Reviewer George Miller focusses on six products that help us organize everything from stock market investments to Christmas card lists
IN RECENT MONTHS, quite a few products of varying use have appeared on the market designed to help control inventory or set up filing sytems for home and business.
Although many people might sneer at the idea of a company using a T/S1000,ZX81 as the corporate computer;, many of us have need of some sort of filing or inventory system at home. Consider the uses: Christmas card list, birthdays, recipes, record and tape log, insurance purposes, stock market or investments, telephone numbers, and so on.
These need constant updating and editing and that is what the Focus is about this month.
The Organizer
Timex, 16K
Clearly this product has several advantages over others designed to do the same job. Once it is loaded, you have several tasks to complete. In order to compare tapes I decided to set each with the task of handling a small mailing list.
With this Timex program, the first job I faced was to set up a format for the file itself. In other words, imagine a blank filing card in front of you. Now decide what goes on it and where. These titles are a permanent feature to be included in all files. I used name, street, city, state, zip, phone number, date of birth and notes for headings. Then you decide where each entry will begin.
From here on the T/S,ZX guides you very smoothly through the process of setting up files. There are 13 commands available to work through the files. ENTER allows additions to the system. ALTER changes the file displayed on the screen. INFORM tells you how many files are in memory, how many pieces of data per file and what percentage of the file is filled. FORWARD and BACK simply move you through the file. RESET prepares the files for use. LIST takes you through them. ORDER allows you to decide you you go through; either by the way they were entered, by name, date of birth, state or whatever else strikes your fancy. SELECT lets you search for all files with some feature in common. This feature can be retained for further use or disposed of immediately. PRINT and COPY are self-explanatory, as are DELETE and QUIT.
Each of the commands is accomplished by typing in the first letter of the word: for example “A” will let you ALTER the file on display.
The load time was quick — two and a half minutes — but there were drawbacks. On loading I was presented with the record/format screen, not the main menu. When I hit PRINT, the memory lost the file format, but retained the entries in the file. The accompanying program, an example of how it works is called GAZETEER. It wouldn’t load, not even with the winky board in operation. For more about the Organizer, see “Computerized Dee-Jay” in our Hints & Tips section.
Rating: ★★★½
Home Inventory
Orbyte, 16K
This product also performed up to expectations. When loaded, it took me to the menu (a nice change!), where I found I could inquire, add, change or delete any item, total them by number, or finish. In this program I decided to inventory my computer equipment. Fearlessly I plunged in. ADD ITEM, I commanded. It was extremely simple. The screen was set up to take the following bits of information: last update, item description, quantity in stock, unit price cost, category code and an add or change.
Each item you inventory requires a five-digit number. The lowest is 00001; the highest, 99999. This brings up a 30-second delay called “Processing” at all times and nothing will work without a number. If in your home you had 87 widgets with a value of $1.19, the program willshow the total value of your widget collection.
It is very fast and could be adapted to a business inventory without difficulty. However, it is an inventory and as such it is different from the file systems under Focus in this article.
The TOTAL BY ITEM NO. feature prints (on screen) the number, category code, and cost of all items on the inventory in blocks of 10 items.
There are minor problems with this one. After each prompt or entry you are asked if your entry is correct. I hit Y for yes and was repeatedly told I’d hit the wrong key. I also found the 30 second delay for “Processing” quite a nuisance. The load time was five minutes, 39 seconds. This increased as information was added, but the save/load was quite simple and worked the first time.
Rating: ★★★½
Data Storage and Display System
ZX-Panding, 16K
This program loads in just under five minutes: so far, so good. The screen then shows you themenu and invites you to choose between opening a new file; listing file titles; entering data into an existing file; correcting a point in a file; tabular listing of a file; graphing a file; saving to tape; close out a file; end.
Well, the instructions mentioned that the program “has the capability of storing up to sixty data points in a file under any user-defined titel.”
“Great,” I thought. “I’m back to my telephone book plan and I’ll try to graph the phone numbers.”
Wrong again, Charlie! Pressing a key for option number 1 (opening a new file) is the usual place to being. It would hae been except my silly machine kept telling me of an error code message (you know those little messages taht add a new meaning to the word cursor.) This one was 2/320. Aha — a quick check to my ever-handy owner’s manual revealed that this was an undefined variable. Fortunately, the listing was not beyond my grasp of BASIC, so I figured a way around it and started again.
