Nascom News­let­ter

The new Winchester disc mentioned above can now be used with NAS-DOS, although a special version of NAS-DOS must be specified at time of purchase. In a networking system the effects of the increased storage capacity and fast storage and retrieval of data are particularly dramatic.

CP/M NEWS

The CP/M disc operating system has generally proved most popular with those who wish to run standard business applications software. Both CP/M and the programs to run with it are generally significantly more expensive than the corresponding NAS-DOS versions. A very wide range of software is available to use with CP/M from many sources. If you are buying software from some other source do be careful to ensure that the disc is supplied in the right format – most suppliers should be able to provide Nascom format. A range of the more popular software is available from oursleves through the usual dealers, and this is of course in the correct format and will normally also have been configured for the correct terminal facilities. There are differences in the single and double sided disc drive formats, and although you can access discs easily via a utility program (SINGLE or DOUBLE it wilt generally be more convenient in you specify the appropriate version at the time of ordering.

The most popular languages used when programming with CP/M are Nascom Extended BASIC and Microsoft’s BASIC 80 (also known as MBASIC). Both are available through Nascom dealers. Easily the most popular applications programs are Sorcim’s Supercalc and MicroPro’s Wordstar, again available through your dealer. We can also supply, amongst others, DBASE II , FMS and Datastar, which are database programs, Spellstar, Calcstar and Datastar from the same stable as Wordstar, the various financial programs which make up the FINAS/​ACCENSE suite and the NEWSPAC Newsagents package. The range is steadily increasing, so consult your dealer if your requirements are not on this list. Soon to be released is a very powerful low-cost computer aided design and drawing package, known as LOTTI, which is mentioned elsewhere in this newsletter.

Sorcim have recently released a new and improved version of Supercalc – Supercalc 2. This contains a number of improvements over the previous version, and a new manual is provided. This is a much larger manual than previously, and sore thought seems to have gone into its structure. Overall a worthwhile improvement to what was already an extremely fine product.

MicroPro have also re-vamped their products, with Wordstar Release 3.30 and corresponding MailMerge and Spellstar programs. New documentation here too, properly printed at last and very methodically and well laid out although I don’t feel the ‘cartoons’ really add anything of value. The total volume of the documentation is rather alarming, particularly if you get Reportstar and Datastar at the same time! All the manuals are in the same, A5 (half AA) size, and are in cloth bound ring binders in cloth bound card sleeves – very impressive in appearance. A new product to me is StarIndex which was included in the documentation. This locked a very good way of preparing indexes, particularly when modifying manuals moves the page numbers. Unfortunately although the manual was present in both sets which we