Shareware Overload

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ Shareware Overload / ShartewareOverload.cdr / database / hepcat.zip / HEPCAT.EXE / lha / HEPCATJR.DOC < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1989-11-13 | 58KB | 1,241 lines

HEPCAT Junior (HUG Engineer's and Programmer's CAlculation Tool) Version 0.5 by Patrick Swayne HUG Software Engineer Heath Users' Group P. O. Box 217 Benton Harbor, MI 49022-0217 (616) 982-3463 Table of Contents Introduction to HEPCAT Junior .................... 1 Definitions ...................................... 2 System Requirements .............................. 2 Installing HEPCAT ................................ 2 Activating HEPCAT ................................ 3 Using HEPCAT: A Tutorial ......................... 4 Part 1 -- The HEPCAT Display ................... 4 Part 2 -- Entering Numbers and Commands ........ 5 Part 3 -- Calculations ......................... 9 Part 4 -- Memory and Functions ................ 13 Part 5 -- The ASCII Table ..................... 14 Using HEPSETJR to Make Changes .................. 14 Special Considerations for Certain Programs ..... 16 Graphic Video Modes ........................... 17 Sluggish Performance .......................... 17 HEPCAT and Other Pop-Ups ...................... 18 Changing the Activation Key ..................... 18 Removing HEPCAT From Memory ..................... 19 Table of HEPCAT Operations, Functions, and Commands .................... Separate File Distribution These copyrighted programs are provided free of charge. They may be distributed freely as long as no charge is made for the pro- grams themselves, or any software package with which they are included. The programs and all related documentation files must be distributed together, and may not be modified. A nominal charge may be made for the disk containing these programs. Warranty The programs included herewith are provided AS IS without any warranty, expressed or implied, including but not limited to fitness for a particular purpose. Disclaimer In no event will the Heath/Zenith Users' Group or Patrick Swayne be liable to you for any damages, including any lost profits, lost savings, or other incidental or consequential damages aris- ing out of the use of or inability to use these programs, even if the Heath/Zenith Users' Group or Patrick Swayne has been advised of the possibility of such damages, or for any claim by any other party. Instruction Manual for HEPCAT (tm) Junior Introduction to HEPCAT Junior HEPCAT is an acronym for HUG Engineer's and Programmer's CAlcula- tion Tool. HEPCAT is a memory resident program, which means that it installs itself into your computer's memory when you run it, and remains there ready for use at any time, even while you are running other programs. When you enter a special activation key sequence, the HEPCAT display window pops up on your screen, and HEPCAT takes over the keyboard, so that you can enter calcula- tions and see them displayed on the HEPCAT window. HEPCAT Junior is an introductory version of HEPCAT. It can perform all of the same calculations (except conversions) as its "big brother". However, the full version of HEPCAT offers some unique features found in no other pop-up calculator: 1. The full version of HEPCAT is concurrent. That means that when you pop it up over a running program, the program continues to run. If you pop it up over Lotus 1-2-3 (tm) while it is calculating a large spread sheet, Lotus will continue to work while you use HEPCAT. HEPCAT Junior is not concurrent, and the program you pop it up over will "freeze" while it is popped up. 2. The full version of HEPCAT can protect the keyboard inter- rupt it uses to detect its activation key from being "clobbered" by an application program. This feature allows it to pop up over "difficult" programs like Microsoft Windows (tm). HEPCAT Junior does not protect the keyboard interrupt. 3. The full version of HEPCAT can pop up while your computer is in any standard CGA, EGA, VGA, or Hercules (tm) graphic video mode, as will as when it is in text modes. You can pop it up over Windows or AutoCAD (tm) while they are running in EGA or VGA graphic modes. The graphic screen is not altered, and the part of the screen under the HEPCAT window is restored when you exit from HEPCAT. HEPCAT Junior can only pop up while your computer is in a text mode or a CGA graphic mode. 4. The full version of HEPCAT can perform the following conver- sions: degrees -- radians, Celcius -- Fahrenheit, centimeters -- inches, meters -- feet, kilometers -- miles, grams -- ounces, kilograms -- pounds, milliliters -- fluid ounces, liters -- quarts. Each conversion works both ways. In other words, you can convert feet to meters or meters to feet. If you would like to purchase the full version of HEPCAT, it is available for $37.50 ($35 plus 3.50 s/h) from 1 Heath/Zenith Users' Group P. O. Box 217 Benton Harbor, MI 49022-0217 Ask for HUG part no. 885-3045-37 if you need a 5.25" disk, or 885-3045-80 if you need a 3.5" disk. Phone orders are accepted using Visa, Master Card, or American Express. The number is 616- 982-3463. HEPCAT Junior (hereafter referred to as HEPCAT) is actually two calculators in one: an engineer's floating point calculator with several built-in functions, and a programmer's binary calculator that works in several radixes and has a built-in ASCII table. The HEPCAT package also includes a parameter setting program that lets you alter certain parameters of HEPCAT, such as the display colors in the window. Definitions Within this manual, the term PC-compatible will be used to de- scribe