, since page numbers aren't displayed, jumping to a specific page would be impossible anyway.

You insert material in two ways. Press the insert key to insert just a few characters: every¬ thing in front of the cursor pushes ahead as you enter text. Or, to insert large blocks, hit F8 and the text splits at the point of the cursor,

leaving one line displayed at the bottom of the screen for continuity. After you've finished in¬ serting, hit F6 again to dose the gap. Unfortu¬ nately, when you use the insert key you get no on-screen reminder that you're in insert mode. To make things worse, hitting any other func¬ tion key (such as control, backspace, or tab) cancels insertion and puts you back in over- strike mode. If you're not careful, you'll wind up typing over valuable text.

Logically, PeachText uses the delete key to erase the character under the cursor and the backspace key to delete the character to the left. But, not so logically, when you use the backspace key to remove several words, you're stopped at the left margin . This makes it impossible to back up to the line above to con¬ tinue deleting. And, stranger still, you can't use the delete key to remove a carriage return. In fact, the only way to get rid of an unwanted return is with the line delete command.

The F4 key deletes by word, and F9 deletes from the cursor position to the end of the line. As a safety measure, however, you have to press F9 twice before anything happens. The program doesn't highlight the words to be de¬ leted nor does it remind you to press F9 again — it just stubbornly waits for a second F9. Although safety features are usually appre¬ ciated, this one seems like overkill. William Faulkner might have been devastated by the loss of a few words, but most of us would just as soon skip the extra keystroke. Ironically, this safety feature works only on the first line you delete; you can erase as many additional lines as you want without pressing F9 more than once per line*

Manipulating blocks of text can also be irri¬ tating* Marking the beginning and end of the segment is easy enough: Just press F3 and an underscore character appears as a block marker. However, the same symbol is used to designate text to be underlined, so its some¬ times impossible to tell how many markers you've inserted. Complicating things still more, the program won't allow more than two block markers in the text at any one time, but it doesn't give you an error message until you ac-

for the IBM Personal Computer December 2PS3

tually attempt to manipulate the block.

Once you've marked the block, you press escape and leave the text-entry screen to return to the editor's status screen. At the bottom of this screen you type a two-letter code to indi¬ cate whether you want to move, copy, or de¬ lete the segment. Since the markers disappear as soon as the operation is complete, there's no easy way to determine if everything went as planned. And although you're asked to confirm your deletion, you can't retrieve it if you change your mind.

To activate the search-and-replace func¬ tions, you press F6. The program displays a colon at the bottom of the screen without any other prompts such as the traditional, "Search for7" Nor is this function particularly power¬ ful. When you tell the program which word to look for, you have to insert spaces on either side of it and resign yourself to missing occur¬ rences set off by punctuation, because whole words can't be differentiated. Capitalization can't be ignored, so words occurring at the be¬ ginning of sentences will also be missed unless you do a separate search. In addition, the pro¬ gram won't search backward.

Another limitation of the editor is its inabil¬ ity to handle columns of numbers or text. There's no separate mode for moving columns, and you can't scroll horizontally beyond 80

columns, although you can print up to 132 col¬ umns if your printer has the capability.

Formatting and Printing. PeachText is definitely not screen-oriented: You can't see page breaks, double-spacing, or right- justified margins on screen while you're editing. To get an idea of what your document will look like when printed, you have to "print" it to the screen instead of to the printer. In some cases what you see on the screen still doesn't corre¬ spond to the printed page. For example, Peach- Text indicates boldfacing by displaying each letter twice and underlining by inserting an ex¬ tra line of multiple dashes beneath the words to be underlined.

Printing to the screen does allow you to see page breaks. Unfortunately, if you spot any page breaks falling at inopportune places, you have to return to the editor to correct them. Then, you have to print to the screen again, since changing one page will affect any breaks that follow. With long documents, this process turns out to be a major undertaking.

Fortunately, you can control page breaks by inserting a conditional page command at the beginning of your document. For example, if you type CNP2, the program will not break