Well, Smaller Is Better for sure, for the size of the group that made this
one was, for sure, small! Tom Mannion showed up with his 20/40 mHz tower-
based 386, complete with stero SoundBlaster, stereo speakers, high speed
modem, etc. etc. Tom Veile, our featured speaker, and beloved newsletter
editor, after passing out grapefruit, oranges, tanjello (no persimmons this
year) orders, polished up his LORAN talk notes to be presented a bit later.
Lee Bradley and his lovely bride Linda finally made it to a meeting. Would
you believe Stephen Griswold WAS NOT PRESENT? (Fire Company had top billing
this time around. Actually, I think Stephen was picking up a triple 8"
drive CP/M system some guy left a notice on the board about.) Let's see.
Who else made it? (I'm writing this from memory, refusing to look at my
notes until desperate). Steve Dresser's excuse was that long lost friends
were going to visit and he wanted to be home to "see" them. Speaking of
Steve, he now has no more headaches or discomfort from the sun, now that
his eyes are "fixed." Glass eyes look real good according to his son
Rawley.
Oh yeah. Prez Al Hathway was there. Al asked Lee if he'd heard anything
about Hal Bower's progress on BPBIOS, the Banked Portable BIOS for the
YASBEC, SB180 and the like. Hal's spending some time taking courses at MIT
these days. He's working on the documentation for his new BIOS. No word on
release date.
Lee asked Tom to fire up MYZ80 on his machine so he could demonstrate a
little program called RDUMP which came with the SIL package and which Bruce
Morgen turned into a Type-4 utility. While bringing up MYZ80, Lee did his
typical thing, renaming things, moving things around etc. etc. until MYZ80
behaved the way he wanted it to. Hopefully, Tom was left with a more usable
system when Lee was done with it.
Speaking of MYZ80, guess what arrived in my mailbox a couple of days ago?
MYZ80 version 1.04, direct from down under. Howard Goldstein figures it
took two months for the registered version to arrive since I did not put
AIRMAIL on my shipment to Simeon Cran, so the package I sent him went by
BOAT! Anyway, what was taken for lost was not lost at all. Simeon must have
received what I sent him, including all back issues of Eight Bits And
Change, a bug list, a check and a letter. BTW, the price to register MYZ80,
the greatest emulator of them all, has gone up. It'll now cost you $30 US
to register your copy. About 5 people have responded to the article I wrote
for The Computer Journal entitled Z AT LAST! and have sent checks for $10
for a 3 1/2" floppy containing the latest unregistered copy of MYZ80 plus a
Z-System Software Sampler collection. The offer has changed slightly since
it was announced. It is now a TWO disk collection, and features IMP (thanks
to Tom Mannion), MYZ80103.ZIP, and about 1.5 meg of other goodies. Send
check for $20 to Lee Bradley, 24 East Cedar Street, Newington, CT if
interested. 3 1/2 720k disks only.
Tom's talk on LORAN was really good. Tom is a teacher at a technical school
in Connecticut. He teaches his students about Avionics, or, how to fix,
fly, feed, fondle (no, I guess that's not in the curriculum) airplanes.
Long Range (ok, time to consult my notes, acronym escapes me.) Before I
forget it, and speaking of words, Howard Goldstein shared the following
definition with me a couple of nites ago: aibohphobia, fear of palindromes.
Ok, LORAN stands for LOng RAnge Navgation. It was developed in 1942 and was
used on ships. The basic idea is this: There are sites all over the US that
are part of a network, sending signals at specific frequencies and for
specific time periods. A ship or a plane monitors these signals and can
locate its position by recording the times it gets signals from different
sites. Here's a picture, brought to you by the wonderful world of ANTSY
graphics:
MASTER >>>>>>>>> . WISHBONE (Maine)
(NY State) 100kh . 10000 usec
.
.
. 10699
. usec
v
Tom (in his Cesna)
^ ^.
18000 . .
usec. 14388 .
. usec .
