CFOG's PIP, February 1987, Volume 5 No. 4, Whole No. 52, page 4

Getting the "Enhancer", the "Clock", "Anychar", and more into 'WordStar" together!

by Paul Litke

For a couple of years, I've had the problem of trying to get Spite Software's The Enhancer, my RT-60B battery backed up clock, and the program Anychar, to work together with WordStar. Over Christmas, I learned enough 8080 code to combine with PIP and Foghorn articles to solve the problems important to me.

The RT-60B battery backed up time clock which piggybacks on the parallel port of my DD Osborne 1. It has a print-time-trap feature which allows the current date/time to be dumped to the printer as the document is printed. It works by use of an @tXXXX or @dXXXX, or using ^PQxxxx^PQ or ^PWxxxx^PW.

The @ trap wouldn't work with The Enhancer installed, and the ^PQ/^PW traps wipe out major Enhancer features.

Then came Anychar, incomplete in the Sep'86 Foghorn p26 by Walter D. Neumann, and completed in the Jan'87 Foghorn p50 by W. Ernst Eder and p 18 by Tony Woozley. Now my Star Gemini 15 printer can do anything I've wanted out of WordStar. I inserted Anychar at 0310h out of the way of other patches. An important modification was to use a -50h character shift per ^PK A -40h (Neumann) shift of the ASCII Code Table makes the @ character impossible to access since no other keyboard characters can be shifted to its value using a 40h shift. A -60h (Woozley) shift would seem to allow the @ to be accessed using ^PR^PR^PR (front single quote) or ^PR^PR^PR^PR^PR (space). Unfortunately, the front single quote is not on the O-1 keyboard, since it uses the back single quote only which shifts to ring the bell instead. Also, the space character is a delimiter which nullifies the ^PR attempt.

However, I used a -50h shift instead. This allows the @t and @d to slip past Enhanced WordStar as ^PR^PR^PR0tXXXX (zero+t+9X's or zero+d+24X's) and reach the printer as the current time and date. Patching the ^PR for the Anychar only knocks the elite (12 cpi) out of The Enhancer, but elite becomes ^PEB2. The Woozley patch solved the continous underlining of left margins. I took my Enhanced WordStar 2.26 on a disk with DDT and not write-protected and patched as follows:

A>DDT WS.COM
DDT VERS 2.2
NEXT PC
4000 0100
-S0310
0310 00 21   ;This is the Anychar
0311 00 1E   ;patch in an open
0312 00 03   ;area of MORPAT:
0313 00 FE
0314 00 20
0315 00 CA
0316 00 1F
0317 00 03
0318 00 FE
0319 00 FF
031A 00 CA
031B 00 29
031C 00 03
031D 00 D6
031E 00 00
031F 00 36
0320 00 00
0321 00 5F
0322 00 0E
0323 00 05
0324 00 CD
0325 00 05
0326 00 00
0327 00 B7
0328 00 C9
0329 00 7E
032A 00 C6
032B 00 50   ;Used a 50h shift her per article
032C 00 77
032D 00 C3
032E 00 28
032F 00 03
0330 00 .
-S037E
037E 08 00   ;Changes offset to zero
037F 00 .
-S06D8
06D8 00 01   ;Changes USER4:^PR to send
06D9 00 FF   ;FFh to printer
06DA 00 .    ;via Anychar and Clock
-S06E7
06E7 00 05   ;PSINIT:Sends next 5 hex
06E8 00 1B   ;instructions.
06E9 00 40   ;[ESC]@ initializes printer
06EA 00 1B   ;to "just-turned-on" condition.
06EB 00 4D   ;Sets margin to 9 spaces per Woozley
06EC 00 09   ;solution to continuous underlining
06ED .       ;of margin.
-S071D
071D 5F C3   ;Sends WS to 0310h for
071E 0E 10   ;output to printer.
071F 05 03   ;Anychar requires 28
0720 CD 00   ;addresses, but WS only
0721 05 00   ;has 8 addresses here for
0722 00 00   ;the output routine.
0723 B7 00
0724 C9 .
-G0          ;That's a G{zero} to exit DDT
             ;back to CP/M
A>SAVE 63 WS.COM

The "page" 63 is the number of 256 decimal byte (00h to FFh) "pages" in the file in RAM to SAVE. My WS.COM goes to 0400h. Neglecting the 00 portion, the 04 translates to Ox256 + 4xI6 = 64 pages less one because the 00 says the last page was not started. I am constantly updating "calendars" and want to know which copy was printed when.

My prior best solution was to copy a file of @t and @d created on a Clock WS disk not containing any Enhancer. Somehow, this would work fine, but was not as convenient. I don't create files needing the print-time-trap very often, but it is a very nice feature to have.

Next Christmas, I hope to figure out a catalog disk patch that not only isn't screwed up by the Clock software, but carries the date and time stamping into the catalog. The Clock reduces the directory limit to 46 files instead of 64 files to make room for the stamping. PIP and the Foghorn have been more valuable to me than any magazine, and I hope this article is helpful to someone.