Nascom News­let­ter

Now you can read the time in the addresses 0C82H-0C83H and time differences can be measured by subtracting two time values. As TP1 gives 300Hz, you can measure time differences of up to 3.5 minutes with an accuracy of 1/300 of a second. You can reset the timer at any time, either from Nas-Sys (using the M command) or from BASIC (using DOKE). The timer cannot be used under Nas-Sys 1 as this is not interruptable.

S.D.Pedersen,
Copenhagen,
Denmark

XBASIC tip

A tip to all bone idle users of XBASIC who, having written their ultimate, high-speed data-handling routine which has lots of internal GOTO/​GOSUBS, find that when they install it in their main program it runs very slowly because it is located way down the program, miles from the start, here is an easy solution:

You may say ‘why not use MGE before the RETURN, well, it doesn’t work, it terminates the program end returns to command level which is understandable.

I have used this method in a program which has a ‘SORT’ routine and two ‘SEARCH’ routines and all three run much faster. I timed the sort routine and it runs 28% faster using the above method.

Now, can anyone tell me how to set up a type-ahead buffer for XBASIC as the authors seem to have used their own keyboard routine and I haven’t, as yet, managed to find it?

I.P. Coole,
London ___