Nascom News­let­ter

the whole of a disc (76 tracks of 16 sectors each) it is possible to specify the data file to be on a disc drive other than 0, so that this disc can be dedicated to the data. However, the index file for any application must ALWAYS be mounted in disc drive 0. In a similar vein I have seen some users loading MANOR and UTS from their original master disc and then changing the disc in drive 0 for their own data (and index) disc. It really makes it much easier to use the system if you copy at least MANOR and UTS (or even all the files) from your original master disc onto any disc you intend to use for MANOR. In this way the disc becomes self contained, and you don’t need to keep swapping discs. It is only if you want to create really big data files that you need to remove the programs from the disc in drive 0, and even that requirement is largely eliminated if you use a separate data disc and only keep the index(es) on the disc in drive 0.

Incidentally if you intend inexperienced users to use MANOR (or indeed any application program) you can make life easier for them by using the NAS-DOS ‘User boot’ facility. This allows a specified program to be initiated simply by typing. ]U and pressing the ENTER key. Refer to your NAS-DOS manual for more details of this very useful, but underutilised, feature. The one point you should remember with the user boot is that it is NOT copied from disc to disc when the COPYDD utility is used – you will need to use separate ]R and ]W commands to copy the user boot sector (track 0, sector 1).

One further hint if you manage to delete your index file (the one suffixed I rather than D), which would normally prevent you doing a Reruild. ALl you need in the index file to permit rebuilding is the file format information. Therefore you could insert a new disc (DON’T use the old one) and use HINTON to specify the number of records, fields, field names and widths in the usual way. Then use FILCPY to copy the index file (NOT the data file) which is created onto the old disc. You will then be able to use Rebuild to recreate the remainder of the index data from the data file. This will only work if you specify the same number of fields and the correct field widths as in the original file. If you are really desperate and don’t have a note of this information you could resort to the NAS-DOS R command tO read is the start of the data file and examine the data in memory to see what format you originally used. The normal disc directory shows you where the data file starts. There is of course no reason in normal operation why any of these steps should be necessary – but if you inadvertently delete the wrong file and have no back-up (VERY naughty) it is reassuring to know what solutions (apart from suicide) are available.

4. Nascom extended BASIC

The tape version of the extended BASIC has been available for a few months now, and seems to have been well accepted. We now have an identical CP/M version available. The NAS-DOS version has been rather delayed, but is now confidently(?!) expected in January.