By now you should have a pretty good idea of what I’ve been doing; so what’s ol’ Tom been up to? Well, instead of a much-deserved rest from high math writing, Tom has been busy upgrading his hardware with the Oliger system, Starting out as a self described “electronics duffer,” he has succeeded in getting through all the pitfalls and has an enviable system built up. Included is the facility to burn 2K or 8K EPROMs. The first task to which he’s putting all this neat hardware is to upgrade the ZX 8K ROM. He’s burned a couple prototypes and has figured out an easy way to incorporate the new EPROM inside the machine in place of the old ROM.
So far, the changes we’ve come up with are:
- Correcting the LPRINT bug and the division bug.
- Changing the bit patterns of V, W and Q in the character set to make U, V and W easier to distinguish and end confusion between 0, 0, and Q.
- Changing the initialization routine so the machine comes up in FAST mode after NEW or reset. Also, the machine automatically goes to FAST mode when breaking a BASIC program and hitting ENTER to get the automatic listing. This bypasses the sometimes annoying “reformatting game” that the existing ROM loves to play.
We’re also determined to improve the SCROLL and possibly CLS commands (these have been improved-ed). SCROLL in particular could use some work.
By the time I get out this issue, Tom hopes to have his little EPROM production line in full swing. Contact him about getting an EPROM of the corrected ROM, and instructions for installation, If you’ve seen the reports of various bugs and wish you could do something about it, well now you can.