CFOG's PIP, March 1989, Volume 8 No. 1, Whole No. 69, page 1
by Benjamin H. Cohen
It was just before Christmas, and I stopped to visit with John Madden, of Modern Impressions, Inc. John is a law client who is a close friend. His company prints PIP each month. He has an Osborne 1 with a 384K RAM disk that he has used for years to maintain mailing lists for his business, using PC-File and more recently PC-File 80. He also has a Macintosh that he uses for "typesetting" on a QMS Kiss laser printer, preparing resumes, flyers, booklets, and other materials for his customers as well as his own business needs.
"Here's the letter I sent to the payroll service terminating their services", John said. "Hmmmm. I think that means you want me to get you a payroll program for the Osborne," I said.
Except for a lot of information about a program to run under dBase II (and that is no longer available) that ran in an early issue of User's Guide (the one that I'm missing!), I couldn't find any real reviews of any accounting software in any of the magazines or newsletters that I have. But a hard look at advertisements and lists found two payroll programs for CP/M still available.
Since both of the programs that I located could be returned, I ordered both and tried them out. The one my friend is using came from Computer Professionals, Inc. (CPI), 1508 West Blue Ridge Dr., Greenville, SC 29611, (803) 294-0494. CPI offers general legder, accounts payable, and accounts receivable software as well. Each unit is $100.00 and includes 45 days of free telephone support. The program that I returned was from James River Software, 125 North First Street, Minneapolis, MN 55401, (612) 339-2521. Both programs are available for MS-DOS systems and have been around for several years, so if you think you might some day be moving from CP/M to MS-DOS you can reasonably expect to move your data and still run the same software. Both programs will 'export' the payroll data so that you can 'import' it into a general ledger module.
Payroll software performs a specific set of functions. You enter some information about each employee and you get the program to calculate the deductions, print checks, and print the reports that you'll need with the tax forms that you have to file periodically. One of the problems is that the tables of deductions (for state and federal withholding taxes and FICA) change from time to time. It's important to be able to easily update these tables, or (better yet) to get new tables economically from the software house.
0ne peculiar factor was the hardware / software environment in which I planned to run this program: an Osborne 1 with a Drive C RAM disk with SmartKey resident. This makes for very small TPA for a CP/M machine. The James River payroll program wants more TPA than I had available. It could run on floppy disks, but the sacrifice in speed was more than I wanted to accept.
The second factor in my decision to select the CPI program had to do with how the two programs work. With the James River program it is necessary to call up the record of each employee to be paid and to enter the number of hours / pieces / periods (or whatever). When the employee's record has been updated the stub is printed. If computer checks are printed, checks are printed in a batch at the end, but only for those employees for whom payroll data for the current period has been entered.
With CPI's program you can designate salaried people as such and hourly people as such, and establish a standard number of periods/hours. When the payroll is done you need only to access the records of those employees who will not be paid the standard number of periods or hours. When all the exception entries have been made, you have the option to make changes in the records of employees who are not normally exceptions. When you are done -- never having looked at the records of those who are salaried or who worked the standard number of hours -- the payroll is calculated. Computer checks are then printed in a batch. Employees who have been terminated are flagged so that they are not included when the payroll is calculated.
Since the vast majority of the employees at Modern Impressions are either salaried or usually work a standard number of hours, the CPI system would require considerably less effort each payroll period for data entry. This is especially important if the system has to be used on a floppy disk system instead of utilizing the RAM disk! If you have to do payroll in a company where almost everybody will get paid on an hourly basis that will vary from payroll period to payroll period, you might find it just as easy to access each record each payroll period.
There are some other differences between the two programs which I think give additional advantages to the CPI system, but none are sufficiently important to be determinative. For example, CPI includes state tax tables as well as Federal, provides 45 days of help starting seven days after shipment of the program. James River gives 30 days of support from the date of purchase and charges an additional amount for Federal tax tables and requires you to 'roll your own' state tables.
The CPI manual is much longer than the James River manual. CPI has a detailed table of contents that makes it fairly easy to find what you are looking for, but both manuals could use an index. The CPI manual is much more comprehensive.
James River has a special setup for Osborne 52 columns, while CPI doesn't. But test operations indicate that this simply is not a serious problem. Simply set auto-scroll to "on".
There are features in the James River program that I prefer: for example, employees are searched for by last name, whereas CPI requires a six character coded reference which means you have to work with a 'crib' sheet.