any computer that is compatible with an IBM PC (tm), including all current Heath or Zenith Data Systems models. The term Z-100 will be used to describe the discontinued Heath H-100 and ET-100 (with ETA-100 expansion) or Zenith Data Systems Z-100 dual processor series computers. The term system disk refers to the disk that is used to start up MS-DOS (or PC-DOS) when you have first turned on your computer or reset it. if you have a hard disk in your computer, it will probably be the system disk. You should be familiar with general MS-DOS usage before you begin to use this or any other program. Consult your MS-DOS manual if you do not understand terms like PATH or AUTOEXEC. Programs like HEPCAT that remain resident in memory are often called "background programs", but in this manual I will sometimes refer to HEPCAT as being in the foreground while it is popped up, and to the program over which it is popped up as being in the background. System Requirements To use HEPCAT, you need a PC-compatible or Z-100 computer, any version of MS-DOS or Z-DOS, and at least 128k of program memory. HEPCAT itself uses about 12k of memory on either a PC-compatible or a Z-100. Installing HEPCAT To install HEPCAT, just copy the files HEPCATJR.COM and HEPSETJR.COM from this package to your system disk. If you have 2 a hard disk, place the files in your root directory, or a direc- tory pointed to by your PATH statement. If you have a Z-100 computer, copy the file ZHEPJR.COM instead of HEPCATJR.COM, and rename it to HEPCATJR.COM after you copy it. If you want HEPCAT to be loaded into memory automatically every time you boot up your computer, add a line HEPCATJR to your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. After you copy the HEPCAT program files to your system disk, HEPCAT will be ready for you to load into memory and use. If added an AUTOEXEC.BAT command to load HEPCAT, reset and reboot your computer, and HEPCAT will be loaded into memory for you. To load HEPCAT manually, ensure that you are logged on to your system disk, and enter HEPCATJR at the system prompt, and hit Return. If you do not wish to make HEPCAT resident in memory this time but would just like to try it out, you can run it in a special test mode. To do this, enter HEPCATJR TEST at the system prompt, and press Return. The HEPCAT display will appear in the upper right corner of your screen, and you will be able to perform all calculations that you can when HEPCAT is installed normally. You can perform many of the tutorial exer- cises in this manual with HEPCAT in the test mode. To exit from the test mode, press the Escape key. Note: Once HEPCAT has been loaded and is resident in your computer's memory, you cannot use the test mode. Activating HEPCAT Once you have loaded HEPCAT into your computer's memory, you can activate it at any time by pressing a special activation key sequence. To active (or "pop up") HEPCAT on a PC-compatible com- puter, press and release the right Shift key three times. To activate it on a Z-100 computer, press the Break key twice. (Note: A procedure to change the activation key is presented later in this document, but it is not recommended that you do it, especially in the case of the Z-100 version of HEPCAT.) When you enter the activation key sequence, the HEPCAT display window will appear in the upper right corner of your screen when you activate it, and it will look like this: 3 HEPCAT version 1.5 by PS 0 D/R: D Rad: F Acc: X Op: CLR If the display is hard to see on your screen, you may want to change the display colors. A utility called HEPSETJR has been provided to allow you to do that and make other changes. HEP- SETJR is described in the section "Using HEPSETJR to Make Changes" later in this document. You can pop up HEPCAT while you are running many different pro- grams on your computer. For now, however, you should confine yourself to popping up HEPCAT over the DOS only (that is, while the system prompt is showing) until you have read this manual completely. You can release control from HEPCAT to the currently running program in two ways. You can release control entirely, remove the HEPCAT display, and restore the original background display, by pressing the Escape key. You can also release control but leave the HEPCAT display on the screen by pressing the F1 key. Using HEPCAT: A Tutorial This section of the manual is a tutorial on how to use HEPCAT. It is assumed that HEPCAT has been installed on your system disk and is loaded into memory and ready to use. You will be instructed to enter numbers and commands, and the display changes that result will be indicated. From time to time rules of operation will be presented that describe what HEPCAT does in a certain situation. Note: If you are using TYPE HEPCATJR.DOC | MORE to view this file, you should exit from TYPE now (type Ctrl-C), load HEPCAT into memory, and start TYPEing this file again. Then you can pop up HEPCAT and try each example as you read the file. Part 1 -- The HEPCAT Display Enter the activation key sequence for your version of HEPCAT. The display window will appear in the upper right corner of your screen, one line down from the top of the screen. The display is down one line to allow room for the HUG screen clock, an accesso- ry included with the full version of HEPCAT. If you chose not to include the screen clock, you may want to move the display window up to the top line. The section on "Using HEPSETJR" will de- scribe how to do that. On the top line of the window, you will see the message "HEPCAT version 1.5 by PS", and a zero. This line is where numbers you enter into HEPCAT are displayed, as well as the answers it calcu- lates. At the left end of the line, the names of built-in func- tions that you use will be displayed. For example, if you take the square root of a number, SQRT will be displayed. 