I actually got to see the next screen before — you guessed it, error code message 2. To make a long story short, my machine really didn’t like the way Al Bandy of ZX-Panding Ltd. had written the program. Now in all fairness I’ll confess right here that I was using a ZX81 with 16K RAM and not a T/S1000 or T/S1500. Maybe they differ.
So I checked that out. Wrong again, Charlie! I really began to feel like a tuna. However, before I went on to the next one, I listed a few other annoying things. The program came in a sandwich bag with the instructions around the cassette under an elastic. The cassette had no case, but a paper strap between the guard tape sprockets. I’m not sure how to store it. I’m not even sure if I want to store it.
However, winter is coming and maybe it’ll be fun to se if I can get this thing working over the next few months. Stay tuned for future developments.
Rating: ★½
Business Inventory Control
Mindware, 16K
Inside the gray box (cardboard) comes the cassette in a plastic case — the next program to focus on, with a feature called Quickload. Because of quickload, I barely had time to light a cigarette before — it crashed. Try again. This time I actually got the cigarette lit before — it crashed. Well I tried LOAD, LOAD “STOCK I“, LOAD “STOCK II on both sides. Then I tried again with my Winky Board. Success! But this success lasted only seconds — just long enough to read the title screen.
Well, I was getting tired, so I trudged off to seek sleep and solutions to those nagging problems. The next days were no different. Anyway, I have no choice but to tell you what the manual says these programs can do. I’m sure you’ll keep in mind that they didn’t do it for me, but who knows what your luck is like.
With STOCK Iyou have three options: find, add or delete a line; print stock list; save data on tape. EAch entry requires a name, which is alphanumeric in nature. Numbers are sought before alphanumeric entries. The title of the file is then complete and you fill in unit price, supplies code, type code, stock level and re-order level for each.
STOCK II is a variation of the first program (so I read) which “accommodates over 2000 inventory items in 16K, if only numeric line codes and inventory levels are entered.
Rating: ★½
Inver Inventory Accounting
D. Lipinski, 16K
Would you believe it? After four tries it finally loaded. The opening screen asks for the length in digits of the number you’ll assign to each item to be inventoried. You follow with the lenth of the word description. Basically from here on this product is on inventory control rather than a pure filing system. Unlike the Home Inventory, this is business oriented and its object is to insure adequate stock of items is maintained. It does this extremely well. For people operating home businesses (like Amway distributors), this is an excellent tool.
I had some difficulty altering each item. In fact, the only solution seemed to be to re-enter the entire file for that item. The instructions are clear and concise. The program allows you to save, make changes, add a new item, delete an item, search items, print complete inventory, check on reorder items, and clear for new accoutning period. As mentioned, I had problems with changes and searches.
Rating: ★½
ZX Pro/File
Thomas B. Woods, 16K
Well, I finally got around to the last one for this Focus. I left it to the end because the documentation with it is literally a book! Its 59 pages include BASIC and machine code listings with explanatory notes; suggestions to adapt to a faster loading progam (Thomas Woods recommends the International Publishing & Software Fastload), the Timex or Sinclair printers and larger mnemonics. Also, Woods will supply a quarterly newsletter at $9.95 yearly to update and develop the program.
Clearly this is the best of the programs I focussed on. Consider the obvious advantages — it loaded and ran! Then after entering my telephone-address files it was able to search all files for any one or two word combination of numbers and letters and list them. It can alphabetize your files no matter how you enter them. This is not an automatic feature, but works efficiently and quickly.
The progam comes with adaptations through a Memotech interface to a full size paper printer. The program listing changes it to adapt to my Sinclair printer were concise and worked.
Combined with Fastload (from International Publishing & Software) it does actually load in 73 seconds. The change in the listings were provided, and I checked and they do work.
All in all, this is the one I’d recommend. As Woods himself says: “This program is dedicated to all those Timex and ZX81 owners who refuse to believe the Apple, TRS-80, OSI, IBM Commodore and Atari users and dealers who constantly remind us that the Timex 1000 “is just a try!” He proves his case dramatically.
Rating: ★★★★