Three payroll periods have now passed. The first was hand entered after the fact. It was not difficult to enter the figures taken from the tables in place of the calculated figures. Now entering the payroll to be calculated is a snap. Continuous form checks haven't yet been ordered, but it's easy to print out the information and "stub" on blank paper and then make up the checks manually. When continuous checks have been obtained the process will be even faster. If you have a multi-employee payroll to meet, you should look into a payroll program.
CFOG's PIP, March 1989, Volume 8 No. 1, Whole No. 69, page 3
The following financial reports from the Treasurer cover the year 1988. Not shown on this report is the final issue of PIP, the cost of which was around $300.00, including printing and postage. Therefore, our net cash flow for the year was about $350.
The balance sheet must be taken with a grain (or mountain) of salt. The value of the equipment is undoubtedly considerably less than indicated: no depreciation has been taken for 1988. The two Osborne 1s are at this point worth very little. The Executives are probably not worth more than $150 each. The variety of hard drives we have -- all but the new 80 Mb Seagate (not included on the list below) are old and well used -- are probably not worth more than $800. We do have the Konica/WestWind 11 Mb floppy drive, probably not worth more than $500 simply because there is not a large market for it. The modems we have may be guess-timated as worth, in the aggregate, perhaps $400. That's a total of about $6,000 in equipment. The fair market value of the equipment does not, of course, have any effect on its utility. [At the January 16th CFOG Board meeting a timid soul inquired whether we should consider upgrading the RCPM equipment. The general response was to inquire what could possibly be considered an upgrade. The system is very fast and responsive now that it has NZCOM installed and the hard disk system has been reformatted and optimized. The current system software is flexible and powerful -- more so than any MS-DOS system would be. The message system, while it has its limitations (most notably lack of word wrap), also has great strengths in terms of search capability and (notable for the Sysop, a beast we must put up with if we want to have an RCPM!) powerful maintenance tools that make the Sysop's life easier. If you don't have a modem, you ought to seriously consider getting one: the information exchange on the Antelope Freeway Remote Access System is enlightening and interesting, and there is an abundance of new software for CP/M and MS-DOS users.]
Income Statement: 01-01-88 to 12-31-88
Membership Revenues $3,510.75
FOG $6 Rebate Income 136.00
Other Income (Bank Interest) 18.43
---------
Total Income $3,665.18
=========
Expenses:
PIP-Newsletter Printing & Postage $1,737.47
Meetings 135.93
New Membership Related Costs 169.94
Disk Library-RCPM & Copying Expenses 845.18
Asset Depreciation (done 12/31) .00
Other Expenses 106.74
---------
Total Cash Expenses $2,995.26
=========
Income for Year $ 669.92
=========
Balance Sheet:
Assets
Cash $1,087.39
2 - Osborne 1's 300.00
2 - Osborne 2 exec 600.00
Hard Drives 3,442.85
Televideo Equipment 1,646.17
design one 530.00
1200 baud modems 338.25
2400 baud modems 450.00
---------
Total Assets $8,394.66
=========
Liabilities
Compumat Advertising Credit ( 210.00)
---------
Net Assets $8,184.66
=========
Capital:
Prior Period Retained Earnings ( $7,514.74)
---------
Current Period Income (Loss) $669.92
=========
CFOG's PIP, March 1989, Volume 8 No. 1, Whole No. 69, page 4
by Steve Lucius
PC Tools Deluxe Version 5
The most interesting MSDOS software package I have seen recently has been PC TOOLS Deluxe version 5. The upgrade from version 4 was a total of $8 and the software is well worth it. Included with the upgrade are 4 new program disks and a new manual. The program has been heavily modified to include a point and shoot backup system to make partial backups easier and major modifications to all utilities. Expanded memory can now be used to store utilities when not in use. I really haven't explored it enough to do a full review. One caution is that the version 5 backup program can not read files made by the version 4 program, hence a new backup is required.
WordStar 5 Upgrade
The cheapest upgrade I have seen has been Wordstar 5 version 093. It brings 11 replacement disks and includes new printer drivers. Haven't tried it on anything fancy yet but also haven't found any bugs. Looks like they did fix my pet peeve with headers where you couldn't put a blank line between the header and the text. The cost is a phone call to tech support or a message left on the MicroPro Sig on Compuserve.