4 On the next line, four prompts are displayed. The first prompt at the left end is "D/R:". There will be a D after this prompt if the calculator is set to use degrees for angle measurement, or an R if it is set to use Radians. It is initially set to de- grees. To change this setting, press the D key. Try it now and watch what happens. Make sure that the prompt shows D before you go on. The next prompt on the second line is "Rad:". Here, the current radix or floating point display mode is displayed. HEPCAT starts out in the floating point mode, with a normal floating point display, which is indicated by the F besides the prompt. We will show you how to change this later. The next prompt is "Acc:". This shows you which of the two accumulators in HEPCAT, X and Y, is displayed on the top line. The number displayed on the top line is always the content of one of the accumulators. The next prompt is "Op:". It indicates the operation that HEPCAT is commanded to perform. For example, if you are going to add two numbers, a + will be shown here when you press the + key. At first the display shows CLR, because no operation has been en- tered. Part 2 -- Entering Numbers and Commands You can enter numbers into HEPCAT using either the numerical keypad or the main keyboard. On PC-compatible computers, it does not matter what the setting of Num Lock is while HEPCAT is popped up. The keys on the keypad will always produce numbers when they are pressed without a Shift key down (except in the ASCII table mode, described later). When you hold down a Shift key, the numbered keys on the keypad will always perform other functions (arrow keys, etc.). While HEPCAT is active, you can use either the left or right Shift key or the Alt key for shifted functions. The Caps Lock key also has no effect while HEPCAT has control. For example, the built-in function that calculates the sine of an angle is always activated by pressing the S key, and the arc sine function is always activated by pressing Shift-S (or Alt-S). If you have a keyboard with separate arrow keys (separate from the numerical keypad) on your PC-compatible computer, you can use those arrow keys without having to hold down a shift key. On a Z-100 computer, you should release the Caps Lock key if it is down while you are using HEPCAT, because it does make a dif- ference on how the main keyboard is interpreted. If you type S while the Caps Lock key is down, the arc sine function will be performed regardless of whether you held down a Shift key or not. When you need to use an arrow key on the Z-100, you can either use the separate marked arrow keys by themselves (no Shift needed), or you can hold down a Shift key and use the 2, 4, 6, or 8 keys. 5 In the following exercises, when you are instructed to press an arrow key, you should hold down either Shift key or the Alt key if your computer is a PC-compatible that does not have separate arrow keys. You can use the separate marked arrow keys if your computer is a Z-100, or you can hold down a Shift key and use the 2, 4, 6 or 8 keys of the keypad. Here are some exercises to familiarize you with entering numbers and commands in HEPCAT. If you have already been playing with it, press the Back Space key until "CLR" appears after the "Op:" prompt in the lower right corner of the window. Type the numbers 1, 2, and 3. If this is the first time you have entered any numbers, you will see the message "HEPCAT version 1.0 by PS" disappear as soon as you type the first number. The display should now look like this: 123 D/R: D Rad: F Acc: X Op: CLR Now press the Back Space key three times. Notice that the numbers are removed from the display in the reverse order as you typed them. Now type 123 again, and press the up arrow key. The display should look like this: 1.2300000 E+02 D/R: D Rad: S Acc: X Op: CLR You have changed to the scientific notation mode, in which numbers are always displayed as a mantissa and exponent. Now press the up arrow again. The display should look like this: 123.00000 E+00 D/R: D Rad: E Acc: X Op: CLR This is the engineering notation mode. It is like the scientific notation mode except that the exponent is always forced to a multiple of 3. Now press the down arrow key three times. You will go back through the scientific and normal floating point modes, and wind up at a display that looks like this: 123.00 D/R: D Rad: F2 Acc: X Op: CLR This is the fixed point mode, and the "F2" after the "Rad:" prompt shows the number of places after the decimal. Press the left arrow key 6 times, and the display should look like this: 123.00000000 D/R: D Rad: F8 Acc: X Op: CLR You can set the number of places after the decimal to any value from 2 to 8 using the left or right arrow keys. If you try to go beyond these limits, nothing will happen. Press the left arrow key again and notice that the display remains at 8 places after 6 the decimal. Leave the decimal places set to 8, and press the down arrow key. The display will look like this: 7B D/R: D Rad: 16 Acc: X Op: CLR You have just switched from the floating point calculator to the binary calculator, and set the radix to base 16 (hexadecimal). Notice that the number 123 (decimal) is automatically converted to its hexadecimal equivalent. Press the down arrow key 8 more times, noticing what happens each time. You will see the 6 radixes that the binary calculator supports (hexadecimal, dec- imal, split octal, octal, tetral (base 4), and