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may playnotes
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PlayNET COMAL Meeting Notes -- MAY '85
======= ===== ======= ===== === ===
by: Joel Ellis Rea
of LoadStar
----------------May 09----------------
The Commodore 1520 color printer/
plotter works fine with COMAL. A pack-
age to drive it is available from the
COMAL Users Group, USA (CUGUSA).
IBM COMAL will retail in $250-$300
range, with 40%-50% discount for
schools. MyTech COMAL for IBM-PC is
$150, but is slower and has a bug in
multiplication. It also does not sup-
port subdirectories or PASS"msdos cmd"
Hot unsubstantiated rumor tonight!
Kmart purchased 1 MILLION 64's -- will
sell for as low as $69.95!
--------------- MAY 16 ---------------
We discussed Packages and Assembly
Language for COMAL 2.0, and also the
language PILOT for educational uses.
One attendee described a database he
is writing in COMAL 2.0. It sounded
FANTASTIC!
Ellen Boukamp, who wrote into Byte
asking for a Sign Language Teaching
program, will get one written in COMAL
thanks to the Captain and a COMAL
aficionado who is a teacher.
An attendee had duplicated the
benchmark test on p. 282 of May BYTE
in COMAL 2.0 on the 64. It beat both
BetterBASIC and Turbo Pascal on an
IBM-PC! Times: PC-BASIC 190.7, Turbo
Pascal 82.6, C64 COMAL 2 75.6! IBM
PC-COMAL only 43.33!
--------------- MAY 23 ---------------
New CUGUSA address:
COMAL Users Group USA
6041 Monona Drive
Madison, WI 53716
Sorry, there is NO known COMAL for
the Atari ST's or any other Ataris in
the works.
COMAL 2.0 comes up with Quote and
Insert modes disabled! BUT, it ONLY
disables them for keyboard echo and
LIST/DISPLAY/EDIT, NOT for PRINT or
SELECT INPUT. This means that even
with "quote'mode(FALSE)" set, if you
do a PRINT """"18"" (print a quote
followed by a HOME), you get a reverse
"s", just as if you had typed DEL in
BASIC's Insert mode!
We had another big IBM vs C64 flap
during the meeting. Since PlayNET will
soon be supporting Apple and IBM and
since COMAL is supposed to be a
UNIVERSAL language, people should not
get so upset when other computers are
discussed on PlayNET!
CUGUSA offers PlayNET without the
initial startup fee to COMAL Today
subscribers!
--------------- MAY 30 ---------------
Cap got a final version of IBM PC-
COMAL. He says it is VERY NICE! It
is an IBM European product for now
(meaning it is not available in the
USA); general USA distribution will
have to wait until it is a Worldwide
product.
There will be 3 workshop sessions
for COMAL programmers at the MARCA
Fair. One by Mindy Skelton, one by
Captain COMAL Len Lindsay, and
one by Borge Christensen(!) Jesse
Knight and Eric Brandon will be there,
also!
MyTech may have a very nice Macin-
tosh COMAL out in July 85. They also
announced a DEC VAX version in the
$5,000 range!
About 50 new COMALites due to hit
PlayNET next week from the CUGUSA PN
offer. TPUG now has all 40 COMAL
disks in their library -- that's 30%
of their entire library!
The Commodore Inner-Space Anthology
from Transactor has up-to-date memory
maps and materials for both 64 COMALs!
One person reported a problem trying
to get two M/L routines from magazines
to run under COMAL 0.14. Most such
programs are only intended to run
under BASIC.
----------- End of Article -----------