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     ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN MICROPENDIUM
     P.O. Box 1343  Round Rock TX 78680
     Phone [phone]
     Internet [e-mail]

     MICROREVIEWS FOR JUNE 1995
     by Charles Good
     ------------------
     PFM+ by Cecure Electronics

     In a MICROpendium article from November 1989 about the Myarc Geneve it
     says, "Concerning an EPROM based version of DOS, (Myarc's owner Lou)
     Phillips said that few users are interested in it.  Such a system
     wouldn't have the memory to support hard disk drives nor could it be
     updated easily."  My, how times have changed.  Everything about Lou's
     statement is now incorrect.

     One of the new computer technologies, programmable flash memory, is
     described by Tony Lewis in the May 1990 issue of MICROpendium.  To
     reprogram a flash eprom you don't need any special hardware and you
     don't have to remove the flash eprom from its circuit board.  Recently
     Cecure Electronics has given Geneve owners access to this technology
     in the form of a reprogrammable on board flash eprom containing the
     Geneve's operating system.  Called PFM, this product is described by
     Cal Zanella in the June 1994 issue of MICROpendium.  PFM consists of a
     128K flash eprom chip that replaces the boot eprom that came with the
     Geneve.  My PFM flash eprom came preloaded with the latest non SCSI
     version of MDOS SYSTEM/SYS and this will load automatically after
     about 15 seconds from a cold boot and almost immediately from a warm
     boot.  If you temporarily don't want to use the operating system in
     the PFM chip you can, with a keypress, load an alternate operating
     system from any device.  If you want to put an upgraded operating
     system in the PFM chip that is also very easy to do.

     There is one significant limitation to PFM.  It is only 128K.  This is
     too small to hold the SCSI version of MDOS, which takes up 136K.
     Cecure is hoping to have a data compression system that will allow
     such large SYSTEM/SYS files to be loaded into PFM, but as of this
     writing you can't load SCSI compatible MDOS into PFM.  If you already
     have PFM you have to hit the space bar as the Geneve powers up, and
     then select the menu Floppy or horizon Ramdisk as the source of the
     SCSI version of MDOS.  If you plan to use the SCSI card you may not
     want to purchase PFM.  However, you may want PFM anyway so that you
     can have the benefits of PFM+.  My, how things have changed.  The last
     versions of MDOS officially mailed out by Myarc took only 90K and
     would fit on a SSSD disk.

     Now Cecure has taken flash memory technology one step further.  Cecure
     now offers to install a reprogrammable flash simulated disk drive
     right on the Geneve board where you can keep your most important
     software.  For those early Geneve owners who had to get used to
     booting from floppy or figuring out how to configure a Horizon ramdisk
     or hard drive to boot the operating system, the new Cecure flashdisk
     system is almost like magic.  "Look carefully.  There's nothing up my
     sleeve, no ramdisk or hard drive controller or memory expansion card
     in the Pbox and no floppy in the drives.  Now watch the magic as I
     turn on the Pbox and the Geneve loads MDOS.  I now type "DIR DSK8."
     and you can see that I have immediate access to all these neat files
     on drive DSK8, 509 sectors of files."

     This PFM+ flashdisk is a second 128K flash memory chip Cecure installs
     on the Geneve board.  It can be reprogrammed thousands of times to
     suit your needs.  It requires no battery, no Pbox card slot, no CRU
     address, and has no DSR.  It does however require that you already
     have PFM, the flash chip containing MDOS.  The flashdisk is piggyback
     soldered on top of the PFM chip so you now have a layer of two chips
     in the socket once occupied by the Geneve's original eprom.  Dealer
     installation of PFM an PFM+ is required.  There is as yet no do it
     yourself kit.

     The flashdisk is normally used as a ROM disk.  Right now I have the
     latest 80 column Funnelweb disk review and editor with its 128K text
     buffer on my flashdisk.  I am using the Funnelweb word processor to
     write this article.  Any time I want I can exit the word processor and
     go to Funnelweb's disk review to examine the contents of my flashdisk.
     Using disk review I can examine sectors, get a flashdisk directory
     (drive is DSK8, volume name is FLASH-DISK) and view or run files
     directly from this directory in exactly the same manner I would deal
     with files on a floppy or hard drive.  The flashdisk responds in the
     expected way to any disk management software.  But don't throw away
     your Horizon ramdisk yet because the flashdisk has some limitations.
     What I cannot do in the normal way is write to the flashdisk.  When I
     want to save this article, I will have to save it to a floppy (or a
     Horizon or a hard drive).  I can't go to the word processor's command
     line, press SF (save file), specify DSK8, and save this text to my
     flashdisk.  Using normal disk managment software I also can't delete
     or upload files to the flashdisk, sweep or reformat flashdisk, or
     change its sectors with a sector editor.

