Aucbvax.1394 fa.info-micro utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!CSTACY@MIT-AI Fri May 22 15:01:37 1981 INFO-MICRO Digest V3 #45 INFO-MICRO AM Digest Thursday, 21 May 1981 Volume 3 : Issue 45 Today's Topics: Micro Architecture - 8086/Z80 & NSC16000, Micro Networking - CP/M, Lisps - Choices & Plisp & Oregon Lisp, Mince - Onyx, Atari Expansion, Circuit Analysis, Data Ram Query, Video Boards - NEC & MATROX ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 28 April 1981 05:08-EDT From: Daniel J. Blumenfeld Subject: Hardware interfacing to the 8086 and the Z8000, NSC16000 news Well, designing stuff around the 8086 or the Z8000 is pretty straightforward, and besides the fact that there are 16 bit data paths and the I/O address space is larger (thus, you need more chips to perform qualification), hooking up peripheral chips to either processor is not difficult. Personally, I prefer the Z8000, but I don't mind working with the 8086. As for the NSC16000, well, that is a story in itself. Page 44 of the April 6th issue of Electronic Engineering Times has an article on the NSC16000, and the title of the article claims that the chip goes into full production in 1982. This chip seems to hold promise, though since it is a National Semiconduction product, don't hold your breath for it. Examining National's past track record, things do not look too rosy: the IMP, the SC/MP, the PACE, and then the COPS. There is also the NSC800, which is a Z80 on the inside and has the pinout (more or less) of an 8085. This chip was supposed to be available over a year ago... and currently, you can only get samples of the 2.5 MHz part for over $100. So much for N.S. holding to their delivery schedule. Dan ------------------------------ Date: 22 April 1981 23:25-EST From: Steven T. Kirsch Subject: Is there a CP/M BIOS that implements a file server protocol? What I have is an RS-232 port to a big machine. I would like to make it look like the RS232/big machine combination is just a floppy interface. One way to do this is to write a BIOS for the target disk and have the micro "pass through" the floppy commands to the big machine. I'm looking for a more abstract, virtual interface type thing where the BIOS sends out a virtual protocol for extracting/sending data onto a generalized storage device. I suspect what I am looking for is a guy who intercepts BDOS calls and if they access the "B" disk (say), then he passes the call to the big machine and waits for a response. The big machine interprets the calls and executes using its standard filesystem calls, and then tells the "interceptor guy" what values to set the registers to and what storage locations to set to what values. Of course, the interceptor needn't necessarily be huge: it could pass all the calls to the big machine which then might respond with "pass it on to BDOS." The interceptor must have a protocol to communicate values of registers and storage to/from the big machine (it needn't have the smarts to know what to send out to the big machine; the big machine can ask for what it needs) and to recognize the "pass it on to BDOS" message. Is this the right way to go? CP/NET from digital research will do things as I described. They call the guy NDOS, for Network DOS (I suppose). ------------------------------ Date: 1 May 1981 03:22-EDT From: Keith B. Petersen Subject: [RGF: Networking] Date: 1 May 1981 02:09-EDT From: Ronald G. Fowler Sender: RGF To: SK cc: INFO-CPM Re: Networking Steve, I retrieved the following two messages from CBBS/DETROIT, a local message service. I don't know this guy Winkler, but have seen his stuff advertised on CBBS's around the country, and (so far) have heard no bad words about him. One advantage I can see is that he provides source for his sys- tem, so if there are any problems (if?), you will be better equipped to solve them. I don't know this guy and can't vouch for his software, but thought it may be what you need. Msg 01036 is 16 line(s) on 04/06/81 from MARK WINKLER to ALL re: CP/NET - SMARTNET SMARTNET AND DUMBNET NETWORKING SOFTWARE BEFORE YOU BUY CP/NET CHECK THESE FEATURES. 1: NO MODIFICATIONS NEEDED TO THE BIOS OR XIOS 2: PASSWORD PROTECTION FOR LEVELS 1 TO 15 OF THE HUB. 3: LIST FILES OFF OF HUB COMPUTER WITHOUT DOWNLOADING. 4: AUTO SPOOLING AND DESPOOLING. A TRUE SPOOLER. 5: BLOCK DATA TRANSFER WITH CHECKSUM. 6: THE STAT COMMAND IS FULLY FUNCTIONAL ON SATELLITES. 7: ANY NUMBER OF FILES CAN BE OPENED ON THE HUB. 8: VERY LOW MEMORY REQUIREMENTS. 9: LINK SPEED BASED ON HARDWARE NOT SOFTWARE QUEUES. 10: FULL DOCUMENTED SOURCE IS PROVIDED ! 