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- CCP/M Meeting Notes - 11/29/87
-
- Only 1 day overdue. Not too bad. Z-Fest on the
- horizon. Let's see. Where to start?
-
- I'm writing this on a Royal. This Royal is running
- CP/M 2.2. It's showing me yellow letters. Which
- makes this the first (and only ?) color-capable
- CP/M machine that I know of. Isn't it great that
- in 1987, a full 12 years since the first
- commercial version of CP/M, new products are
- coming out that run under it?
-
- And let me tell you. This little baby ain't no toy
- computer. It may not run Z (yet...) but it does a
- few things Kaypro never tried... I'm going to save
- the details for a future article, 'cause there's
- news to tell besides this and the deadline is
- already history.
-
- Here's my December list. Not my Christmas list.
- Speaking of XMAS, check out "Twas the Night Before
- XMAS" elsewhere. Compliments of GEnie guru J.
- Taylor, whose upload stats at Mouse House belong
- in Ripley's. Also, an original piece on GEnie
- itself in "Accessing the Lamp". Jim even gives me
- GEniegrams to convince me of the GEnie service. We
- are all indirectly GEnie users because probably
- well over 50% of the material he has put up on my
- system was downloaded from there.
-
- But I digress. The list. Z-Festival on the
- Horizon, Making Boards, Membership drops
- (ALOT...), UNIFORM on the IBM PC and Royal etc.
- computers, ON!ward and Upward or Waiting for my
- 7th computer, No meeting on the second Tuesday,
- Easter in Mouse and dBase etc., personal
- WORDprocessor for the Commodore 64 owner, CCP/M
- catalog has 3668 files on 103 disks, Recent
- Uploads, and as they say, Much, Much more...
-
- The last meeting of CCP/M went well despite the
- many counts against it. The weather was bad, the
- newsletter was not on time so some may have
- thought it was not going to be a meeting night
- plus our main speaker fell ill and was not able to
- make it. In way, it was one of our better meetings
- strangely enough. Reno Franconi expressed again
- his interest in a Pascal Programming workshop, and
- it was decided to have just this. I have not
- worked out the details at all on this but will be
- putting something together in the coming weeks.
- The more I think about it, the more I think the
- course should be on programming techniques in
- general with Pascal emphasized only after the
- "pseudo code" has been worked out. Daryl Gehlbach
- brought WordStar Release 4 and distributed it to
- those who had bought it. Reno visited me later in
- the week and after an initial unsucessful attempt
- to null modem the Kaypro formatted software over
- to his Televideo we later got it over over to his
- format after using the services of UNIFORM on an
- IBM PC. This is a non-PD program which understands
- many formats, among them, Royal alphaTronic PC,
- Kaypro II, 4, 10, Osborne SD and DD, Televideo,
- etc. etc. Anyone have an IBM PC they could bring
- to the Z Festival so we can use it to copy
- software, both that Jay Sage will bring (he has
- expressed an interest in having such a copy
- facility) and that I will bring? If so, please let
- me know!
-
- The CCP/M Public Domain Software Library now has
- 103 volumes. There are 3668 files in it. This
- represents a project that I have been working on
- for several years actually. Almost all redundancy
- has been removed, a catalogue has been printed and
- will be available at a modest cost ($2) at the
- Festival. It's a 20 page (double sided pages)
- document and was generated using FATCAT, the
- FATter but faster CATaloguer. Almost all squeezed
- files have been unsqueezed and then crunched.
- Related files (source, help, doc, object, example,
- etc.) have been LiBRaried. I lost track a long
- time ago, but if I were to guess, I would say
- these 103 Kaypro DD (191k) floppies used to be
- about 300 disks! What a project. I have not been
- able yet to put together what is really needed,
- namely a one or two line description of what the
- files are for. But I do know that everything in
- the library has been tested, edited, fixed,
- compiled, assembled, enhanced etc. etc. I had a
- ball doing this and am proud of what we have. I
- would even venture to say that CCP/M may very well
- have one of the best CP/M (ZCPR3 etc.) libraries
- around... Check it out.
-
- Since the Z Fest is so close to the second
- Tuesday, I have decided to cancel the regular
- meeting of CCP/M. ie. DON'T show up at the
- Farmington Public Library on Tuesday the 8
- th!!!!!! Unless you need to take out Stephen
- King's "The Eyes of the Dragon" or the like.
-
- In my PD Software Library project, I ran across
- once again what I find to be one of the funniest
- pieces of writing I've ever seen. See "How to Make
- a Board" elsewhere in this issue. Speaking of
- funny writing, the following definition is part of
- an extensive list of equally amusing ones and was
- shown to me at work. We'll print the full list as
- soon as I can type it up:
-
- COPY-PROTECTED: A clever method of preventing
- incompetent pirates from STEALING software and
- legitimate customers from USING the software.
-
- Here's a brief list of uploads to my RCP/M during
- the last few months. This is not meant to be
- exhaustive. It's meant to show that there's been a
- tremendous amount of very good software and text
- uploads and I encourage you to look into our very
- active collection.
