Scor­pio News

Letters to the Editor

Re. Shugart SA200s.

Dear Sir,

Mr Smeester asks about Shugart SA200 drives in Issue 2 of Scorpio News. Richard Beal says that he thinks they were 8″. I have an SA200. It is in fact a single sided double density 5.25″ drive.

I have always understood that it was the update of the originally very popular SA400. Unfortunately Shugart took too long to bring it out and when it arrived double sided double densities abounded.

Yours sincerely, Rodney Hannis, Reading, Berks.

IBM OK ! … and NasNet ?

Dear Sir,

A few thoughts on the future of Scorpio News, as you ask in your Editorial. But first of all, what a pleasure to receive an 80-BUS related magazine on time!

I teach computing at an independent school in Surrey; for my own purposes, I still use my faithful Nascom-2, with both Nas-Dos and CP/M (I’m using Spex to write this). Our main computer lab has a network of Nascoms using Nas-Net, but I an finding the lack of a structured BASIC, and the paucity of languages/​applications a handicap, so we have recently obtained an Amstrad PC1512, partly for immediate use for demonstrations, and partly for the possibility of changing over one day. We also have another lab-full of Amstrad 6128s, end various other computers used for Admin purposes.

Although I should like to see something in the magazine on Nascoms with Nas-Dos and/or Nas-net, I recognise that they are a dying breed, so would not attract any great reader interest. However, I should most certainly welcome the ides of an IBM/​clone/​MS-DOS section. After the Nascom manuals, I find Amstrad very uninformative (though at least they have now found somebody who can prepare a sensible index: in this respect their PC1512 manual is an enormous improvement on their PCW one). I should also be interested in Dave Hunt’s suggestion of a section on Modula-2, having just bought the Turbo version.

I certainly hope you continue into the next Volume. I should be very sorry not to have magazine to carry on the INMC tradition.

Yours faithfully, B.M. Hawkes, Budleigh Salterton, Devon.

Yes to more OSs.

Dear Sir,

I think that Scorpio News should give space to articles on CP/M-86, MS-DOS and PC-DOS and the hardware, as a lot of readers are now using these systems and there is an acute lack of information about any of them. I myself bought en Apricot Portable, but couldn’t get on with it. This was mainly due to the awful screen, but also I couldn’t get on with COMMAND.COM and I couldn’t do anything with it! Now I have the Gemini GM888 board and CP/M-86 which I am slowly pulling apart from CP/M-80 thanks to Digital Research providing CP/M-80 versions of ASM86 and GENCMD.

May I wish Scorpio News many years of success.

Yours sincerely, W.H. Turner, Mew Malden, Surrey.