MicroSolutions Drive Controller
Received an interesting add from MicroSolutions of Dekalb, IL. (815-756-3411) They make disk drive controllers and floppy disk drives to allow such things as 3 inch drives on XT and AT machines and external 5 inch drives for PS2 machines. They support 1.44M drives on XT machines which many vendors don't. They are the same people who have the software package Uniform to allow reading CPM disks on MSDOS computers.
Mindware's Colmpute Mouse
A product to avoid is distributed by Mindware (800-447-0477) called the Calmpute Mouse. The Mouse is not your normal rodent but actually a biofeedback sensor to detect the level of stress in the body. It then displays it on a graph or supposedly gives off a tone and gauges the level of stress by the pitch. I don't know how the other Mindware products are but this one is mostly vaporware.The product is produced by Thought Technology Ltd. and while the hardware works fine the version of software sent out was beta test, poorly documented and had many features missing. An interesting feature of the program is that part of it runs on CGA and other parts require VGA. The companies other products include analog biofeedback sensors that give out a tone. They have several courses based around the tone version that could be used with the Calmpute Mouse except for the small fact that the tone feature doesn't work on the mouse.
New Member Disk Update
I made a minor update to the CFOG new member disk. Since PKARC is no longer supported by PK Industries I removed it and added the latest version of ARC. Also added was ANSI.COM to speed up screen writes and allocate more memory to keyboard reassignments. Also added was an improved print spooler MSPOOL2.
CFOG Library Update -- ZIP
Additions to the CFOG library include a disk of dBase programs, 3 tax programs (AMTAX is by far the best), a demo of Mathcadd, Phil Katz latest file compression utility called ZIP and the newest version of ARC. Also included are a couple of disks of assorted utilities.
It is good to see Phil Katz producing more software. I briefly tested his new method of file compression, on an ASCII file it made a smaller file than QARC and took the same amount of time. He also has utilities to convert ARC format files to ZIP. We will have to wait and see if it is accepted.
CFOG's PIP, March 1989, Volume 8 No. 1, Whole No. 69, page 5
by Bob Lay
[Reprinted with permission from the January 1989 issue of Q Bits, newsletter of the Quad Cities All Computers User's Group. Bob and Delores Lay are the editors of Q Bits.
Cache, or cache buffer, as this poor CP/M user understands it, refers to a program which sits in high memory, a TSR or RAM resident program, and keeps track of your activity, and throws the programs and data that you are using into memory as if it were a RAM disk. Then when you call these programs or data again, the program or data is called from the memory cache, instead of from the disk. This speeds up hard disk operations noticeably, and floppy disk systems benefit even more. If I'm wrong in concept or details someone will have a rebuttal here next issue, I'm sure! -- bhc]
This a tale with TWO morals. When we got our laptop MS-DOS computer last spring, the first set of utility programs I bought was the superb and bargain-priced PC-Tools Deluxe Version 4.2. One of the included utilities was PC-Cache, and I stared using it to cache about 128k of my 640k base memory to speed things up a bit, and it seemed to work okay on this floppy disk only system.
I also installed PC-Cache on Delores' desktop system (which has a 40Mb hard disk and 512k of additional memory above the 640k base memory, installed as extended memory), allocating all the extended memory as a cache buffer.
One August day Dolores was working at her system and suddenly everything went haywire. Attempts to reboot from Drivc C: proved fruitless. We rebooted from A: (the floppy) and took a look around. Every file in her root directory had been deleted, including DOS's two hidden files. We were able to recover kjdm all using PC-Tools undelete function, but it took about an hour, and considerable fretting trying to figure out what had happened.
In the October FOGLIGHT, on page 20, was published an article by Robert Bobs about some problems with PC-Tools, with a caveat by Gale Rhoades and Jack Brown of the FOG office stating they had numerous reports of hard disk corruption from people using PC-Cache. At about the same time QC-ACUG member Brian Gillette told me the FAT on his drive C scrambled several months ago and he suspected the PC-Cache he had been using and switched cache programs.
Being your basic slow-learner, I paid no attention and left the cache active on Delores' system and went merrily on my way until I bought my new AT at the end of November. The memory on my system is configured the same way as Delores' machine (640 base, 512 extended.)
