The Winterfest
Economists are always being quoted as saying that the best time to buy anything is last year. This year, they were wrong. The prices for QL’s, 2068’s, and a lot of peripherals, software, and literature were lower than I have ever seen them.
The weather of Sunny Florida was a bit of a disappointment, but then I guess that they need a little rain now and then to make the oranges. (Actually, the Florida residents were happy that it was raining–that part of Florida has suffered badly for lack of moisture.)
The show opened with 17 exhibitors, including SyncWare News. As of this writing, I don’t have final attendance figures, but 167 visitors were clocked during the first day. As Legislator Murphy (the one who wrote Murphy’s Law) would have predicted, the visitors always seemed to come in bunches, much like a platoon of traffic on the highway. But the bunching didn’t keep them from buying.
The Marriott Hotel is not one of the world’s lowest in price–but then, it’s not one of the lowest in quality of service, either. And Disney World and EPCOT provided an interesting break for those who had time (and will power) to tear themselves away from the computer exhibits.
The customary series of lecture/seminars rounded out the event.
1500 Monitor?
Gerard Tripptree of Little Ferry, NJ wants to know:
“Does anyone have any suggestions on how to modify the TS1500 so that it will produce a composite video output to drive a Zenith monochrome monitor with a 75-ohm input impedance?” He goes on to report “great results” from his ZX81 and an AERCO composite video circuit, but finds that similar techniques will not work with the 1500.
He also would like to get a “good, clear copy” of the TS1500 schematic.
Can anyone out there help? If any of you could give us a good quality TS1500 schematic, SWN would be glad to publish it, provided that there will be no copyright complications.
A Further Word To Authors
As part of our cost-shaving program, we are going to have to reduce the payment we make to authors.
You have probably noticed that this issue carries a lot of material written by in-house people. We believe that the material is stil of high quality, and will be interesting to you, the readers.
However, we don’t want to be guilty of denying prospective writers the forum that we have provided for getting their works before the public. We welcome submissions as much as we ever did, but I’m afraid that we will have to pay our authors largely in terms of immortality.
A word of encouragement to you authors: we are not going to discontinue all payment. We will continue to pay you on the basis of $10 per page, pro-rated for segments less than a full page. And discounted, as our payments always have been, for articles that require extensive editorial work.
We hope that you budding (or fully florescent) authors will not be discouraged by our new policy. We hope that the fact that we offer a first-class medium for your manuscripts will be more important than the reduction in tangible reward.
More on the PC
You are still commenting on the PC question, and your comments are still as diverse as ever. Several of you, however, have managed to make constructive suggestions that had never occurred to us. We’re grateful for them, and we’ll do what we can to carry them out. Please keep your comments coming–on this subject or on any other.
Here are excerpts from the latest:
Hal Bellison, Troy, NY–“SWN has been a good journal…if you reduce the space that points at my system (2068) you do lose me…”
Rick Cavaness, Farmington, NM–“Please get serious!…We don’t need another PC mag.”
Louis Dooley, Ocala, FL–“If you must branch out, make it ATARI, or APPLE, or even Commodore (AMIGA)”
James Eisfeld, Placitas, NM–“If it must go toward a ‘Major’, let it be the Apple II family.”
W.D. English, Orange, CA–“Sorry, but I am not renewing…I’ve enjoyed your mag, but I’m now into 32 bit words, 2 meg memory, and powerful languages…”
But I wonder whether he’ll have so much fun-bw
R. Arthur Gandin, Petosky, MI–“It’s really hard to believe that you’re planning to support the IBM PC…You should be looking for other uses for the ZX81 and 2068.”
A constructive suggestion-bw
Bob Howard, West Covina, CA–“…don’t waste space supporting PC’s, take space to discuss why one would want or not want one, along with discussion of what is the best upgrade…(such as QL, AMIGA, ST)”
Jim Kopisch, Oklahoma City–“Our fate may be the ‘BIG BLUE’ PC, but please, don’t rush it along.” However, he suggests articles on hardware and software that can be modified to use with TS computers. “Also, new and better methods of interacting between different types and brands of computers.”
