Only 1 day overdue. Not too bad. Z-Fest on the
horizon. Let's see. Where to start?
I'm writing this on a Royal. This Royal is running
CP/M 2.2. It's showing me yellow letters. Which
makes this the first (and only ?) color-capable
CP/M machine that I know of. Isn't it great that
in 1987, a full 12 years since the first
commercial version of CP/M, new products are
coming out that run under it?
And let me tell you. This little baby ain't no toy
computer. It may not run Z (yet...) but it does a
few things Kaypro never tried... I'm going to save
the details for a future article, 'cause there's
news to tell besides this and the deadline is
already history.
Here's my December list. Not my Christmas list.
Speaking of XMAS, check out "Twas the Night Before
XMAS" elsewhere. Compliments of GEnie guru J.
Taylor, whose upload stats at Mouse House belong
in Ripley's. Also, an original piece on GEnie
itself in "Accessing the Lamp". Jim even gives me
GEniegrams to convince me of the GEnie service. We
are all indirectly GEnie users because probably
well over 50% of the material he has put up on my
system was downloaded from there.
But I digress. The list. Z-Festival on the
Horizon, Making Boards, Membership drops
(ALOT...), UNIFORM on the IBM PC and Royal etc.
computers, ON!ward and Upward or Waiting for my
7th computer, No meeting on the second Tuesday,
Easter in Mouse and dBase etc., personal
WORDprocessor for the Commodore 64 owner, CCP/M
catalog has 3668 files on 103 disks, Recent
Uploads, and as they say, Much, Much more...
The last meeting of CCP/M went well despite the
many counts against it. The weather was bad, the
newsletter was not on time so some may have
thought it was not going to be a meeting night
plus our main speaker fell ill and was not able to
make it. In way, it was one of our better meetings
strangely enough. Reno Franconi expressed again
his interest in a Pascal Programming workshop, and
it was decided to have just this. I have not
worked out the details at all on this but will be
putting something together in the coming weeks.
The more I think about it, the more I think the
course should be on programming techniques in
general with Pascal emphasized only after the
"pseudo code" has been worked out. Daryl Gehlbach
brought WordStar Release 4 and distributed it to
those who had bought it. Reno visited me later in
the week and after an initial unsucessful attempt
to null modem the Kaypro formatted software over
to his Televideo we later got it over over to his
format after using the services of UNIFORM on an
IBM PC. This is a non-PD program which understands
many formats, among them, Royal alphaTronic PC,
Kaypro II, 4, 10, Osborne SD and DD, Televideo,
etc. etc. Anyone have an IBM PC they could bring
to the Z Festival so we can use it to copy
software, both that Jay Sage will bring (he has
expressed an interest in having such a copy
facility) and that I will bring? If so, please let
me know!
The CCP/M Public Domain Software Library now has
103 volumes. There are 3668 files in it. This
represents a project that I have been working on
for several years actually. Almost all redundancy
has been removed, a catalogue has been printed and
will be available at a modest cost ($2) at the
Festival. It's a 20 page (double sided pages)
document and was generated using FATCAT, the
FATter but faster CATaloguer. Almost all squeezed
files have been unsqueezed and then crunched.
Related files (source, help, doc, object, example,
etc.) have been LiBRaried. I lost track a long
time ago, but if I were to guess, I would say
these 103 Kaypro DD (191k) floppies used to be
about 300 disks! What a project. I have not been
able yet to put together what is really needed,
namely a one or two line description of what the
files are for. But I do know that everything in
the library has been tested, edited, fixed,
compiled, assembled, enhanced etc. etc. I had a
ball doing this and am proud of what we have. I
would even venture to say that CCP/M may very well
have one of the best CP/M (ZCPR3 etc.) libraries
around... Check it out.
Since the Z Fest is so close to the second
Tuesday, I have decided to cancel the regular
meeting of CCP/M. ie. DON'T show up at the
Farmington Public Library on Tuesday the 8
th!!!!!! Unless you need to take out Stephen
King's "The Eyes of the Dragon" or the like.
In my PD Software Library project, I ran across
once again what I find to be one of the funniest
pieces of writing I've ever seen. See "How to Make
a Board" elsewhere in this issue. Speaking of
funny writing, the following definition is part of
an extensive list of equally amusing ones and was
shown to me at work. We'll print the full list as
soon as I can type it up:
COPY-PROTECTED: A clever method of preventing
incompetent pirates from STEALING software and
legitimate customers from USING the software.
Here's a brief list of uploads to my RCP/M during
the last few months. This is not meant to be
exhaustive. It's meant to show that there's been a
tremendous amount of very good software and text
uploads and I encourage you to look into our very
active collection.
