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CORCOM3.ARK
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2006-10-19
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Review of the CorComp 512K card By Scott Darling 09/20/86
Report Card
------------------------
Performance............B
Ease of Use............A
Documentation..........A
Value..................B
Final Grade............B
CorComp Inc.
2211-G East Winston Rd.
Anaheim, Ca. 92807
(714) 630-2903
The CorComp Memory Plus card comes in 4 variations. 256K and 512K P-Box cards.
And 256K and 512K Stand Alone Units. Two SAU's or one SAU and one P-Box card
can be configured together. Two P-Box cards wont work. I had the following
cards in my Pbox and found no incompatability. The Triple Tech, RS232, CorComp
Disk controller and Horizon 192K Ramdisk Card. Also, I used Gram Kracker
without any problems. The P-Box cards require the original 32K card be removed.
The SAU operates with or without the 32K card. A 9V power supply is included
for backing up the card or the SAU memory. It should NOT be the sole source of
a copy of the Memory Plus. All units will operate at >1000 or >1400. These are
the only choices for addresses. At >1000 the unit can be named drive #1-5 or R.
At >1400 the only choice is #6. The unit for Review was the 512K P-Box card.
Performance:
-------------
The card does everything the documentation says it will do. The power supply
backup never crashed once. I wrote 120 plus files on the card and used them
every day. I was able to move and manipulate them successfully every time.
Evidently, there were some glitches in the earlier cards. This seems to have
been taken care of. The version of the prom in this card is 2.42.
The ONLY disk manager that can be used is resident on the card. To access it
from Basic or XB is a CALL RMGR. This manager is the only sore point of the
card. Besides its being the only one you can use. It has many drawbacks. The
reason this manager has to be used is that the card uses 3 sectors for the disk
info. Sector 0 for disk name, sector 1 for file directory, and sector 2 for the
bit map. Because the card has the capability of 2048 sectors sector 0 was not
going to be large enough. You can read the directory with any other manager,
just don't attempt to write to it. The resident manager can manipulate on
floppys with no problems utilizing the existing disk controller cards
capabilitys.
The resident manager is 8K long and this is why the functions are not what we
have become accustomed to with those available nowadays. It does function
properly, tho. The sore items are having to provide the names of files to
rename, delete, change file protection, and single file copy. There are
provisions for disk image and multiple file copying. Using multi file copy, it
asks if you want to copy all files. If you answer no. It reads the directory
and asks you copy Y/N. It does this for each file heading, then goes back and
does the actual copying. On screen is a nice reminder which drive the Card is
set for! You can also change the drive number from the manager. Or use a DELETE
"SD.x" Where x is the drive number.
The manager also has a Ramdisk test built into it. At >1400 it doesnt work
properly. But, at >1000 it functions correctly. Also the R command doesnt work
at >1400 because if there were two cards available the system wouldnt know
which one to go after.
There is another resident function on the card. It DELETE "LOWER". This
provides a lower case true descenders for a RUNNING Basic or XB program. You go
back to the original case set when in command mode.
Basic deficiencies are a cumbersome tho adequate manager. And it is the only
one that can be used with the card to write files. Also CALL CAT("DSK3.") from
GK doesn't function. CorComp plans to rectify this.
Positive points are a resident manager that can access ANY drive; floppy or
Ramdisk, and has 480K bytes use for a ramdisk. 80 more than Myarc. Almost a
SSSD drive extra! Another mildly ammusing item is a switch with built in remote
pins that does a sort of write protect on the card before powering down. This
supposedly eliminates any power feedback glitches. To quote "Sort of like
opening the disk drive doors". I found that if I did this I did not lose any
data. But, when I didn't I would sometimes lose a byte or two in the files. And
they would act very strangely. So I got into a habit of doing this.
One point I missed: You can use any other Disk Manager program on the card.
Only above 400 sectors must you use the resident manager. And only because of
the disk bit map. If you intialize the Memory Plus as a 1440 sector disk, you
can use all the other disk managers. CALL CAT from GKXB does not function, this
will be remedied.
Ease of Use:
-------------
The card is very simple to install and operate. There are only two major
decisions to be made before operating the card. Which address and which drive
number. After the card or SAU is installed it is treated exactly like a disk
drive for every operation.
Documentation:
--------------
The documentation is actually overkill. Besides explaining installation it even
includes a section on how to read and write files. This is one that I would
take for granted by most users by now. But, it is included anyway. It fully
explains the manager functions. Another that to me was self-explanatory.
Value:
-------
It is hard to place a value for everyone's degree of use. Each Ramdisk has
specific functions and each user must determine thier usefullness. This card
would be nice for a lot of disk accessing types of programs. Databases, BBS's,
Spreadsheets, Gram Kracker files, E/A, TI-Writer files. Assembling assembly
programs is fast, downloading from BBS's and Information Services would be some
of many applications for this card. A round about way of print spooling can be
accomplished by writing the file to the ramdisk and then printing it from the
ramdisk later.
A big advantage of this card is its ability to work with the other Ramdisk
cards. The Horizon seemed to have the most trouble, tho. I placed it at >1000
and the CC at >1400. Everything powered up and ran fine. When I reversed the
cards addresses....the system refused to power up. I finally set the Horizon at
>1700. The system powered up...but I could not access the Horizon. Strange, I
plan to explore this more. There must be a good combination that works
correctly.
I won't recommend one ramdisk over another. This is each users choice. I hope I
have provided enough information for you to make that choice.
Also, the purported Memory Plus programs were not included as they are not
ready for release. There was no information supplied as to description or
release dates.
After presenting this review to CorComp for answers I found I had made a few
mistakes. I have corrected the above text accordingly. Also I was told the Word
Processor will soon be available. Also improvements to the resident manager are
planned, hopefully because of my opinions above.
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