binary). At the sixth press of the down arrow key, HEPCAT will reenter the float- ing point calculator and switch to the engineering notation mode. After the eighth press, the display should look like this: 123 D/R: D Rad: F Acc: X Op: CLR You are back at the normal floating point display. Now press the Back Space key once. This time, the entire number disappears with only one press. Back Space rule no. 1: If a number on the display is the result of your entry, Back Space will remove it one digit for each key press. If the number is the result of something HEPCAT has done, one press of Back Space will remove the entire number. Now try to enter 123456789. The display will look like this: 12345678 D/R: D Rad: F Acc: X Op: CLR The floating point calculator only allows 8 significant digits. When you tried to enter the 9, it wasn't accepted. Now type a 0, and the display should look like this: 1.2345678 E+08 D/R: D Rad: F Acc: X Op: CLR Even though the calculator only allows 8 significant digits, it will allow you to enter zeros after the 8th digit to make the number larger. Since the display cannot show more than 8 digits in this mode, it automatically changes to scientific notation to show the large number. Now press the down arrow key, and the display should look like this: OVER D/R: D Rad: F8 Acc: X Op: CLR The fixed point display can only show a maximum of 16 digits. Since it is set to show 8 places after the decimal, it is not able to show the 9-digit number that is now in the accumulator. Press the right arrow key once, and you should have: 7 123456780.0000000 D/R: D Rad: F7 Acc: X Op: CLR Now the number can be displayed within the limits allowed. You should be aware that even though the calculator can show a number of more than 8 digits in this mode, it still can handle only 8 significant digits. Press the Back Space key to clear the dis- play, and the up arrow key to return to the normal floating point mode. Enter the number 1.2345678 and try to enter an additional 0. Since trailing zeros on a decimal number do not affect the value of the number, they are not allowed. Press the Back Space key until the number is cleared back to zero. Now, enter .012345678, and the entire number will be accepted. Zeros that fall between the decimal point and the first significant digit are not them- selves significant, but change the value of the number, so they are allowed. Again, press the back space key until the number is cleared to zero. Enter the number 123E23. The display should now look like this: 1.2300000 E+25 D/R: D Rad: F Acc: X Op: CLR You can enter numbers containing exponents directly, but if they are not in standard scientific format, they will be converted as you enter them. Therefore, when you entered 123E23, which means 123 E+23, it was translated to 1.23 E+25. It is not necessary to type the + key after the E if the exponent is positive, but you must type a - if the exponent is negative. Now press the space bar, and the display should show: -1.2300000 E+25 D/R: D Rad: F Acc: X Op: CLR The space bar is used to change the sign of the number on the display. The - key is used only for entering negative exponents, and for subtraction. Press the down arrow key 4 times. You should now be in the split octal radix of the binary mode. The display will show zero, because the floating point number was too large to convert to binary (32 bits). Type an 8, and notice that nothing happens. HEPCAT will not allow you to enter a digit not in the current radix. Only 0-7 are allowed in octal. Now type 737. The dis- play shows: 337 D/R: D Rad: 8S Acc: X Op: CLR In the split octal radix, only 0-3 is allowed in every third place, and so the 7 is truncated to a 3. But suppose that the number that the number we intended to type was 7377, which is a legal split octal number. Go ahead and type one more 7. The 8 display will now show: 007 377 D/R: D Rad: 8S Acc: X Op: CLR Now the four digits that we entered, 7377, are shown correctly. (Notice that HEPCAT leaves a space between each byte in the split octal radix.) The first 7 entered was truncated when it fell into the third place, but it was restored when the final digit was entered. Keep this in mind when you enter split octal num- bers. It may not appear correctly on the display until you have entered the complete number. However, whether the number you entered is legal or illegal (and truncated), the number shown on the display will be the one used in calculations. Now press the up arrow key twice, and press the space bar. Be- fore you pressed the space bar, the number in the display was 7FF, which is the hexadecimal equivalent of 3733 in split octal. After you press the space bar, the display shows: FFFF F801 D/R: D Rad: 8S Acc: X Op: CLR This is the two's complement of 7FF. When you negate a number in a non-decimal radix, the two's complement will be shown. If you want to, use the arrow keys to see what this number looks like in the other radixes and display modes, and then go to the normal floating point (Rad: F) mode and press Back Space to clear the number to zero in preparation for the next section. Part 3 -- Calculations Ensure that HEPCAT is set to the floating point display mode and that it is cleared. The number on the top line should be 0, and the operation prompt should show CLR. Now without holding down a shift key, press the +/= key on the main keyboard. Notice that the operation changes to +. While HEPCAT has control, the +/= key produces + whether you use a shift key or not. So what does HEPCAT use for an equal key? We'll get to that a bit later. Now press the - key that is right next to the +/= key, and