[Let me spare you the gory details -- suffice it to say that after spending three days setting up his new system and making a backup, four hours later Bob got to use his backup. -- bhc]
Incidentally, if you ever suspect a problem and run CHKDSK to look things over, use DOS's redirection as follows:
CHKDSK > TROUBLE<cr>
Then you'll have a disk file called TROUBLE with all the results of running CHKDSK (that would normally be seen on the screen) available in an ASCII disk file. You can study the results and keep them as a permanent record (that, we hope, you'll never need again).
The two morals? Believe at least some of what you read and hear (i.e., DON'T use PC-Cache, period) and DO make regular backups. There are probably other morals in here as well, but I just don't want to talk about it anymore!
CFOG's PIP, March 1989, Volume 8 No. 1, Whole No. 69, page 6
by Benjamin Cohen
While we're talking about backup (if you're not making backups you should at least be talking about it!) here's a simple SUBMIT file that I use to back up my data files after I update them. If you are using MS-DOS you could make this in a BATch file, substituting appropriate MS-DOS commands as required.
01 echo off
02 echo Insert backup disk
03 echo Date added?
04 echo If not, abort, restart with date
05 echo on
06 pause
07 era b:/F*.upd
08 save 0 /F$1.upd
09 era /F*.upd
10 save 0 b:/F$1.upd
11 pip b:=a:FILE.dta
12 go b:=a:FILE.inx
13 echo off
14 echo insert another backup disk
15 echo press A to abort if done
16 echo on
17 pause
18 submit backup
This file, which I call FILEBAK.SUB, is created with VDE or WordStar in ASCII or non-document mode. You don't enter the line numbers, of course.
When you start this backup routine you'll enter the following on the command line:
SUBMIT FILEBAK YYMMDD<cr>
The YYMMDD represents the year, month, and day the backup was made. More about this later.
Line 01 turns the echo off so that you don't see the commands on the next few lines, just the prompts. Lines 02 through 04 are prompts to remind the user that the backup disk has to be in the drive and that the date is needed on the command line. Line 05 then turns the echo back on. We could keep it off, but it's nice to see that what's supposed to be happening is happening. I copy my files to a rotating set of backup disks so I couldn't test to see if they got there as you could if you used a new disk each time.
Line 06 runs the submit utility PAUSE.COM which prompts the user and then stops processing of a SUB file until the user presses a key. Pressing A aborts the SUB file processing; any other key allows it to continue. Line 06 is a pause so that the user can easily abort if the date has been forgotten.
Lines 07 through 10 erase the existing empty file backup dates on the source drive, save a new empty file backup date on the source drive, and then do the same on the destination drive. These date files take up no disk space, just a directory entry. The result is a file named /FYYMMDD.UPD on both disks. You may want to substitute a hyphen for the slash, the idea simply being to get it to sort to the top of any alphabetical directory. I put the letter F in the filename to indicate which database was backed up on the date indicated. The letters "UPD" stand for "update".
Lines 11 and 12 copy the data and index files from my database to the backup disk. I use PC-File 80, which creates three files, data, index, and header. The header file doesn't change in ordinary usage, so there's no need to copy it. The "GO" command (Line 12) is a ZCPR resident command, which runs the previous program if it is still in memory after running (and PIP, like most, is). If you're not running ZCPR (any version) you can achieve the same result on most CP/M 2.2 machines by saving an empty file called GO.COM (Save 0 GO.COM<cr>).
At Line 13 we turn the echo off again, and Lines 14 and 15 prompt the user to insert another disk and remind the user to press A to abort when the requisite number of backup disks have been made. If you always make two backups you could simply repeat the commands once in the FILEBAK.SUB file.
Line 16 turns echo back on, Line 17 makes a pause, and Line 18 repeats the backup procedure if the user has not aborted.
I normally back up certain databases to specific floppies, so I put the submit file on the floppy disk and save space on my RAM disk where each file requires 4K bytes.
Mike Andrews demonstrated years ago how this task could be done with SYNONYM.COM and /.COM to create a command file that would do essentially the same thing, though limitations of the CP/M command line would not allow the pauses and repeats. (The command line used to create the freestanding COM file cannot exceed 128 characters.) I like this verbose procedure through SUBMIT because of the reminders to enter the date on the command line and the ability to repeat without having to enter the date a second time (I make three backups every time!).
