80-Bus News

present if I include all of my normal Hardware and Software options, so there is not enough room to allow inclusion of the extra code and tables needed to display the day name unless I omit something else or alter MOVCPM so that CP/M leaves room for an even larger CBIOS. Examination of the code listed later will show that this option will only be allowed if NKBD is set FALSE. (This is the most suitable routine for me to omit, since I normally use the Gemini GM827 keyboard.)

In some cases, there may well be enough room for the extra code and data anyway, since some other features such as Virtual Disk may not be incorporated in the CBIOS, and it may not be necessary to omit routines or modify MOVCPM.

The final part of this extract shows the RTC ports added to the relevant section of SYS.

The second set of extracts are the extra code that has been added into the Workspace/Boot/High Level I/O routine section of SYS (which is module 4 of SYS 16).

In order to allow user programs to easily access the Clock, it is necessary to set up some method of allowing the ‘calling’ program to find the clock routines. The simplest way of doing this is to add an extra ‘Jump to Clock Routine’ to the jump table at the start of the CBIOS. Since the offset of this jump from the start of the CBIOS is known, it can be used as the access point. Some details of how to do this are given in App. 1. A look at the code for the clock will show that on ‘RET’urn, HL holds the start address of STRING (or STRNG1), which holds the clock data for subsequent processing.

A marker is also placed after the additional jump in the ‘jump’ table. The calling program can check for this marker before attempting to read the clock, and can thus be made to avoid trying to read a non existent clock. This can sometimes cause the program to lock into a permanent loop from which the only exit is ‘RESET’, unless additional software is used to ‘time out’ any such loop.

Additional space is reserved at the end of the ‘SYS’ workspace for clock related data and variables. A space of 11 bytes is allocated to ‘REGS’. The RTC chip registers are stored in this space as they are read. After some further processing, REGS will hold the ASCII equivalents of the clock register data. Once the clock has been successfully read, the data is moved to ‘STRING/STRNGI1’, being formatted as it will be printed on the screen in the process. Two sizes of output string are possible, depending whether or not the day name is to be included, as previously described. If the name is to be included, the store starting at ‘STRING’ is used, but if no name is to be output, the space starting at ‘STRNGI’ is used. The space UDSTOR is used to hold a copy of the Seconds, Tens of Seconds, or Minutes register of the RTC, to be used as described later.

The other bit of code added to module 4 will conditionally allow the top line of the GM812 IVC card to be locked, to prevent the time/date from scrolling. I added the necessary code into the ‘WARM BOOT’ routines, just before the ‘SYS’ code to restore the current default drive. I do not think the actual position of the extra code should be very critical. I chose this place as it was near the end of the warm boot.