CCP/M Meeting Notes - 11/29/87

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.

Keep in touch.