Donald Lambert, Cedar Rapids, IA–“…the article on IBM PC just overloaded my mind…if T/S is dropped from SyncWare News, I will no longer subscribe…I’ll never live long enough to exploit all the features of the T/S computers I own.”
Bill Manschot, New Orleans, LA–“I’d iike PC articles that are pertinent to Sinclair owners.” He would like to see articles on MSDOS and other commands or procedures not used on the Sinclair computers, with hints on how to translate them into Sinclairese.
John J. Shephard III, Coldwater, MS–“Your doom and gloom obituary made me mad enough to chew nails…don’t let them die, fix them.” He suggests that we develop self-diagnostic software, as well as software that would let a 2068 perform diagnostic tests on a TS1000, and vice versa. About the PC: “if the articles are for education, to aid in becoming a more informed member of the computer hobby community or help in using PC advantages in the use of our T/S computers–then the articles are sure to be welcome.” But not to help change over to PC. “…only use the PC as it can help us use our T/S computers.”
Now, there’s a really constructive suggestion–in a letter that is uniformly upbeat in tone. Does anyone have ideas on self-diagnostic programs?-bw
Guilford Taylor, Baltimore, OH–“Lord knows there’s enough PC publications out there already…If you do decide to run articles on the IBM PC, I hope they are of a comparative nature that would be of interest to Sinclair users. A perfect example might be to compare IBM BASICA to Sinclair Basic.”
Another fine suggestion–any takers?-bw
Van Vangor, Island Falls, ME–“I don’t give two hoots about PC’s…There are few T/S publications left for one to turn to.”
NOTE: Van also made the suggestion that served as the basis for the IFWARE™ proposal elsewhere in this issue.-bw
Bret Lanius, Decatur, GA–“As long as SyncWare doesn’t get to be dominated by PC articles, I’ll be happy! I own an IBM PC but I don’t program on it much. I prefer to ‘tinker’ with my 2068.”
Don Mattocks, Sun Lakes, AZ–“My Timex-Sinclair died…(but)…I don’t want to lose contact.”
Arthur B. Marzano, Philadelphia, PA–“I love my TS’s and encourage all readers to submit any material which may be useful to the loyal TS fans left…keep our journal TS oriented.”
Things To Come. . .
April 17, the second Practical Computer Show, Ross Park Mall, Pittsburgh. For more information, call Dreux Priore, [address omitted], Pittsburgh, PA, telephone [phone number omitted].
Late May-June. We hear reports of the possibility of a show in the New Jersey/New York area. If the show’s organizers will keep us posted, we’ll be glad to pass information on to our readers.
August 27/28, Cleveland. For more information, call Andrew Kosiorek, [phone number omitted].
August 6/7, the 3rd Annual International/Great Northwest TS Mini-Fair. This promises to be a skookum event, as they say out in those parts. Rod Gowen is Chairman of the event, and the mailing address is 1419-1/2 Seventh Street, Oregon City, OR, telephone (503) 655-7484.
Information available to date indicates that the Northwest Fair will be held at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Portland, 15 minutes from the airport, 2 blocks from I-5. Hotel rooms go for $38 (plus 9% tax) for single or double. Admission is $3, tickets at the door.
Exhibitors’ rates are $20 for 2 tables, $5 for each additional table–one free pass given for each table. Special rates for users’ groups: $10 for 2 tables, $3 for each additional table.
Twelve seminars are planned, on such subjects as 68000 architecture, Z80 machine code, CP/M on TS computers, GIF graphics, telecommunications, and other equally fascinating subjects, with a roundtable discussion at 9 on Saturday evening, with seminar speakers fielding questions from the floor.
A tentative list of seminar speakers includes such well-known names as Jack Dohany, Norm Lehfeld, Ed Grey, Mike de Sosa, Syd Wyncoop, Vince Lyon, Wilf Rigter, and Michael Carver. Sponsors of the show include CCAT/S users’ group, R&G Enterprises, and Time Designs Magazine.
For your family, the city of Portland offers the choice of a number of delightful activities. And if you have the time to drive around the vicinity, you will enjoy some of the most beautiful scenery in the United States.