-
- VDE262FX.LBR 2k JIM TAYLOR
- UNERA32 .LBR 21k JIM TAYLOR
- XMAS .WZ 4k JIM TAYLOR
- WT20 .LBR 5k JIM TAYLOR
- ST-TNG .TZT 4k JIM TAYLOR
- HEADROOM.TZT 2k JIM TAYLOR
- DOS+ .LBR 103k GARY ZUREK
- 1KUTILS2.LBR 13k JIM TAYLOR
- SOURCE .CPM 2k JIM TAYLOR
- NEWBATCH.LBR 5k JIM TAYLOR
- MXM-2416.AZM 15k STEPHEN KISNER
- NTWRK-11.TZT 6k JIM TAYLOR
- NOAH-ARC.INF 5k GARY ZUREK
- CPM+C128.LBR 22k GARY ZUREK
- CPMARC .LBR 92k GARY ZUREK
- NTWRK-10.TZT 5k JIM TAYLOR
- KENMORE .LBR 61k RICK SWENTON
- PACK10 .LBR 25k RICK SWENTON
- PACK10 .LBR 25k RICK SWENTON
- NZEX-D .LBR 16k RICK SWENTON
- Z33LIB05.LBR 8k RICK SWENTON
- MB-TUTR1.LBR 52k SYSOP
- EASTER .MSE 1k LEE BRADLEY
- Z-SIGNON.NOT 1k WALT WHEELER
- JOURNAL .LBR 36k SYSOP
- TCJ .INF 2k JIM TAYLOR
- Z-NEWS .8Z5 11k JIM TAYLOR
- Z-FEST .LBR 6k JIM THOMPSON
- SPRI2LSM.TXT 4k DAVID WRIGHT
- CCP/M-11.87 20k SYSOP
- EASTER .PAS 4k DAVID WRIGHT
- Z80D-MOD.LBR 3k RICK SWENTON
- MXO-RV12.ASM 18k STEPHEN KISNER
- NETWRK-9.TZT 7k JIM TAYLOR
- TRINITY .DIR 3k GLEN GROSS
- PCFILE .LBR 113k GARY ZUREK
- TCJ29 .MZG 26k JIM TAYLOR
- NETWRK-8.TZT 8k JIM TAYLOR
- SWEEP .EXE 46k LEE BRADLEY
- SHOW12B .LBR 40k RICK SWENTON
- DDTZ26 .LBR 75k RICK SWENTON
- NHSH-Z33.LBR 14k RICK SWENTON
- Z33VER10.LBR 32k RICK SWENTON
- NETWRK-7.TZT 6k JIM TAYLOR
- LT23 .LBR 39k JIM THOMPSON
- NETWRK-6.TZT 7k JIM TAYLOR
-
- I have been talking with the folks who make the
- ON! computer. They are shipping me a new one! They
- will be getting a full write up in these pages
- soon I expect. But I just want to say that John C.
- and Bill E., their hard- and software technical
- team, are terrific. The original ON! suffered from
- what John could only term "infant mortality".
- They've had hardware trouble in only 3 of those
- they've shipped. The new one will have 4 mb RAM
- disk, which is what I wanted in the first place.
- The ON! is a state-of-the-art Z system. I am quite
- confident it will work fine and will be bringing
- it, and my new Royal, to the Festival. Strange
- combo I know. The Royal system cost me $970 (I got
- a lot of software, the color monitor and the
- better printer). The ON! $3700. And they both
- appear to be excellent buys.
-
- A consultant I work with named Rich Zlatkus gave
- me a PD full screen editor for the Commodore 64.
- He wrote it. It appears to be very good. If you
- are interested in this, I will be bringing the
- disk and the hardcopy documentation to the
- Festival. It was written in Commodore Basic. And
- compiled. Rich is also trying to market a front
- end to KEDIT, an XEDIT work-a-like for the IBM PC.
- This guy is very sharp. Check out his Personal
- WORDprocessor (for this is what he calls his C-64
- editor). He's looking for feedback on it. Don't
- let this pass you by if you have a C-64 (or -128).
-
- I am trying to finish this so I can visit Mort
- Fabricant. He needs an up-to-date list of CCP/M
- membership. At Tom Veile's and my last count, 24
- people have paid up. This is out of some 45 odd
- members in 1986-87. I know a few who are just
- absent minded. At least I hope they are. But there
- are going to be quite a few people who may miss
- this Dec. news because they did not renew their
- dues. We cannot operate without the money to pay
- for the news. Please send in your $15 to Tom Veile
- if you feel membership is something you want to
- continue having. We'll miss you if you don't !!!
- Mort sent me a solution to my First Annual T-Shirt
- Giveaway Programming Contest. It was not machine
- readable and so I asked his to supply same. Hope
- this all comes together in time. I've included my
- BASIC solution. If you don't recall, this problem
- had to do with automating the evaluation of all
- those worthless lottery tickets we've been buying
- lately. Mort's solution appears at first glance to
- be an interesting example of dBase I programming.
- Can't wait to try it out. Thus the need for
- machine readable copy. Machine readable copy is
- ALWAYS advised. It makes an editor's job
- infinitely easier. Thanx Mort for contributing.
- And also for your ambitious work on the database
- for the YOU-CCP/M gang. Well done. Now all we have
- to do is keep people interested in having their
- names stay on the roster!
-
- Well, better close this. I look forward to Dec.
- with some uneasiness. I know it's going to be
- fantastic. But I see lots of work yet to do to
- make it so. I hope everyone that comes has a good
- time. PS. Linda's baking a million cookies and I'm
- bringing Finast's 100 cupper for coffee. Bring a
- friend. Stay for a while. Ask Jay Sage an
- interesting question.
-
- Keep in touch.
-