. . 12000 usec
YANKEE XRAY (Cape Cod)
(North Carolina)
14000 usec
By subtracting the times the signals are sent from the times the signals
are received, and them feeding the differences into a microprocessor-based
computer, you get your position in latitute and longitude:
10699 - 10000 = 699
14388 - 12000 = 2388 >>> You are at 47 30.3 lat. 60 21.6 long.
18000 - 14000 = 4000
If you want to go to Danielson (where there IS an airport, according to
Tom), and you know Danielson is at 47 N 71 W, by punching in this data, the
LORAN computer will tell you your time of arrival, your ground speed etc.
etc.
The LORAN chain uses 99600 microseconds in the Northeast. That is, there are
99600 microseconds between MWXY bursts (MASTER/WISHBONE/XRAY/YANKEE). The
burst itself looks like this:
GRI \
_ _ v _ _ _
_| |_| |_| |_| |____________| | <-- "I am the master"
2 millisec
The GRI (Group Repetition Interval) is 270 microseconds. Tom told us
computerists take a back seat to aviators in the jargon/acronym/buzzword
department. Tom also apologized for not bringing an actual LORAN device. He
did however draw us a little diagram, showing the "mode" and "position"
buttons etc. (I'll spare you another ANTSY graphic).
We learned that BDL, which is what you no doubt have seen pasted to your
bags when picking them up at Bradley airport, stands for, surprise,
Bradley. I bet you didn't know that 5B3 stands for Danielson. There seems
to have been a heavy emphasis on Danielson in this talk ... These three-
letter (well, alphanums) codes may be punched into the LORAN computer and
it will, based on its internal database of places and its knowledge of
where you are, announce:
You must fly (sail, swim, walk, etc.) 045 degrees to get there
We learned of VFR, IFR and countless other Avionics Lingo. Tom was well-
prepared, interesting and answered our questions. His students are lucky to
have him.
At the aftermeeting, Al Hathway spoke of a new movie about Steven Hawking.
His book, "A Brief History Of Time" has been made into a movie. Al said it
was the kind of movie CCP/M folks would like and suggested we keep our eye
out for it. (A remark comes to mind, but I'll keep it to myself ...)
So ... hope to see you at the December meeting. Gary Stagliano and friends
promise a C128 demo of Turbo Pascal software from S. Goldsmith, complete
with SoundBlaster, graphics and much much more. Hope your Thanksgiving was
great and your Chistmas even better.
Lee Bradley, acting Secretary (Gary, our Secretary, was taking care of
little Nicholas who managed to get sick just before the meeting.)
Late News: The CCP/M BBS is now running MAXIHOST software. The days of
trashed/lost message bases with PROCOMM PLUS TestDrive are OVER. Ian
Cottrell promises to ship a 20 meg hard drive from Canada to replace the
dead 10 megger on the Xerox. S. Griswold, if we can pry him away from his
new triple 8" system has the official OK to see if he can wire it in. We
all miss PBBS but it's been kinda fun learning a bit about PC's while
running the board on the XT. We can thank Tom Mannion for MAXIHOST, for the
3 1/2" drive, S. Griswold for replacing the 5 1/4" drive (TWICE) and Tom
Veile for fixing the XT in the first place.
PS: your acting Secretary got a job with Mountain International in
Wallingford as a programmer last week. Will start December 1. Mountain
International is in the Telecommunications business. They are a Service
Bureau as well as a small phone company, supporting businesses and
universities, mobile phone systems etc. Mainframe and PC based COBOL and
assembler. Wish me luck!
Other Stuff: Bruce Morgen's ON! lost a Western Digital Floppy Disk
Controller. He's looking for a replacement. The chip is a WD2797A, was made
around 1982 and is about the size of a Z80.
Jay Sage is unloading BASCOM, BDS C/Z, and about 10 other popular
commercial programs for unbelievable prices. Sample: BASCOM for $10, BDS
C/Z for $35 (lists at $60). Call the BBS for details. 203 665-1100.
