After all the lousy weather maybe we are headed for spring. BUT! it did snow this morning and it has almost all melted. I have my taxes figured and mailed so things do look better now. With that moaning and groaning about the weather and taxes out of the way
I have progressed in my typing in the TUTORIALS from the newsletters and currently I am on my 4th disk of material. More on that later.
I had a call from Earl Kielgass; [address omitted]; Tel [phone number omitted]; in which he sought information on how to use his new 24-pin EPSON printer on the T/S 2068 using the AERCO printer interface. That was Saturday February 18th. He uses the LarKen disk interface so I searched for 24-pin printer software and I found two disks BUT they were for the Oliger. I contemplated the problem of transferring the files from Oliger to LarKen but before I started, I once more went through my master file of LarKen software. I found two disks but the labels weren’t exactly what I thought I was looking for. A comparison of the directories of the disks revealed that the LarKen was almost an exact duplicate of the Oliger material. So I used D.U.S. and COPYII.B1 to copy the disks for Earl. Earl called Saturday February 22nd to report that the disks had arrived and that the other disks I had sent looked very interesting. He had not tried to do anything with the printer information. If any one has anything on a 24-pin EPSON printer and the AERCO printer interface let either me or Earl know. While Earl only has the LarKen disk interface, I have the Oliger, the LarKen and the AERCO disk interface. Earl only has 40 track (DSDD) drives.
On Sunday I had a call from Fred Stern in which he had his one and only copy of MASTERSCRIBE (a T/S 1000 work processor) copied over. apparently his daughter had grabbed what she thought was a blank cassette to copy a CD. I steered him to where I thought there was a copy. Discussion led to my mentioning the TUTORIAL project but he only has the AERCO disk drives both for the ZX81 and the 2068. He was interested but the thoughts of all that paper if printed out and the cost of printing and mailing. After the phone conversation ended I remembered the article that Les Cottrell had wrote about the Radio Shack Mini audio amplifier 277-1008 for $11.99. Put a 9 volt battery in it and plug it in between the two 2068s.
I have two 2068 computers located 51 inches apart on separate computer desks. The right hand one is set up with the AERCO disk system only. The left had 2068 has the LarKen/Oliger disk systems setup. Normally I use the Oliger disk system and the others when and if needed or the fancy strikes me. The left hand computer with the Oliger interface has an audio cord from the MIKE jack to the INPUT of the audio amplifier. The audio amplifier EXT. SPEAKER jack goes to the EAR jack of the AERCO computer. I do have one extra item in the line up and that is a meter to monitor the output of the amplifier to keep from blasting the EAR of the AERCO computer. The files of the TUTORIALS are in MSCRIPT. And I have MSCRIPT V5.5 for each of the disk systems. To transfer the files from Oliger to AERCO I power up the AERCO system and got MSCRIPT loaded and a disk FORMATted. In the menu mode I press the U key to trigger the change from DISK to CASS. I then press the L key to get the LOAD a cassette software and I press ENTER. That gives the cassette LOADing pattern on the monitor. I then turn on the audio amplifier full on (The nine volt battery I am using is just marginal for use according to a Radio Shack battery tester). I then LOAD MSCRIPT and the file I want to transport to the AERCO disk and change the file name if necessary to something that the AERCO will accept and press the U key to trigger the change from Disk to CASS. Then I press the S key to SAVE and when the query to SAVE filename? appears, I press the Y key for Yes and get the start tape and press ENTER. When I press enter the Oliger monitor displays the SAVEing pattern and a brief moment later the other monitor displays the LOAD pattern.
When the LOAD is completed, I go to the AERCO computer and press the U key to trigger from CASS to DISK, then the S key to SAVE and on the SAVE filename I press Y and the disk drive goes to work. When the SAVE is complete, I press C for CAT and press the ENTER key twice to get the CAT done. A look to see if the file SAVED correctly as far as number of bytes, then press the U key to change from DISK to CASS and press L and ENTER to get ready for the next file to be transferred. I found that a printed out directory on the Oliger was a necessity to be able to not miss a file and have the correct file name. It does require concentration to avoid problems. The copying the files from one DOS to the other is not fast but a lot faster than SAVEing to cassette and reLOADing the files. In the future I will transfer the files as I type them in.
I am currently typing in SINC-LINK which was the newsletter of the TTSUC of Toronto. Since I have almost all the issues. I started with their first and am now where they are starting to discuss the various disk drive systems. Some of the early articles are very interesting. I learned more about machine code presented in such a way as to make sense. Of course the early articles were on the ZX81 only. Since I have the newsletters filed by name alphabetically, this will put ZXir QLive Alive! last. BUT! I don’t know if SYNTAX is a newsletter or not. I sort of considered it a magazine because of its price. After the newsletters, will be all the magazine articles and there are a lot. Which will give up first? Me, the computer or the lack of any other T/Sers out there? With that I close this issue’s column!