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08MIC93.TXT
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2006-10-19
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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN MICROPENDIUM
P.O. Box 1343 Round Rock TX 78680
Phone 512-255-1512
Internet jkoloen@io.com
MICRO REVIEWS for August 93 Micropendium
by Charles Good
Some of the software I review is shareware or public domain. In order
that my readers can have ready access to this software I will
sometimes offer to directly distribute some of these products (such as
TIME CALC reviewed in this column) if you send me $1. Your money pays
for a disk and postage, and the rest goes in my Florida vacation fund.
This is done strictly as a service to the TI community. I suspect it
will be a long time before my "Florida" fund will be large enough to
get me to the edge of town. Loan me your products for micro reviews
by sending them to Charles Good, P.O. Box 647, Venedocia OH 45894. My
phone is 419-667-3131. All products will eventually be returned
-----------------------
MAIL ROOM by Larry Tippett
This is Asgard's top of the line "name/address/phone" data base.
There are lots of public domain name-and-address programs for the
99/4A written in TI BASIC or Extended basic. I have been using one
for years to handle the mailing list of my user group's newsletter.
All these PD programs suffer from a bad case of the "slows". Most
will handle only a limited number of names (usually about 100) because
all the names and addresses have to be loaded into memory at the
beginning of program execution. Many have problems with foreign
addresses because there is no place to put "country" in the name and
address data. Although written in Extended Basic, MAIL ROOM deals
effectively with all these problems.
No file size problem-- MAIL ROOM saves name, address, city, state, zip
code, and phone on a disk file whose data is only loaded into memory
as needed. Thus, large files are possible. A DSSD disk can hold the
program itself AND a file of 1000 addresses, although 500 is the limit
if you want MAIL ROOM to sort the file for you. A SSSD disk can hold
the software and a file of 388 addresses, which is more than the
membership of the largest TI user group. You can print labels,
envelopes complete with your return address, or just a hard copy list
of your data. You can print these things for all the addresses in
your list, for just one address, or you can mark specific addresses in
the file and print only those addresses. The data file is in INT/FIX
128 format, but MAIL ROOM allows you to convert the file to DIS/VAR 80
for use with the mail merge option of TI Writer.
No foreign address problem-- There is plenty of room in the "zip code"
field for non standard foreign postal codes AND the full name of a
country. When printed, the zip code or country name is the last line
on the address label, and because it is indented several spaces it
stands out very strongly from the rest of the address.
Good speed for extended basic-- Although MAIL ROOM is largely written
in XB (and is thus easily modifiable by the user) there is lots of
imbeded assembly code to speed things up. Sorting in particular is
done with a nice fast assembly routine. Prior to printing you can
sort your file by any field. If you sort by name the result is
alphabetical by last name, except for addresses you specified as
"corporation" when the data was entered. Corporations will end up in
the sorted list alphabetically by first name. For example, ASGARD
SOFTWARE will be with the A's. Speed is very noticeably enhanced by
using a ramdisk. MAIL ROOM is very disk intensive, loading different
parts of itself into memory from disk and then going to disk to look
up parts of its data file. Assembly code can speed up things when
already in memory, but can't do much to speed disk access.
Other nice features-- If you have a modem you can display an address,
press <D>ial, and MAIL ROOM will dial the phone number for you. The
program package comes with two disks containing a 40 column and an 80
column version. The two versions are functionally identical, but the
80 column version really looks great on my AVPC equipped 99/4A system!
There are lots of overlaping windows. The 80 column version is
written in XB using Alexander Hulpke's X80. In my opinion, everyone
should try to upgrade to 80 columns because there is now a nice
variety of useful TI/Geneve 80 column applications. These include
MAIL ROOM, Funnelweb, Spell It, First Draft, Y.A.P.P., 80 column
Multiplan, and Telco.
Conclusions & complaints-- I like MAIL ROOM enough that I now use it
to handle the newsletter mailing list and the membership list of the
Lima User Group. The only other TI software comparable in terms of
ease of use, speed, and list size is the RAMBO specific mail list
program (I can't remember its title) written by Gary Bowser. I do
have a couple of complaints about MAIL ROOM, however. The printed
documentation does not explain how to set the program up to run off of
some drive other than DSK1, and the CONFIGURE option from within the
software won't do this either. With no hints in the docs, it took me
a long time to get MAIL ROOM to run off of my ramdisk as DSK5. I
finally discovered that there are 4 or 5 separate parts of MAIL ROOM
that you need to OLD into memory, change the XB code, and then SAVE
back to disk. There are REM statements near the beginning (but
confusingly not exactly at the beginning) of each program segment that
tell you which XB program lines to modify. This procedure should be
spelled out in detail in the printed documentation, or at least in a
-README file on 40 and 80 column program disks. My other gripe is
that removing an entire address record (deleting a name) is difficult,
though not impossible.
MAIL ROOM requires only a minimal SSSD disk system with 32K. An 80
column device (or Geneve), printer, and modem are usefully supported.
It is available for $14.95 plus shipping from most TI dealers and from
Asgard Software, 1423 Flagship Dr., Woodbridge VA 22192, phone
703-491-1267.
------------------------
TIME CALC by Bruce Harrison
The TI community has been greatly enriched by the efforts of Bruce
Harrison. Assembly programmers have told me that his assembly column
in Micropendium is first class. Also, he has contributed lots of
useful assembly language and assembly/XB hybrid software to the public
domain for us to enjoy for free. His latest public domain offering is
TIME CALC.
Have you ever tried to do simple math with time? For example, lets
say you want to fill up one side of a C60 cassette tape with specific
music tracks from your CD or record collection so you can play the
music in your car. Each track of music has a time listed in minutes
and seconds; 7:25, 2:15, etc. How many tracks can you fit on a 30
minute C60 tape side? Simple: just add up the individual times on a
pocket calculator. Well..it really isn't very simple. Just try it
some time. The problem is that pocket calculators do math using a
base of 10 whereas time has a base of 12, or 24, or 60. TIME CALC
does this work for you with an accuracy of one second. TIME CALC does
the following using either 12 or 24 hour time:
--Elapsed Time: Input start time, input stop time, and you get
"elapsed time".
--Cumulative Sum: Input a time and either add or subtract it from the
running total. You can keep adding and/or subtracting from this
running total indefinately.
--Time Multiply or Divide: Input a time and then divide it by a number
such as 3.5 or just 3. For example, 5 hours and 35 minutes divided by
3 equals 1 hour 51 minutes and 40 seconds. Just try that on a
calculator!
Inputting time is easy because you can ignore minutes and seconds
if you want. 12 and <enter> is the same as typing 12/00/00 and
<enter>. As a comparison, the TIME command in MS-DOS usually requires
hours, minutes, and seconds even if the minutes and seconds are zero.
I like TIMECALC enough to keep it on my ramdisk and listed on my
Funnelweb XB menu. You can get a copy by sending me $1 to the address
above carefully wrapped in a piece of paper upon which is written your
name, address, and a request for TIMECALC.