the operation will change to -. If you have a PC-compatible, press the keypad + key (at the right edge of the keyboard). If you have a Z-100, press the keypad Enter key. The display should show + at the operation prompt. On a Z-100, the keypad Enter key is a + key while HEPCAT has control. Now, press the keypad - key, and the operation prompt should show - again. How hold down a Shift key (don't forget that you can use Alt for a shift key on PC-compatibles) and press the keypad + key (keypad Enter key on a Z-100). Notice that the operation prompt now shows *. Hold down a Shift key again, and press the keypad - key. The operation prompt should now be /. You can perform the four basic math operations, +, -, *, and /, all from the keypad with HEPCAT by using Shift-plus (Shift-Enter on a Z-100) for multiplication and Shift-minus for division. 9 If you have a PC-compatible, press the Prt Sc key, and the opera- tion prompt will show *. On either computer type, press the \ key, and the prompt will show /. It should be obvious by now that there several keys you can use for the four basic math operations. For +, you can use the +/= key or the keypad + (keypad Enter) key. For -, you can use the main keyboard - key or the keypad - key. For *, you can use Shift-8 on the main keyboard, Shift-plus (Shift-Enter) on the keypad, or the Prt Sc on PC-compatibles. For /, you can use the main keyboard / key, the \ key, or shift-minus on the keypad. Of course, if your keyboard has separate * and / keys on the keypad, you can use those also. Note: In the binary mode, you cannot use \ for division. The \ key is used for the modulus operation. Now press the Back Space key so that CLR shows at the operation prompt, and then press 2, +, 3, and +. The display should look like this: = 5 D/R: D Rad: F Acc: X Op: + Notice that the answer to 2+3 is displayed, and also that an equal sign (=) has appeared on the top line. Now press 1 and -, and the display will show: = 6 D/R: D Rad: F Acc: X Op: - The display now shows the answer to 2+3+1, but the operation prompt now shows a -. Now press 1 and +, and the display will show: = 5 D/R: D Rad: F Acc: X Op: + This is the answer to 2+3+1-1. If what we have done seems a bit confusing to you right now, consider what happens when you work with an ordinary (infix notation) pocket calculator. If you key in 2, +, 3, and +, as soon as you type the second + the calcula- tor will apply the first + to the two numbers typed in, and display the result. That is exactly how HEPCAT works! The fact is that on an ordinary pocket calculator, the = key is not needed at all. Instead of typing = when you want to get the result of a calculation entered, you can type any one of the operation keys (+, -, * or /). Try entering the same sequence into a pocket calculator that we entered into HEPCAT. Enter 2, +, 3, +, 1, -, 1, +, and see if you don't get exactly the same result that you got with HEPCAT. But if you don't feel comfortable without an equal key, just use the +/= key on the main keyboard whenever you feel that you should press =. You will actually be entering +, but the result will be the same. You could enter our sample calculation as 2, +, 3, =, +, 1, =, -, 1, =, on either the pocket calculator or in HEPCAT, but you will have used two unnecessary 10 keystrokes. Now press Back Space once, and notice that the number is cleared to zero, and the operation is cleared to CLR. Back Space rule no. 2: If the number on the display is the result of a calculation (as indicated by the = sign on the top line), one press of the Back Space key will perform a master clear. That is, the number will be cleared to zero, and the operation will be cleared to CLR. Now enter 22+33, and watch closely what happens after each key is pressed. When you type the 22, only the number display changes. When you type the +, the operation prompt changes. When you type the 33, the number display changes to 33, and the accumulator at the "Acc:" prompt changes to Y. Accumulator entry rule: Any time you type a number after you have typed an operation key, that number is placed into the Y accumulator. At other times, the X accumulator is used. Now press the Back Space key twice. The number on the display is cleared to zero. Now, type the - key. The display will look like this: 22 D/R: D Rad: F Acc: X Op: - Notice that the operation changed to -, the accumulator changed back to X, and the number 22 (which is in the X accumulator) reappeared. Now type 33 again, and watch the accumulator change back to Y. Use Back Space again, but this time press it three times. The display will show this: 0 D/R: D Rad: F Acc: X Op: CLR Back Space rule no. 3: When you clear a number in the Y accumu- lator to zero using Back Space, you can then enter a new opera- tion. When you do, the accumulator will switch back to X, and the display will show the number in the X accumulator. However, if you press Back Space one more time after clearing the Y accu- mulator to zero, it will perform a master clear. Now enter the calculation 22/0= (remember that you can use any operation key for =). The display will look like this: ERROR D/R: D Rad: F Acc: X Op: CLR Any time you try something that HEPCAT cannot do, such as divi- sion by zero, it performs a master clear, except that the word "ERROR" is placed in the display instead of the number zero. You can either press Back Space to get rid of the ERROR, or you can just enter a new number. The first digit typed will get rid of 11 the ERROR display. Enter the keys 1, <, 1, and =. The display will look like this (assuming you used +/= for the = key): = 1.4142135 45.000002 D/R: D Rad: