80-Bus News

1. FIND (Search file for hex or ASCII strings. There is an error in the documentation here as it requires ‘??’ for wild hex bytes.)
2. File compress/​uncompress suite
3. Memory testing utilities
4. PIP (with all the bugs fixed)
5. FINDBAD (Collects bad sectors into single file)
6. SD (Sorted Directory listings with file sizes)
7. SPEED (Check for speed of PERTEC disk drives)
8. STATUS (Displays RAM size, TPA size, BIOS start etc.)
9. SUB (or EXSUB – replacement for SUBMIT)
10. TRANSLAT (Converts 8080 to Z80 mnemonics)
11. SWEEP (For moving files from disk to disk)
12. UN (Removes protection from protected MBASIC files)
13. UNERASE (Unerase files)
14. UNSPOOL (Provides background file printing)
15. HELP (Online help facility)
16. WHATSNEW (Displays changes to disk directory)

My only critisism of these centres on Unspool, for which only source is supplied, as it would not compile with M80 until tweaked a little. This is one program that should have been supplied as a COM file. Having said that, the source of Unspool supplies the solution of how to write programs that can relocate themselves (and also reveals the purpose of the ‘r’ on every second line of SYS listings).

Well that was a brief review! Not so much a review as a list of what’s on the disk. Considering the number of useful programs packed onto the disk it must be value for money as are both CCPZ and BDOSZ.

This magazine also represents excellent value for money (a Superbrain friend of mine eyed it enviously). Readers, support your magazine with more letters and articles; Editor, what has happened to all the issues this year?