Something On Account(s)
One of the moves triggered by our recent change of personnel was a thorough (and somewhat overdue) audit of our accounts. Our findings have prompted us to make a number of changes in our practices. We believe that none of these changes will reduce the quality of our magazine, or of our services to you, our readers. Some of them may, in fact, work to your advantage.
We find that costs have been creeping up on us, unobserved. At the same time, revenues have not grown accordingly. Clearly, this is no way to run a railroad. You’ve heard about the company that loses a little on every transaction, but makes it up in volume–but we haven’t figured out how they do it. Not yet.
Our first decision was NOT to raise our subscription prices at this time. We’re going to stick with that decision as long as we can. With life being what it is, the time will inevitably come when we will just HAVE to raise the price. You’ll remember that even the United States Congress awarded itself a pay raise last year, in order to keep up with inflation.
But we hope that we can do better than Congress did. We have held the line ever since we started publishing Volume II, and we’ll resist any rise as long as we can. But if you want to take out insurance against that inevitable rise, renew early, at today’s prices.
If you are worried about the remote possibility that we might close our doors some day and leave you holding the proverbial bag, let me tell you a little about our operating practices. In common with many other reputable publishers, we keep in a reserve bank account all of the money that you have entrusted to us. As each issue is mailed to you, we release an appropriate amount from that reserve, since we have fulfilled the obligation represented by that amount.
The money released, of course, goes to pay the expenses of the next issue, as well as our general expenses of operating during that period.
So if (Heaven forfend!) we have to close our doors some day, the money will be there for return to those who trusted us. We won’t have to pay you off in apologies, in subscriptions to magazines that you don’t want, or in other schlock.
So What To Do?
Obviously, there are two ways to ease the squeeze between income and expenses. We’re trying both.
EXPENSES–we’re doing all we can to cut our overhead expenses to the marrow. This sort of thing should come naturally to me. Both of my grandfathers were Vermont farmers, for whom frugality was a matter of survival. And it needn’t concern you, unless you can pass along some ideas. If you do have some ideas, let’s have them, by all means. They may be of interest to our readers in general, too.
One change that will affect both you and us is that we are going to start using a bulk mailing system. It means a bit more work for us, as we have to sort the outgoing mail by ZIP code. Not too much more work, though–after all, we ARE a computer-based operation.
And how does it affect you? Under the old system, if a subscriber moved, the Postal Service would forward his copies of SWN for a year…and would never tell us! I don’t know what would happen after that year, but I hope that the subscriber would renew his subscription in the meantime, with a notice of change of address.
With bulk mail, the P.O. declines to forward your copy…but they do let us know what new address you have filed with them. We’ll then check with you, and send you a replacement copy after you have confirmed your new address. This means that your copy will be delayed, UNLESS you let us know ahead of time of your new address. Obviously, you and we would all benefit if you did give us advance notice.
What happens to your unforwarded copy? In theory, the postman throws it away. I’d like to think that he gives it to some school instead, or maybe takes it home to his kids. But we may never know the answer to that one.
RECEIPTS–If we’re not going to raise the subscription price, there remain at least three other ways to increase revenues. We’re going to try all three.
1. We hope to increase our subscription base. Maybe you can help us here. Tell your friends about us–show them a copy–even lend them a copy, if you can trust them to give it back. This is sort of like the pet store owner saying, “Take the puppy home for a day or two, and see whether you like him.” We’re confident that to see SyncWare News is to want a subscription.
So please help us to interest new readers. You’ll be doing them a favor. And at the same time, you’ll be helping to postpone that inevitable day when we’ll have to raise the price of our subscriptions.
2. We plan to solicit more advertising. Somehow, we’ve let our efforts in this direction lapse. I used to love to read the ads–it reminded me of the Sears catalog at Christmas time. I’d like to increase them for the sake of making SWN more appealing to our readers. But we don’t mind getting paid for the ads, too.
3. We hope to publish a few other documents that we think you would like. We propose to offer them on an IFWARE® basis, which is described elsewhere in this issue. We’d appreciate your comments on what reprints (or what new material) you’d like to see.
We’d like your advice on anything else, too. We want SyncWare News to continue to be YOUR magazine.