F Acc: X Op: + The "<" that you typed is the operator for rectangular to polar coordinate conversion. This operation results in two answers, both of which are displayed. The r value is displayed first, and is in the X accumulator. The theta value is displayed next, and is in the Y accumulator. The X accumulator is the one that would be used in subsequent calculations, so if you were to enter 5, =, for example, you would be adding 5 to 1.4142135. Suppose you wanted to use the theta value in the next calculation? You can, just by typing X. That will cause the values in the X and Y accumulators to be swapped. Try it now, and the screen will show: 45.000002 D/R: D Rad: F Acc: X Op: + The r value simply disappeared, since the HEPCAT has gone back to the normal display method of showing only the active accumulator on the screen. The active accumulator is X, which now contains the theta value instead of the R value it held previously. You can also type X to swap two values that you have entered yourself before completing a calculation. In addition to the special < operator, HEPCAT also supports the # operator, which performs polar to rectangular conversion. To use it, enter the r value, the # operator, and the theta value. This operation also causes two numbers to be displayed. The first number is the X value, which will be in the X accumulator. The second number is the Y value, in the Y accumulator. The two special operations, < and #, along with ^ (X to Y power) and the standard 4 (+, -, *, and /) make up the operations available in the floating point calculator. The binary calcula- tor supports the standard four along with \ (modulus), & (logical AND), ^ (logical OR), # (logical XOR), L (shift left) and R (shift right). Included with HEPCAT is a "Table of HEPCAT Opera- tions, Functions, and Commands" that will list all of these and other HEPCAT features. In addition to the L and R operators, HEPCAT provides another special way to shift a number left or right. To illustrate it, press the down arrow key twice to change to the binary mode, hexadecimal radix, and press Back Space to clear the calculator. Then enter FFFF, and press the left arrow key once. The display will show: 1 FFFE D/R: D Rad: 16 Acc: X Op: CLR 12 This is the result of shifting FFFF left by one bit. You can shift any number right or left while HEPCAT is in the binary mode just by pressing the right or left arrow keys. Part 4 -- Memory and Functions HEPCAT contains 10 memory cells into which you can store the results of calculations at any time. To access the memory cells, you type M followed by the cell number and a memory operation code. The operation codes are S (store), R (recall), C (clear), X (exchange cell with accumulator), + (add accumulator to cell), and - (subtract accumulator from cell). The 10 memory cells are numbered 0 through 9, and if you are accessing memory cell 0, you can leave off the cell number. To illustrate, enter M, 0, and S, and then press Back Space to clear the display. Now, enter M, and R, and the number that was on the display before you cleared it will reappear. Now press the up arrow key twice to go back to the normal floating point mode, and press Back Space to clear the display. Now enter the number 123, and press M, 1, and S. Now, type M twice, and the screen should show: M 0B 1F 2C 3C 4C 5C 6C 7C 8C 9C D/R: D Rad: F Acc: X Op: CLR Typing M twice calls up a memory map that shows you how each cell is being used. Each cell is listed by its cell number, followed by a C if the cell is clear, a B if it holds a binary number, and an F if it holds a floating point number. In our example, cell 0 has a binary number in it, cell 1 contains a floating point number, and the other cells are cleared. When you call up the memory map, you can complete a memory operation by entering a cell number and operation code, an operation code only for cell 0, or you can just press Back Space to remove the memory map and restore the previous number. Now type R, and the screen should show: 131070 D/R: D Rad: F Acc: X Op: CLR This is the decimal equivalent of 1FFFE, the number that was stored into cell 0. Whenever you recall a binary number while you are in the floating point mode, it is converted to floating point as it is recalled into the active accumulator. This pro- cess also works the other way (when possible), so that floating point numbers recalled by the binary calculator are converted to binary. However, the MX, M+ and M- operations do not work like this. MX only works if the cell contains the same type of number as the accumulator, and M+ and M- only work if the cell is either empty or contains the same type of number as the accumulator. Type Q, and the display will show: SQRT 362.0359 D/R: D Rad: F Acc: X Op: CLR 13 You have just taken the square root of 131070. The square root function is just one of the functions built into HEPCAT. You will find a list of them in the "Table of HEPCAT Operations, Functions, and Commands". Part 5 -- The ASCII Table Press Back Space to clear the display, press the down arrow key twice (to switch to radix hexadecimal), and type T. The display will now switch to the ASCII table display. The organization of the information in this table will be different depending on the type of computer you have. If you have a PC compatible, each entry in the table will show the value of the character in deci- mal (using 3 digits with leading zeros), the value in hexadeci- mal, the printable form of the character (which may be either a graphic symbol or a normal alpha-numeric character), the mnemonic representation, if any, of the character, and the control