Nascom News­let­ter

Clangers

Not suprisingly after this period of time, there are no reports of any problems with Nas-Dos itself other than the occaissional failure to determine the top of memory correctly (see Nas-Dos News, Issue 1, for details).

It has been pointed out by one user who has Nas-sys 1 that the instructions provided with the Nas-Dos utilities package specify incorrectly the byte to be changed for use with Nas-sys 1. As I know that several different versions of the utilities have been issued (it is a development package) the best solution is to look at the enclosed listing of the relevant section of the utilities and make the change shown when you have found out which byte it is which needs changing in your copy. The byte should be within 6 bytes of the position shown. Sorry about this, but as explained, this is a developement package provided free rather than an integral part of Nas-Dos and, as I never run Nas-sys 1, the need to record the change of this byte keeps getting overlooked. If you come to the exhibition that we are attending on a day on which I am on the stand, and you have a disc with you, I will make sure you have a copy of the latest edition of the utilities.

NAS-DOS 1.2

Rev 1.2 of Nas-Dos is now being released. However, as mentioned in the last issue, the changes from 1.1 are very minor – correct detection of top of memory, faster seek times and file write protection facility (using a new utility program). If you really feel you need these changes then send us your existing Nas-Dos chips and utilities disc, together with a cheque for 10 pounds, and we will send you back Rev 1.2 and the additional utility program. Note that this is an upgrade service; you will still only own a single copy of Nas-Dos (with the original serial number) which must only be used on a single machine.

One important cautionary note: the improved seek speed will work only with later disk drives with metal side plates. If you attempt to use Rev 1.2 with older (plastic sided) drives you will get disc access errors. If your drives have a horizontally mounted trimpot in the centre of the board mounted over the drive, you should be able to adjust this to get satisfactory results. Unfortunately, one batch of drives was supplied by the drive manufacturer with fixed resistors in this position and in this case you can not run Rev 1.2. You have my deepest sympathy – I too bought one of this batch of drives; which is how I discovered the problem.

NAS SEMBLER

Nas-Sembler is the new disc-based assembler for the Nascom with Nas-Dos. Some of the highlights are:

Full range of disc commands for file loading, storage, directories, etc.