80-Bus News

It is highly unlikely that I will be upgrading to the Intel series of 8086 or 8088 chips especially as Zilog have announced the Z800 series where the specification reads as if it were tailor made for the 80-BUS. I feel that it is a sufficiently big chip to last me for the next 10 years.

We all know that BASIC is the language that everybody loves to hate but everybody is using it, there is so much software written in it that to abandon it would be very short sighted. Couple to this the ability to run in interpreted mode until the program works and then compile it to run faster and to protect your code and you have a combination of software for developing applications programs that work.

Having said all this in praise of the humble Z80 chip and CP/M systems all that is needed is for some volunteer to come forward to write this program. All serious contenders please call me on ____ ______.

John Stuckey, Bognor Regis, W. Sussex.

Non-communicating Dodos

It appears that most of you (at 80-BUS News) feel rather upset that Dodos like myself do not communicate more regularly.

I’m sorry about this, but I would point out that a major characteristic of a dodo is its lack of communicable ideas.

Two possible reasons for your upset, it seems to me, are:–

i) you feel that the ratio of contributors to subscribers is far too low
ii) you wonder whether there is any real demand for the mag.

Now it seems to me that, if you take these fears seriously, the solution is easy: cut down the number of subscribers. I have no idea what the number is, but it must be reasonable for your contributors to wonder what we’re all doing (fiddling with our appendages Chris, but we call it ‘getting on with life’).

I think that this approach is silly, and that a large number of subscribers, at £2.25 an issue (£9/6 issues per year = £2.25 if 6=4 as it did last year) is something to be proud of, but a way of implementing it, if you really want to, is to return the £9 if it is not accompanied by usable material for the mag.

If you think that anyone but me will read articles on what I do with my Nascom 2 / GM805 with DCSDOS II / Pluto (baby) / Imp then you are mistaken, as it doesn’t work anyway.

If you think that all we dodos are sitting on a goldmine of ideas, you fail to recognise that you wrote the goldmine!!!

As long as I can keep buying it, I will read it!

Bill Radcliffe, Teddington, Middx.

The Final Word

I wrote to you on 14/4/83 to ask why there were only 4 issues of 80-BUS News 1982 when you clearly stated there would be 6. I have not yet had a reply.

I enclose a cheque for £9 for a years subscription in the final hope that things will improve; although performance so far is not good. There can be few excuses left.

A. Brown, Didcot, Oxon.