I'd like to talk briefly about what happened at last May's
meeting and then talk in some detail about my visit to the
Trenton Computer Festival on April 22, 23.
Three new members joined. New member Rod Drymon and I talked
about uncrunching and library (LBR) files etc. Bob Person snuck
in some mind-blowing C-64 synthesized music at one point. No
formal presentation. I handed out pamphlet newsletters (new
format) and CCP/M guidelines as well as mentioned the upcoming
Trenton Computer Fest. New member Reinhard May and I talked
about OTHELLO. One OTHELLO program we have is written in E
Basic. We also have a C version of OTHELLO.
Al Hathway and I talked about an IOP he's written. This is a
program which permits him to assign keystrings to his numeric
keypad and function keys. I am trying to change it to make my
Royal arrow keys work when I use VDE.
Trenton, 1989
My wife and I headed down Saturday morning, early. We got to
Trenton at about 10:00 and found Bliss Hall shortly thereafter.
I saw Jay Sage on the way over and we chatted a bit about the
upcoming all-day CP/M Conference.
There were about 40-60 people at the Conference I'd say. The
number grew steadily from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM. I spotted Howard
Goldstein fairly quickly. I'd heard from Jay during our walk
over that Howard was using a loaner hearing aid and that he was
having difficulty with it. Howard is blind and this extra
aggravation was surely annoying. I introduced myself to Howard
and he smiled and shook my hand. It became clear to us that
moving out of the main room and into the hallway would make for
better conversation so we did that. I would like to quote from
Jay Sage's Z33 manual what he has to say about Howard Goldstein.
"One individual, Howard Goldstein, must be singled out for
the transcendent role he has played in the development of ZCPR33.
We have been in constant communication with him during the
development process, and he has been a sounding board for all the
new concepts. In his capacity as beta-tester extraordinaire, he
has subjected the code to remarkable scrutiny, uncovering
countless minor and occasional serious flaws. He has also
suggested dozens of ways to shorten the code. Above all, working
with him has been a pleasure and delight."
Although I've chatted with Howard and he's called my
computer, this was my first real encounter with him and it was
great to be there!
I bought Jay's Z33 Manual after Hal Bower's talk. It is a
joy to read and will be a jewel in the archives of CP/M
literature. I highly recommend it.
Hal Bower told us that scheduled speaker Cam Cotrill was
unable to come and was somewhere in Italy as we met! Hal then
proceeded to take Cam's place with great skill and ease! Harold
(Hal) Bower is a third of the team of three individuals who are
responsible for the latest DOS replacement for the BDOS of CP/M.
Jay spoke next. Jay gave an overview of the history of
Z-System. The talk was introductory and per usual the audience
was a mix of mostly Z-System users but occassionally non users.
Frequent audience participation became the rule around this time
and that marvellous situation occurred in which no leader emerged
but rather each person in the room lead the topic for a spell,
asking this, claiming that, suggesting this, announcing that.
Bruce Morgen saw fit to suggest every so often that the speaker
consider giving an overview of the topic at hand, for the benefit
of those who might not be familiar with the topic.
I kept thinking that it would be a good idea for us all to
go around the room and give our names and anything else we felt
like but it never happened! Oh well. Bruce Morgen. Now who is
he? What did he write? This kind of question kept occurring to
me! I knew I'd heard the name but in several encounters I could
not place the accomplishment. Well, I've just satisfied myself
that I am sure that among many other accomplishments, he's the
author of an article in the latest TCJ. "REL-Style Assembly
Language for CP/M and Z-System".
Howard asked me at a slow point if I could find Bruce and
take them both aside in the quieter hall for a chat. I found
Bruce and we went outside. Howard then told a story about some
guy who wanted to give a message to his neighbor and so scribbled
one out and left the note on the neighbor's fence. After a day
or so when it was apparent the neighbor still hadn't read the
note, the fellow sent the same message to a Z-Node on the West
Coast. It was answered by his neighbor the next day.
Hal talked in the afternoon, after Jay, again. This time
about the future of ZSDOS ZDDOS and Z-System. "Bank everything".
This was the way he tried to summarize where we are going. With
the 64 k limitation of CP/M, there is a growing need to bank
BIOS, DOS and CP.
Ian Cottrell was there. He's just released PBBS 4.50. Bill
Earnest was there. He has been running a Remote Access System
for probably 10 years. I recognized a fellow who'd come to our
Z-Fest and who was giving Jay a board with a Z180 on it that will
make an Apple run ZSDOS and Z34. There was a fellow who kept
speaking out making this and that point. For example, the SYSLIB
16-bit divide function fails to return the remainder, apparently.
He said he fixed this. The audience encouraged him to send his
code to a RAS. (This bug has been repaired in the Version 4
Libraries).
Hal talked a bit about what he did to the older libraries.
SYSLIB 3.6, Z3LIB 1.3 and VLIB 1.1. Harold Bower has completely
rewritten every routine in all three libraries and added his own,
called DSLIB. This one supports date and time stamping. Alpha
Systems has released the REL files for free distribution. The
code is smaller, faster and fully documented in online .HLP
files. The manual of hard copy of the .HLP support was
circulated by Hal. Impressive.
The Flea Market on Sunday was amazing! Junk and Jewel. 5
acres of hardware and software. I ended up escaping the whole
experience by only buying for $5 a cable that will hook my
brother's Zenith PC compatible's 9-pin serial port to his 25-pin
modem. These cables are known to go for something like $25 I
think. Bruce Morgen landed for $100 a 10 mb Xerox 820 system.
New.
All in all, a great time. If I told you all about all the
people I met, all the other stuff I saw and did etc. I'd fill
another few pages. Editor Jim Taylor has given me three pages
and I'm still over that, so I'll close and see where else I can
remove the excesses. See you June 13 in Farmingon. We're going
to talk about FATCAT, the disk cataloguer. And if all goes
according to plan, your next newsletter will be received encased
in a floppy disk jacket. Please take the time to fill out and
return the questionnaire (which you will be receiving shortly).
It will tell us many things about your needs, one of which is the
floppy format you would like your disk to have.
