Letters

Dear Sir,

Congratulations on the first issue, although it was possibly a bit ‘heavy’. Your printer is obviously capable of correspondence quality print in condensed mode, but the cumulative effect of continuous bold print is to make the text harder to read. I know that they are expensive, but it would look much nicer with a daisywheel printer, surely you can scrounge one somewhere.

The one real criticism that I would make is that after devoting a substantial portion of the magazine to PCG design, the circuit diagram was unintelligible to a non-technical reader. The principle seemed simple enough and was well explained, but I think that a full circuit diagram would have been better or – dare I suggest – a Vero layout. It would have taken space, and possibly contributorbadgering, but you are liable to brickbats from readers who misunderstood the project as described.

I am currently writing an article on a very simple project which I will send along to you. We mustn’t forget that a growing number of Nascom owners have bought their machines built and are not part of the merry band of track-hackers that some of these modifications are aimed at.

Yours sincerely,
C. L. Corner
Royston

* We had to publish this letter because it’s the most critical one we received. As we pointed out in the article on the PCG, the construction involves a lot of tedious hardwiring of the address and data lines, and if you don’t fully understand what is neessary then it is best not to start. I agree entirely about the printing, so if any reader has a spare daisy wheel printer . . .

Dear Sir,

Here is a query for your reader. Does anyone know of a simple circuit to give the equivalent of a typewriter shift lock key for the Nascom 2?

Yours sincerely,
R. C. Taylor,
Penrhyndeudraeth

* The keyboard is software controlled, so the addition of any shift lock circuit will mean changing the monitor EPROM software. There is a spare input line to port 0 (bit 7), and if this was connected to a switch so that it could be at + 5 volts or 0 volts, the state of this line could be used to invert the action of the shift key by a slight modification to the monitor. Have our readers any other ideas?

Dear Sir,

I at present own a Nascom 1, to which I am in the process of building on more memory. I intend to install a Gemini EPROM G803 card which will carry Enertech 16K f.p. Pascal or Hisoft Naspas (12K). Have there been any article comparing these compilers? Are they based on the Jensen-Wirth or UCSD Pascal? Does the Enertech compiler generate P-code? Has any Nascom user done what I