desig- nation, if any, of the character. On a Z-100, each entry will show the value in decimal (3 digits), the value in hexadecimal, either the printable form of the char- acter or the control designation, and either the mnemonic or the H-19 graphic equivalent. You must have an ALTCHAR.SYS file on your system disk that defines the H-19 graphic characters in order for HEPCAT to display them correctly. You can move around in the ASCII table as follows: Press the keypad 3 (or Page Down) key to move forward 4 places and the keypad 9 (or Page Up) key to move backward 4 places. Press the keypad 8 key (or the separate up arrow if you have one) to move backward 1 place, or the keypad 2 key (or separate down arrow) to move forward one place. Try moving around in the table for a while. Press the Back Space key once, and the HEPCAT display will revert to normal. Now enter the number 20, and type T to enter the ASCII table again. This time, the table will start with 20 (hexadecimal) or 32 (decimal). Any time that you need to see the ASCII equivalent of a number while you are in the binary calcula- tor mode, just type T, and the ASCII table will appear, starting with the number that was on the screen. If the number is larger than the maximum ASCII value supported (255 on a PC-compatible or 127 on a Z-100), the modulo 256 or 128 value of that number will be used as the starting point of the table. This concludes the tutorial on HEPCAT. If you want to, press Escape now to return HEPCAT to the background, quietly waiting for its next assignment. Using HEPSETJR to Make Changes A program called HEPSETJR is provided with HEPCAT that lets you change a number of parameters once HEPCAT has been loaded into memory. When you ran INSTALL, HEPSETJR was automatically copied 14 to your disk. To use it, enter HEPSETJR xx[,xx,xx,xx...] where xx is one of the following: AR Set angle measurement to radians. AD Set angle measurement to degrees. This is the default setting. R2 Set HEPCAT to come up in the binary mode, with the radix set to binary. R4 Set the radix to tetral (base 4). R8 Set the radix to octal. R8S Set the radix to split octal. R10 Set the radix to decimal (binary mode). R16 Set the radix to hexadecimal. RFn Set the floating point display mode to fix point, with n places after the decimal. Use 2 to 8 for n. RF Set the normal floating point mode. This is the de- fault setting. RS Set the display mode to scientific notation. RE Set the display mode to engineering notation. The above settings will take effect only if HEPSETJR is run before HEPCAT has been popped up for the first time after you have loaded it into memory. The following settings can be used any time. D Disable HEPCAT. Use this command if you have to run a program that requires you to repeatedly press the right shift key (or Break key on a Z-100). HEPCAT will not pop up while it is disabled. E Enable HEPCAT. Use this command to turn HEPCAT back on after you have used HEPSETJR D. Cfb Set the display colors to the values f and b, where f is the foreground color value, and b is the background color value, and f and b are hexadecimal numbers. For a PC-compatible computer, the acceptable values are: 0 black 4 red 8 dk gray C br red 1 blue 5 magenta 9 br blue D br mag. 2 green 6 brown A br green E yellow 3 cyan 7 gray B br cyan F white Use only 0-7 for background colors. On a Z-100 comput- er, the acceptable values are: 0 black 4 green 1 blue 5 cyan 2 red 6 yellow 3 magenta 7 white On a PC-compatible with a monochrome text display card or Hercules-compatible monochrome card, the following foreground and background combinations can be used with 15 the results shown: 70 normal intensity characters on black 07 black characters on a light background 10 underlined characters on black F0 intense characters on black 10 underlined characters on black 90 intense underlined characters on black. The default settings are yellow on red for a PC-compat- ible with a color card, black on a light back ground for a PC-compatible with a monochrome text display, and black on cyan for a Z-100. See the section "Special Considerations for Certain Programs" for more informa- tion on colors. Tn Set the top line of the HEPCAT window to line n, where n is 0 through 9. The default is 1. On a Z-100, only 0 or 1 can be used. You can add a line to your AUTOEXEC.BAT file to cause HEPCAT to pop up with any of the above settings different from the defaults. For example, if you wanted it to come up with angle measurement set to radians, the display mode set to scientific notation, and the display colors set to white on a red background (for a PC-compatible), the HEPSETJR command would be: HEPSETJR AR,RS,CF4 With the above line added to your AUTOEXEC.BAT file (after the HEPCAT line), HEPCAT will pop up with the new settings. See "Modifying Your AUTOEXEC.BAT". Note: Since the AD and RF settings are the default, and since the angle measurement and radix can only be changed with HEPSETJR before HEPCAT has been popped up, these settings actually do nothing. They were added to HEPSETJR in case the defaults change in a future version. After you enter a valid HEPSETJR command it will display the cur- rent settings for some of the settable parameters like this: HEPCAT is enabled. FG Color=E, BG Color=4, Top Row=1 If you want to see the settings without changing anything, enter HEPSETJR ?. If you enter an invalid command in the HEPSETJR command line, or if you run HEPSETJR with no argument, it will display a help screen listing the available settings. Special Considerations for Certain Programs HEPCAT was designed so that it can be popped up over a greater variety