     When you reprogram a flash memory chip you have to reprogram the whole
     thing all at once.  You can't write to just part of the memory on a
     flash memory chip.  To program the PFM+ flashdisk you create a 128K
     ramdisk in the Geneve's memory and temporarily place on this ramdisk
     all the files you want to upload to the flashdisk.  You then use
     special software provided by Cecure to convert all the files you put
     on the ramdisk into one great big file which is saved to any mass
     storage device.  You then reboot the Geneve and quickly hit the space
     bar.  At this point you are presented with a menu that is part of
     Cecure's Geneve boot BIOS v3.  This menu gives you the opportunity to
     load a new operating system (MDOS) into PFM, temporarily boot an
     alternate MDOS without changing that resident in PFM, or reprogram the
     flashdisk.  Press L to (L)oad the flashdisk and select from the next
     menu the kind of mass storage where you are keeping your great big
     file.  If you have several of these great big files on line you can
     select, with a single keypress, any one of 11 such big files to load
     the flashdisk.  Finally press Y to confirm that you really do want to
     reprogram the flashdisk.  That's all there is to it.

     If you really wanted to do it, you could run games on the Geneve with
     only the software on the PFM+ and have the Geneve be the one and only
     card in the Pbox.  No disk controller, no hard drive controller,
     nothing.  For serious computing there are enough sectors on the PMF+
     flashdisk to contain GPL, the extended basic module files, the editor
     assembler module file, EXEC, and HyperCopy, with a little room left
     over for some Autoexec files.  Thus using only on board flashdisk
     files you can load and run from disk any 99/4A or Geneve specific
     software and you can do some really fast disk copying.

     There is one other little thing.  Everytime MDOS starts device T has
     to be remaped as a drive number in order to access the flashdisk
     files.  I like DSK8.  This can be done in several ways.  The most
     sophisticated way is to use Cecure's CYA software to permanently alter
     MDOS so that device T always automatically maps as your choice of
     drive numbers.  You can also type REMAP 8T from the A> prompt, or you
     can put this statement in an autoexec file.  Following this with
     ASSIGN F=DSK8:  makes it even easier to access files on the
     flashdisk.

     PFM costs $75 installed.  If you already have PFM then PFM+ costs $60.
     The cost for PFM and PFM+ installed at the same time is $125.  These
     prices include the latest MDOS and software needed to reprogram the
     flashdisk.
     -----------------------
     BOARD GAMES by Jimmy Dowell

     This disk contains 5 games and is designed to be run from DSK1.  You
     get an introductory menu from which you can load any of the games, and
     you can also from this menu print the instructions to any game to the
     screen or to a printer.  When a game ends, or when you press the
     designated key to prematurely abort a game, you are returned to the
     introductory menu.  These are not arcade fast action games.  In fact,
     none of them use a joystick.  They are instead strategy games
     resembling Barry Traver's "Coney Games" disk released a few years
     ago.  Some of the games use computer generated dice rolling to produce
     random numbers used in game play.

     Technically the games are interesting.  Screen displays are excellent
     and colorful.  Most games are accompanied by assembly language music
     which continues to play even if you go into command mode to examine
     the games' coding.  The only way to stop the music is to OLD another
     program.  Speaking of command mode, there are no ON BREAK NEXTs in
     these games.  This means that you can at any time back out of the game
     with FCTN/3 and enter command mode.  Some programmers consider XB
     software made unbreakable with ON BREAK NEXT to be an example of a
     professional sophisticated programming technique.  I think ON BREAK
     NEXT is a big nuisance.  I like to go into existing programs and alter
     them a bit, adding my printer's NLQ font coding for example.  This
     hard to do with an ON BREAK NEXT in the program.

     Game titles include Can't Quit, Nothing But Trouble, Peg Jump, Fox
     Hunt, Peg Jump, and Backgammon.  My favorite is the one player game
     Peg Jump which I actually played on a plastic game board with holes in
     it in my youth.  The object is to jump pegs, removing the jumped peg,
     in such a way as to leave only one peg on the board in the center
     hole.  Years ago, all by myself, I figured out one of the several
     possible perfect solutions.

     Fox Hunt is somewhat like Peg Jump.  In this one or two player game
     the single fox moves by jumping over the hounds, removing the jumped
     over hound.  Then the hound player can move one of his pieces.  The
     object is to get the fox cornered so it can't make a legal move before
     too many of the hounds are eliminated.

     Can't Quit is hard to describe.  Each turn starts with a roll of four
     dice, from which the player picks one of several possible pairs of
     dice numbers.  You place markers on the board, based on these numbers
     and then roll again.  When you can't make a legal move your turn
     ends.

     Backgammon is, well, Backgammon.  In Nothing But Trouble from one to
     four players move all their several men around the board from start to
     home based on the roll of dice.  Sometimes men get sent back to start
     and have to begin again.

     Board Games comes on a SSSD disk and is fairware.  The author doesn't
     specify a donation.  I think maybe $5 would be appropriate.  You can
     obtain Board Games by sending a fairware donation a disk and a paid
     return mailer directly to the author, or you can send me $1 to pay for
     the disk and postage and my vacation fund and I will send it to you.
     --------------------
     ACCESS:

     Cecure Electronics (send them your Geneve for installation of PFM+),
     P.O. Box 132, Muskego WI 53150.  Credit card orders phone
     800-959-9640.  Voice information 414-679-4343.  Fax [phone].

     Jimmy Dowell (Board Games author), 2310 Adams Ln. #68, Henderson KY
     42420, phone [phone]

     Charles Good, P.O. Box 647, Venedocia OH 45894, phone [phone],
     internet email [e-mail] or [e-mail]