INMC News

STICK TO IT

Dear INMC Committee,

Thank you for your work in putting together an ever improving newsletter.

Twelve months ago I was in the same position as Mr. Hewitt (Letters, INMC5). After playing around with machine code and Zeap, I have now reached the stage where I have written a quite effective control program nearly 2K long, which sends and receives “Tonebursts” via a radio link, to identify the outstation, and cause certain operations to occur.

My message to Mr. Hewitt and people in his position is to stick at it, and particularly the section in the Program Manual on building up a simple program and stepping through it.

But I really do not think it is on to advise a beginner to try to start on such a complex program as Lollipop Lady.

By the way, I suggest all newcomers try to learn about machine code as well as Basic, as m/c is much more satisfying and can do so much more.

A couple of requests – probably impractical – but who knows?

1. Is it possible to publish or make available in the library, more information on NAS SYS? I have in mind perhaps some simpler flowcharts and more data on what each routine does to registers etc. This would make it easier to use the many routines available.
2. Could the software library offer, at some reasonable cost, a cassette option for longer programs?

Yours sincerely,
C. Bowden
Truro, Cornwall.

Ed. replies:

We have had quite a few requests for more info. on Nas-Sys, so we’ll see what we can do. Any offers? As to cassettes, we have discussed this, but we feel it will be some time before we can offer this service.

Stuck Bits

Dear Sirs,

Thanks for publishing my letter in issue 5 and attempting to help. However shortly after writing to you I purchased a “Line graphics generator” from Comp Shop and after fitting this to my Nascom 1 all my problems became perfectly clear – 3 rows of my V.D.U. had bit 7 stuck permanently high.