11: SMARTNET IS USED ON SYSTEMS WITH AT LEAST ONE DRIVE. DUMBNET NEEDS NO DISK DRIVES JUST MEMORY AND A CONSOLE. SMARTNET AND DUMBNET PURCHASED TOGETHER $300.00 DISCOUNTS AVAILABLE. MARK WINKLER 312-868-4866 Msg 00976 is 16 line(s) on 3/8/81 from MARK WINKLER to ALL re: MP/M UTILITIES MP/M UTILITIES PRICE $35.00 PSPOOL -- SPOOLS FILES AND PUTS FILE NAME,TIME,DATE AND PAGE NUMBER ON EACH PAGE. PRINT -- LISTS FILES ON PRINTER WITH SAME HEADINGS AS PSPOOL BUT CAN START ON ANY PAGE. LOGIN -- FORCES ALL USERS TO LEVEL ZERO. PASSWORDS MUST BE USED TO ACCESS ANY OTHER LEVEL. DR -- DISPLAYS THE SYS AND DIR FILES AND R/O AND R/W STATUS. ALSO THE FILE SIZE AND DISK FREE BYTES SETATT - SETS THE FILES ATTRIBUTES COLLECTIVELY OR SELECTIVELY. MESSAGE - ALLOWS MESSAGES TO BE SENT BETWEEN TERMINALS. SIGNALS THE RECEIVING CONSOLE WITH THE BELL. BPATCH - ALLOWS THE USE OF CTL-P,CTL-Q,CTL-D IN MBASIC VER 4.51,5.1,5.2. MARK WINKLER 541 INGRAHAM AVE. CALUMET CITY,ILL. 60409 312-868-4866 ------------------------------ Date: 8 May 1981 21:59-EDT From: Scott W. Layson Subject: Which Lisp (eenie, meenie, ...) I have the impression that there are enough different Lisps and enough aficianados of each that you're not going to find a definition that is directly compatible with more than a quarter of the programs out there. On the other hand, Lisps seem generally not too hard to translate between (especially since it's easy to write useful translation-assistance programs). I dug out the Standard Lisp report, which I had not seen earlier, and indeed it looks pretty standard. Sure, there are things I don't like about it, but that's not what you asked. Just one suggestion: you certainly can't implement the whole standard on a micro, so when you're picking and choosing for your subset, PLEASE don't leave out vectors. Many useful algorithms are difficult or impossible to write without something at least a little array-like; lists, for all their elegance, are often just not appropriate. -- Scott Layson ------------------------------ Date: 3 May 1981 (Sunday) 2228-EDT From: SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 (Jeffrey Shrager) Subject: An updated address for the P-LISP Apple LISP system: As previously promised... the corrected address of Pegasys Systems is: 4005 Chestnut St.; Phila., Penna.; 19104. If you've already sent mail to the previously indicated address -- don't worry -- it will be received as well. -- Jeff ------------------------------ Date: 30 Apr 1981 2046-MDT From: MARTI at UTAH-20 Subject: Little LISP. Yet another LISP for the Z80 (my apologies to Stoutemeyer and John Allen). A LISP system for the TRS-80 et al, has been completed. The following features are supported: Compiler. RLISP parser. Trace package. 48k system has 2k+ pair space 12k code space. The system supports a subset of Standard LISP excluding Floating Point, arrays, COMPRESS, and EXPLODE. All identifiers/GENSYMs are interned. I/O is allowed from only 2 external files. The compiler generates fast-load files. More information is available as U. of Oregon technical report CS-TR-80-18, Department of Computer and Information Science, Eugene, OR, 97403. The source code is in the public domain. Jed Marti, U. of Oregon. ------------------------------ Date: 30 April 1981 23:24-EDT From: Scott W. Layson Subject: Editors on Onyx (for csvax.mark@berkeley) Mince, Mark of the Unicorn's Emacs-inspired screen editor, is basically up under Onix (it needs a little more tuning before official release). You don't have to live with ed... ------------------------------ Date: 29 April 1981 14:51-EDT From: John Howard Palevich Axlon, Inc. (made up of former Atari engineers) has an add on page 371 of the May 1981 Byte for a product called the Axlon 256. I called them up and here are the details: Cost: $895 (for the box, the disk software and 64K) $2100 for 256K Conections to Atari: 1 card slot in back, one joystick port up front. (the joystick port is used to select the bank of memory, the card is for the address and data line.) What it does: $4000 to $7FFF becomes bank switched with fifteen other banks of 16K. They give you a patch to DOS so that you can pretend that you have this super fast disk. . . . What it might do: They claim to be working on a co-processor that can use at the memory you aren't looking at. They are also finishing up (release July) a 128K board that switches in eight sixteen K banks, so you can have 256K that switches in 32K banks, or eight whole address spaces to play around with. They have also interfaced this thing to the Apple II and the Apple ///. ------------------------------ STOUTE@MIT-MC 04/21/81 19:10:25 Does anyone know where I can obtain a general circuit analysis program to run under the CP/M, UCSD PASCAL, and/or Dec11 Unix operating systems? ------------------------------ Date: 21 Apr 1981 (Tuesday) 1909-EDT From: SHARER at WHARTON-10 (Bill Sharer) Subject: Data RAMs Has anybody seen anything like them in the Micro world? At Mitre this summer I worked on a VAX that had one of these suckers for a swapper. It essentially consists of about 80MB of CCD's that is interfaced like a regular old disk drive. I have no idea what costs were involved but I wonder if there isn't a very scaled down version (2MB maybe) that could act like somebody's 8" drive. Don't ask me who makes the thing (probably INTEL) because I am out of reasonable contact with my group. If somebody could make these things for cheap, he would be in the money! They have access time on the same order as the main memory! mr bill ------------------------------ ES@MIT-MC 05/0 ***** Sender aborted connection ***** ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.