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june play-2
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COMAL PlayNOTES -- June 1985 Part II
===== ========= ==== ==== ==== ==
by: Joel Ellis Rea
-------------- June 27 ---------------
Captain C couldn't make it, so the
others asked me to moderate this
meeting in his place. The first
subject was COMAL 2.0 program
protection, specifically the
PROTECT64 program found on the COMAL
2.0 Cartridge Demo Disk #3.
One of the features of COMAL is the
ability, like the advanced versions of
Microsoft BASIC, to save a program in
a special 'protected' form on the disk
so that it will LOAD and RUN, but not
be able to be LISTed or modified. In
Microsoft BASIC, this is done by a
'SAVE "filename.ext",P' command, where
the ',P' specifies Protected SAVE.
COMAL has no such command, but the
UniCOMAL guys supplied PROTECT64, a
COMAL program to do the task. Since
the encryption scheme would be of very
small value were the algorithm to
become public knowledge, PROTECT64 is
itself protected! CUGUSA has offered
a reward to the first person to send
them a source listing of PROTECT64,
but so far no one has succeeded.
Anyway, a protected program LOADs
and RUNs just like the original. It
uses less room on the disk and in
memory, since the name table and other
info needed only by the LIST command
and the editor are removed. When a
protected program is LOADed, a flag
is set that causes any attempt to use
a LIST, DISPLAY, POKE or any names
(such as Packages) to be greeted with
a 'Source Protected !!!' message.
This is good news for those who would
like to publish programs in COMAL,
but would like to keep their
programming 'tricks' a secret!
We also discussed the Star Micronics
SG-10C. It appears to be fully
compatible with the 1526 (MPS-802),
NOT the SG-10, the 1525, the MPS-801/3
or any of the interfaces! That means
it does NOT support the nice print
sizes and styles which made the SG-10
(formerly the Gemini-10x) famous!
----------- End of Article -----------