of programs than many other pop-up utilities (even HEPCAT Junior). Here are some things you are likely to encounter be- 16 cause of this. Graphic Video Modes The following discussion applies only to PC-compatible computers. The colors mentioned previously in the discussion about HEPSETJR are valid only for the normal text modes of CGA, EGA and VGA video displays. If the computer is in the CGA four color graphic mode, the colors in the HEPCAT display will be different. The background color will always be either black or the color of the existing background, so you should not set the foreground color to black if you expect to use HEPCAT while the display is in a graphic mode. The color of the characters in the HEPCAT window will be determined by the last two bits in the color's numerical value, as shown in the following chart: Bits Palette 0 colors Palette 1 colors 01 green cyan 10 red magenta 11 yellow white Therefore, you should avoid using a black, red, dark gray, or bright red as a foreground color if you want to be able to see the HEPCAT display while it is popped up during a CGA four color graphic mode. Sluggish Performance HEPCAT is designed to work as safely as possible, no matter what the program it is popped up over is doing. If it detects that a DOS function call (other than keyboard input) is in progress while it is trying to respond to your input, it will wait until the DOS is finished before completing your request. That is what makes it safe to use HEPCAT while your compiler is grinding away at a job, even if there is disk activity. If the background program calls DOS over and over in a tight loop, HEPCAT could be sluggish in responding to your commands. This could happen if you pop it up over a program that maintains some kind of time display on the screen, since the program is probably calling the DOS in a loop to find out what time it is. One program like this is the Dbase III + Assistant (tm). When HEPCAT is popped up over it, performance is a little sluggish, but it is still usable. Another program, which seems to use a tighter loop, is Perks, while the main menu is active. If you load HEPCAT before Perks, you will be able to pop up HEPCAT while Perks is popped up. However, if you pop up HEPCAT while the Perks main menu is active, you will find HEPCAT's response quite sluggish. If you use HEPCAT while another Perks window is ac- tive, such as the Notepad, HEPCAT will respond normally. HEPCAT stores your keyboard input in a buffer, and will act upon it eventually even if response is sluggish. The buffer holds up to 20 keystrokes. 17 HEPCAT and Other Pop-Ups HEPCAT can co-exist with most other pop-up programs that you are likely to use. You may have to adjust the order in which your pop-ups are loaded to get all of them to work properly, but it is usually best to load HEPCAT first. Some pop-up programs use the BIOS keyboard interrupt (on PC- compatible computers) to detect their hot key, instead of the hardware keyboard interrupt as HEPCAT does. These pop-ups cannot be popped up over as many programs as HEPCAT, and they can some- times interfere with the operation of HEPCAT. This usually hap- pens if you pop up one of them at the DOS prompt, exit it, and immediately try to pop up HEPCAT. HEPCAT will not appear, and the system will seem to be "hung". If this happens, press the Escape key, then press the Back Space key and try HEPCAT again. Most of the pop-up programs that have been published in PC Maga- zine (such as POP-CAL) are in this category, as are the PC and Z- 100 versions of the HUG KEYMAP program (if you toggle them at the DOS prompt). If you use the Z-100 version of KEYMAP, we recom- mend that you upgrade to KEYMAC (885-3046-37), which is a more versatile program. Note to Windows 386 users: If you load HEPCAT before you run Windows 386, you can pop up HEPCAT over non-Windows applications that you run from Windows in a text video mode. Changing the Activation Key You can change the activation key in the PC version of HEPCAT using DEBUG to make a patch. The break key code is stored in HEPCAT at address 110 (hex). If you want to change the key, it is recommended that you use one of the following: Key Code Left Shift 2A Ctrl 1D Alt 38 The key you select will have to be pressed three times to activate HEPCAT. Here is an example in which the activation key is changed to the Alt key. A>DEBUG HEPCAT.COM -E110 38 -W Writing 33E6 bytes -Q The xxxx represents a number that will be different on different systems. The number of bytes in the "Writing.." statement could be different. 18 You can also patch the activation key for the Z-100 version of HEPCAT (at the same address), but it is not recommended because the activation key is passed on to the currently running program, and must be a key that is generally ignored by programs. The break key is the only one that meets this criteria. If you did patch the key, the Break key would still have to be used while programs are running that operate the keyboard in the event driven (up/down) mode. The Z-100 versions of Microsoft Windows uses the keyboard in the event driven mode. The keyboard codes are listed in the Keyboard Encoder section of the Z-100 Series Technical Manual. Removing HEPCAT From Memory You can remove HEPCAT from memory after it has been installed by activating it, and then pressing F4 three times. You should do this ONLY while the DOS system prompt is showing, and not while running a program, and ONLY if HEPCAT is the last memory resident program loaded. Failure to observe these restrictions could cause a system crash! Removal does not work under Z-DOS or MS- DOS version 1. 19