80-Bus News

habit of defeating the interlock switch on the machine as he liked to watch the resist change colour, he says he could judge the exposure far more accurately than by using a timer. Ok, but at the expense of ruining your eyesight? He wasn’t in the job long, and the dosage was not much greater than that needed to erase a few hundred EPROMs, but it was enough.

CP/M Users’ Group

So it seems the CP/M Users’ Group hasn’t seen enough coverage in this magazine. I can’t think why it hasn’t been plugged before, perhaps it was assumed that everyone knew about it. Anyway, I’ll mention it again. A very creditable organisation for CP/M users. As was mentioned by Dr Plews, there are about 250 volumes in the library and all of it costing next to nothing. There’s even some bits of mine in there, perhaps that’s why they give it away. Be that as it may, to get volumes from the library you send a disk and £2.00 to cover the copy charge and return postage. Mind you, you’ve got to be a member first, that costs £7.50 per annum for an individual and you get a quarterly magazine for that. It must be remembered that the volumes refer to 8″ disks with about 250K each, so if you’re using a Henelec/​Gemini G805 system then you’ll require two disks for each volume.

Over the years I’ve acquired a fair number of volumes, and should add that about 50% of the stuff I have is pretty useless, or to be more charitable, very old and written for EBASIC. None the less the remainder is marvelous stuff, all very useful and relevant. About half of the /lsquo;Henry’s Incredible Utilities Disk’ is extracted from various volumes of the User Library. Unfortunately the library is not over endowed with ‘heavy weight’ programs, so large database controllers, high level languages, assemblers, etc, may still have to be purchased when required. But as for the smaller utilities, well you can’t go far wrong by joining and getting the library index volumes and seeing what is available. Contact: CP/M Users’ Group (UR), __, ____ ____, Hawley, Dartford, Kent. ___ ___. Phone (____) _____

MODEMs

Mr. Brown mentioned UKM715, the UK version of the CP/M Library Program MODEM7, and that Henry’s have a copy. True. They don’t even charge for it (they are not allowed to), but they’ll charge you for a new disk to put it on even if you bring along your own disk! Which brings me round to the subject of bulletin boards. These can be great fun but not all use the same protocols. Many are Prestel like, other simply assume a dumb terminal at the other end. Some use 1200/75 BAUD others use 300/300 BAUD. A few will accept either, and one uses 1200/1200 BAUD. Likewise, the range of modems available at present is confusing in the range of options offered. So what ever modem and software you may have, it is unlikely that you will be able to access all of them.

In the short term at least three suites of software will be required, a clever one like UKM715, a dumb one like Richard Beal’s TERMB and a ‘Prestel like’ one such as Dave Ryder’s Pretzel2. Richard Beal is currently beavering away on a new program called DIAL (which will probably be finished when this lot appears in print). This is neat because it will contain a library of telephone numbers, access codes (yours not his) and a list of the appropriate software to run each bulletin board. Basically you select the service you require, DIAL then loads up the appropriate software, dials the service for you, sends any access codes required and then jumps into the terminal software. Hopefully, DIAL will be patchable for the more usual modems, and it may be possible to wrap this lot up as a package for sale at a reasonable price. As to Gemini or one of the dealers setting up a bulletin board, all I can say at present is, it’s possible!