VDE262FX.LBR 2k JIM TAYLOR
UNERA32 .LBR 21k JIM TAYLOR
XMAS .WZ 4k JIM TAYLOR
WT20 .LBR 5k JIM TAYLOR
ST-TNG .TZT 4k JIM TAYLOR
HEADROOM.TZT 2k JIM TAYLOR
DOS+ .LBR 103k GARY ZUREK
1KUTILS2.LBR 13k JIM TAYLOR
SOURCE .CPM 2k JIM TAYLOR
NEWBATCH.LBR 5k JIM TAYLOR
MXM-2416.AZM 15k STEPHEN KISNER
NTWRK-11.TZT 6k JIM TAYLOR
NOAH-ARC.INF 5k GARY ZUREK
CPM+C128.LBR 22k GARY ZUREK
CPMARC .LBR 92k GARY ZUREK
NTWRK-10.TZT 5k JIM TAYLOR
KENMORE .LBR 61k RICK SWENTON
PACK10 .LBR 25k RICK SWENTON
PACK10 .LBR 25k RICK SWENTON
NZEX-D .LBR 16k RICK SWENTON
Z33LIB05.LBR 8k RICK SWENTON
MB-TUTR1.LBR 52k SYSOP
EASTER .MSE 1k LEE BRADLEY
Z-SIGNON.NOT 1k WALT WHEELER
JOURNAL .LBR 36k SYSOP
TCJ .INF 2k JIM TAYLOR
Z-NEWS .8Z5 11k JIM TAYLOR
Z-FEST .LBR 6k JIM THOMPSON
SPRI2LSM.TXT 4k DAVID WRIGHT
CCP/M-11.87 20k SYSOP
EASTER .PAS 4k DAVID WRIGHT
Z80D-MOD.LBR 3k RICK SWENTON
MXO-RV12.ASM 18k STEPHEN KISNER
NETWRK-9.TZT 7k JIM TAYLOR
TRINITY .DIR 3k GLEN GROSS
PCFILE .LBR 113k GARY ZUREK
TCJ29 .MZG 26k JIM TAYLOR
NETWRK-8.TZT 8k JIM TAYLOR
SWEEP .EXE 46k LEE BRADLEY
SHOW12B .LBR 40k RICK SWENTON
DDTZ26 .LBR 75k RICK SWENTON
NHSH-Z33.LBR 14k RICK SWENTON
Z33VER10.LBR 32k RICK SWENTON
NETWRK-7.TZT 6k JIM TAYLOR
LT23 .LBR 39k JIM THOMPSON
NETWRK-6.TZT 7k JIM TAYLOR
I have been talking with the folks who make the
ON! computer. They are shipping me a new one! They
will be getting a full write up in these pages
soon I expect. But I just want to say that John C.
and Bill E., their hard- and software technical
team, are terrific. The original ON! suffered from
what John could only term "infant mortality".
They've had hardware trouble in only 3 of those
they've shipped. The new one will have 4 mb RAM
disk, which is what I wanted in the first place.
The ON! is a state-of-the-art Z system. I am quite
confident it will work fine and will be bringing
it, and my new Royal, to the Festival. Strange
combo I know. The Royal system cost me $970 (I got
a lot of software, the color monitor and the
better printer). The ON! $3700. And they both
appear to be excellent buys.
A consultant I work with named Rich Zlatkus gave
me a PD full screen editor for the Commodore 64.
He wrote it. It appears to be very good. If you
are interested in this, I will be bringing the
disk and the hardcopy documentation to the
Festival. It was written in Commodore Basic. And
compiled. Rich is also trying to market a front
end to KEDIT, an XEDIT work-a-like for the IBM PC.
This guy is very sharp. Check out his Personal
WORDprocessor (for this is what he calls his C-64
editor). He's looking for feedback on it. Don't
let this pass you by if you have a C-64 (or -128).
I am trying to finish this so I can visit Mort
Fabricant. He needs an up-to-date list of CCP/M
membership. At Tom Veile's and my last count, 24
people have paid up. This is out of some 45 odd
members in 1986-87. I know a few who are just
absent minded. At least I hope they are. But there
are going to be quite a few people who may miss
this Dec. news because they did not renew their
dues. We cannot operate without the money to pay
for the news. Please send in your $15 to Tom Veile
if you feel membership is something you want to
continue having. We'll miss you if you don't !!!
Mort sent me a solution to my First Annual T-Shirt
Giveaway Programming Contest. It was not machine
readable and so I asked his to supply same. Hope
this all comes together in time. I've included my
BASIC solution. If you don't recall, this problem
had to do with automating the evaluation of all
those worthless lottery tickets we've been buying
lately. Mort's solution appears at first glance to
be an interesting example of dBase I programming.
Can't wait to try it out. Thus the need for
machine readable copy. Machine readable copy is
ALWAYS advised. It makes an editor's job
infinitely easier. Thanx Mort for contributing.
And also for your ambitious work on the database
for the YOU-CCP/M gang. Well done. Now all we have
to do is keep people interested in having their
names stay on the roster!
Well, better close this. I look forward to Dec.
with some uneasiness. I know it's going to be
fantastic. But I see lots of work yet to do to
make it so. I hope everyone that comes has a good
time. PS. Linda's baking a million cookies and I'm
bringing Finast's 100 cupper for coffee. Bring a
friend. Stay for a while. Ask Jay Sage an
interesting question.