TS1000 Bank Switching
Has SWN done any articles on bank switching with the TS1000?
Is it possible to make 64K NVM in 16K blocks so you would have access to four programs?
E. Ferguson
Ansley, NE
FRED REPLIES:
We’ve received several inquiries about bank-switching on the ZX81 family. It appears that bank-switching is an idea whose time has come.
The answer is that bank-switching IS possible, and also relatively easy. The three essential elements are: memory, decoding, and paging. The need for memory chips is obvious; recent reductions in the cost of the 64256 32K SRAM (static RAM) make non-volatile, bank-switched RAMDOS arrangements very appealing. The same holds true for the EPROM equivalent. The decoding is simply to “tell” the memory chip(s) where they should “live” in the Z80’s memory map. “Paging” involves relatively simple circuitry to control which of several devices (i.e. RAM or EPROM chips) is active at any given time.
The Paging aspect has been touched upon in SWN Vol. 1. As a point in fact, this was an early version of Dr. Paul Hunter‘s bank-switch system, which was subsequently covered in other magazines. Though this system certainly works, it has a few drawbacks. It used 8K chips, which are no longer cost-effective for such projects. More importantly, it was I/O-mapped, meaning that you needed to install a machine-code routine after power-up in order to control the banks.
The good news is that Wilf Rigter, Harry Slot, and the other wizards at the Vancouver Sinclair User Group have developed a remarkable bank-switch board that will work with the ZX81, TS1000, TS1500, and PC8300. It uses only two support chips in addition to the eight 32K RAM or EPROM chips, for a total of 256K of non-volatile memory. It is memory-mapped, meaning that you can change banks with a simple POKE. The location is in the ROM, so it won’t interfere with other peripherals.
We may be tipping our hand by reporting the existence of this, but the news is just too good to keep under my hat. The developers have given me their assurance that as soon as the final touches have been made, the full details will be submitted to SWN for publication. There is also a strong probability that kits, bare-boards, and assembled units will be made avaiable to those with solderphobia.
Regarding the PC8300, I can’t resist the urge for a little “plug”. This machine truly entered the “real world” with my development of a Sinclair-compatible ROM, which runs all known Sinclair programs except high-resolution, and sports a few other neat features. I wouldn’t say that this machine will “replace” the ZX81, as much as it will “augment” it.
Most hardware for the ZX81 should work with the PC8300, if the missing control lines are brought to the edge connector. One in particular, M1*, is needed for 64K RAMpacks. Incidentally, “M1* decoding” (see SWN Vol. 2:5, page 10) is NOT needed to run machine-code in 32-48K on the PC8300. -fn
Hi Rez To Disk
I have been trying to transfer your (SMC‘s) SCRAM (hi-res) programs from audio cassette tape to 5-1/4″ floppy disks, with the LARKEN disk system for the ZX81/TS1000. Some of the programs have a lot of BASIC lines, and these accept the LARKEN line changes and additions and work without difficulty. Some programs, such as HRCHESS (SWN 4:5) which only has a few short lines of BASIC, has to be saved to disk as-is, and has to be started with a GOTO xxxx command, does not auto-run, or provide screen prompts to change the enable/disable switches, etc.
How can I make such software auto-run on the Larken disk system?
FRED REPLIES:
Let’s briefly review the ZX81/TS1000 memory map. At the “bottom” of the memory, at the 16K mark, are the system variables, followed by the BASIC program listing. Above that is the display file, which “floats” as the BASIC area changes in size. Beyond the display file are the BASIC variables.
There are two problems that can occur in some software. Very long programs can be “pushing” 16K (or 64K) to the limit, and adding any BASIC lines can cause trouble with “out of memory” reports. With such software, you’ll have to “trim some fat” elsewhere, such as deleting un-needed REM lines. Many other memory-saving techniques have been published over the years. (See “Byte-Pynchers” in SWN Vol. 1.)
The problem with the Psion CHESS program is a different one. This program has plenty of “headroom”, but employs an unusual approach to storing machine-code. Instead of being in a 1 REM or 0 REM line at the beginning of the program (fixed address), it is in a VARIABLE. This means that it moves around as you change/add/delete lines of BASIC. If the resulting address is off by even one byte, a crash is guaranteed.
