Nascom Crisis
Dear Sir,
The Nascom crisis is a disappointment – this is just to say I appreciate your work and
hope that INMC80 can continue. I only joined a few months ago but the two newsletters
were well worth the subscription (particularly as the contents are not available
elsewhere).
Mike Whitehead
Dundee University.
Space Invasion Mods ?
Just a few words of thanks for the trouble you are taking to keep the magazine going
after all the developments at Nascom and lots of good luck for the future. Please keep
the “Kiddies Guide To Z80 Assembler Programming” by Mr. D.R. Hunt going for all us
beginners (ME).
I purchased
“Space Invasion”
by G. CLARKE from the library, can you tell me what
changes are needed to run on my N2 under NAS-SYS as this will save me much money at
the local amusement arcade ? (Hd. Mr Clarke ?)
Yours, a frustrated programmer,
R.K.Hansell,
Kilwinning, Ayrshire.
Newbear Cassette Interface and Pascal
Dear Sir,
I have just received
Issue 1 of INMC News 80 (or THE RETURN OF THE INMC!). I hope that
this is not the start of a long series (Son of INMC, INMC rides again etc etc). On
reading it, a few points could do with expansion or clarification, hence this letter.
Mr. Keneally’s review of the Newbear/Cottis-Blandford cassette interface may serve to
introduce others to the joys of high speed cassette loading. I have been using the C/B
interface for 18 months now at 1200 Baud with astonishing reliability, and have built
three units in total (two for myself, one for a friend) all of which work very
reliably. There are one or two points which may help Mr. Keneally achieve reliability.
In the ACC Newsletter Vol.16 No.5, dated December 1978, Bob Cottis points out that for
high mains hum, either the input capacitor can be reduced to about 10nF, or a 1K
preset placed between 5v and ground, with its slider taken to the amplifier side of
the input capacitor. This preset should be adjusted so that with no input signal the
schmitt trigger is in the middle of its hysteresis band i.e. midway between the two
points at which the schmitt changes state. I have done this on all the boards I have
made, set the frequency of the 555 i.c. with a frequency meter, and they can all read
each others tapes very reliably. One other point on this board: The Nascom uses the
same clock for receive and transmit, but the C/B board does not. The transmit clock
from the C/B is selected by the rate selector option. The receive clock is slow
running, and is pulled up by the phase locked loop to match the receive clock demanded
by the incoming data.