Saving TS2068 Programs

Marie Kendall asked how to completely save a TS2068 program. Some programs in to LogiCall collection of drives have such saves. VU-CALC, VUFILE come to mind when one thinks of programs that has start up screens to contend with.

Let us take VU-CALC for example. What this program has to save all at one moment is the BASIC driver VUCALC.B1, the screen file vc.C$ and the machine code program vc.Cl. At the moment of the request to save the program, the BASIC driver and the machine code program are both in memory but the start-up screen is not!

It was decided that the easiest way to save the whole program when the user might have only one disk drive would be to have the user start the save with the original disk in the drive. The screen could then be bought into memory. Once that was accomplished, the user could put the destination disk into that same drive and complete the save routine with a simple press of the ENTER key. To save RAM space, it was decided that the save instructions would be placed in the manual and not in the program! (Sorry for that inconvenience, folks!) The following statement was put into the manual:

“Most users like to have a separate disk to store VU-CALC and VU-FILE data along with a copy of the application. Both of these drivers have a unique save routine which allows you to save the entire program to another disk. When you select the option to save the program, the save routine calls the screen code into RAM and, WITHOUT TELLING YOU, waits for you to press ENTER to proceed with the save. Before pressing ENTER you can put a new disk into the current drive, press ENTER and the entire program (driver, machine code file and screen file) will be SAVEd on the new disk.”

To permit the user to save this program to disk I had to set up a menu in BASIC to which the machine code program could be directed. With VU-CALC running and the menu bar at the top of the screen, #q is the way out to the SAVE menu. When the user selects the option to save the program, the user response directs the program pointer to line 9992. The SAVE routine looks something like this:

9992 RANDOMIZE USR 100: LOAD "v c.C$"SCREEN: PAUSE 0: RANDOMIZE USR 100: SAVE VUCALC.B1" LINE 1 : RANDOMIZE USR 100: SAVE "vc.C $"SCREEN: RANDOMIZE USR 100: SAVE "vc.Cl" CODE 32768,1048
9998 RANDOMIZE USE 100: LOAD "L.B1l"
9999 SAVE VUCALC.B1" LINE 1: RANDOMIZE USR 100: LOAD "vc.C$"SC REEN: SAVE "vc.CS"SCREEN: SAVE "vco.C1"CODE 32768,1048