With some programs that use this approach (e.g. Softsync‘s Asteroids), you can “trim fat” as before to keep the program area exactly at the same length as it was before the changes. Here’s a technique that might help:
Before making any changes, peek VARS by entering PRINT PEEK 16400 + 256*PEEK 16401. Write this number down. After making your changes, again peek VARS and make up the difference by changing dummy REM lines, etc. As a point of reference, a single-command line (like an “empty” REM) takes 7 bytes. Don’t forget that every number in a listing takes six more bytes than show on the screen.
CHESS is a rough one, probably the roughest; there is no easy way of gaining the needed bytes. With such programs you HAVE to get creative. I’ll give the following solution without proof; study of WHY each change was made, and HOW it conserves memory, might be helpful with other such programs.
After making the high-res mods detailed in SWN 4:5, the main CHESS program listing looks like this:
1 SAVE "CHESS"
2 LET T=USR 24692
3 INPUT A$(1 TO 9)
4 LET T=USR A
5 LET T=USR B
6 GOTO 3If you peek VARS, you’ll get 17393. The LARKEN-modified program looks like this:
1 RAND USR C
2 REM SAVE "CHS.B1"
3 PRINT Z$
4 PAUSE E
5 LET T=USR D
6 INPUT A$(VAL "1" TO VAL "9")
7 LET T=USR A AND USR B
8 GOTO FAfter making the changes, verify that peeking VARS still gives 17393. Then enter the commands,
LET C=14336 (LARKEN DOS entry)
LET D=24692
LET E=40000 (to pause forever)
LET F=6
LET Z$="TURN OFF DOS, ENABLE SCRAM"As before, the HRCHESS portion must have been previously loaded and safely stored in your SRAM. However, we can’t use our nifty GOTO USR SAVE to bypass Psion’s protection. So simply disable th SRAM, enable DOS, and GOTO 1. After saving, (and subsequent reloading), reverse the procedure then press a key. You will get a “LOAD CHECK FAILED” message, don’t worry about it. The game will play just fine.-fn
Wish Lists
There is one feature that the ATARI has that I wish could somehow be programmed into the TIMEX–the attract mode timer and flag. When the computer is on but no keyboard input is read for 7 to 9 minutes, the attract mode rotates colors on the screen at low luminance levels and helps to save the TV screen from “burn-out” damage.
How about an article on, or just a list of, books in order of learning importance, from BASIC to machine language, for those of us who didn’t have someone to advise us on how to proceed without leaving gaps.
How about some serious reviews of peripherals?
Dorothea Bundy
Ventura, CA
On the subject of PC, Miss Bundy comments: “I say forget it. Now if it’s a way to make the Timex compatible with others, then that’s different, but I say stick to giving us what we as subscribers are paying for.”
More Wishes
Hardware is the aspect of the 2068 I’ve always been interested in. I would be willing to buy plug-in peripherals to increase the real world usefulness of my 2068. I would like to store the city map in my computer.
Pete Kelly
Petal, MS
I particularly like articles on hardware and interfacing.
Harry T. Hall
Flagler Beach, FL
Now, there are some ideas for you serious TS programmers to sink your teeth into. Let’s hear from you. -bw
Hardware BUG ALERT!
Donald Lambert, of Cedar Rapids, IA, warns that some PC8300’s come with 220-volt power supplies. If yours is that way, it’s possible to make a step-up auto-transformer out of a couple of filament transformers. Possible, but a nuisance. Try first to get the supplier to replace your power supply with one that’s designed for North America.
While we’re talking about suppliers, let me toss an unsolicited bouquet to
Sunset Electronics
2254 Taraval Street
San Francisco, CA 94116
When I bought a 2068 as a birthday present for my son, they somehow sent me a defective power supply (after all, who ever thinks to test a power supply?) When I told them, they IMMEDIATELY sent a replacement, no questions asked. They didn’t even ask me to return the defective one. (And before you ask, that was before there was any hint that I was going to become editor of SWN.)