ZCPR2 and ZCPR3 users can use aliases instead of SUB files, of course, or ZFILER scripts. The advantage of SUB files and aliases over the SYNONYM.COM and /.COM combination is that you can easily edit the former. NEWBATCH.COM can accomplish the same results on most CP/M systems by creating a free-standing COM file that can be edited. Because you can put multiple lines in the NEWBATCH file you can get around the CP/M command line limit of 128 bytes, too.
More could be done to this: for example, using Roy Lipscomb's SUPERMIT series you could, instead of looping by running SUBMIT and FILEBAK.SUB again, you could GOTO line line 09 and skip the reminder to put the date on the commnnd line and the pause to abort if you forgot.
CFOG's PIP, March 1989, Volume 8 No. 1, Whole No. 69, page 7
by Benjamin H. Cohen
PC- File 80 offers a 'flip data' character, the tilde (~), which allows you to enter data in 'reverse order' so that it will sort correctly, but also print the later part of the record first. Perhaps the most obvious use for this is a name field where PC-File 80 allows you to enter Cohen~Ben so that all the names will sort correctly but in reports and on labels it will print Ben Cohen. The advantages of using this are: (1) you have one field instead of two, reducing the index size by two bytes for every record and (2) you generally need fewer bytes for the combined name field than you would need for separate first name and last fields, since folks with long last names generally have shorter first names, and vice versa.
But some folks don't anticipate all the uses of their databases and wind up wanting later to print a list that has all the last names lined up so they can scan the alphabetical list easily. They want it to look like this:
Ben Cohen Jonathan Harrison Smith Sam Smith
rather than:
Ben Cohen
Jonathan Harrison Smith
Sam Smith
Unfortunately, PC-File won't let you have it both ways. But you can change from one to the other.
If your file has last_name~first_name, the solution is to export the file to a MailMerge or comma-delimited format. On export PC-File 80 will NOT reverse the order of the names and will export the tilde. So each record will look like this:
"Cohen~Ben","Box 1674","Chicago","IL","60690"
Now, all you have to do is to edit the file with any ASCII editor: WordStar in non-document mode or VDE in non-document or ASCII mode will do fine. Do a global replace, taking out the tilde and replacing it with "," [that's quote, comma, quote]. Now your record will look like this:
"Cohen","Ben","Box 1674","Chicago","IL","60690"
Go back to PC-File 80. Define a new database. The definition will be exactly the same as the old one EXCEPT that instead of a single NAME field you will have a LAST NAME field and a FIRST NAME field. Select field lengths appropriate to your data.
When the new database is ready, go to the UTILITIES menu and select the import a database option. Complete instructions are in the manual. Now your database has first and last names separately laid out
To combine last and first name fields with a flip data character, you again export the database. This time you replace the "," between the last and first names with a tilde and define a new database with ONE name field. This is best done with a macro (WordStar shorthand) that goes to the beginning of the line and replaces the first "," only, goes down one line, to the beginning of the line, and repeats. When this is done, import the data file.
There's actually a second way to get the kind of report you want, without changing your database, IF you have WordStar, Magic Series, or word processing program or formatter that lets you set fixed tab locations or overprint the next line. You still have to export the database and replace the tilde with ",". Then you use the WordStar "Overprint next line" command, CTRL PM, to format the report so that each record prints on one line in a separate column. Magic Series for daisy wheel printers can go back a line to print the last name where you want it and the laser printer version can set fixed tabs.
The article above was written in response to a query by a PC-File 80 user. I got a letter back from him with another, simpler method. He simply used the old shareware version 8.6 of PC-File. That version doesn't recoginize the tilde as a flip-data character, so it prints the list "Lname~Fname".
CFOG's PIP, March 1989, Volume 8 No. 1, Whole No. 69, page 8
by Benjamin H. Cohen
Gerald Pine, our CP/M Disk Librarian, started it. His employer decided to dump four Epson Genevas and offered them to employees. Gerald acquired three of them and Mike Andrews and I would up with two since Gerald couldn't balance all three on his lap at one time! I passed my Geneva on to Hal Taylor, and picked up another one. What with one thing and another they each have a "multi" unit and I have the 120K RAM disk unit. I'll explain that in a moment.
The Geneva (or PX-8) weighs in, naked, at about 4 pounds, has an 8 line by 80 column LCD screen, a keyboard that's about 96% of full size, 64K RAM, CP/M 2.2, two slots into which you can stick ROMs with software (Drives B: and C:), and a tape cassette drive. It comes bundled with four ROMs containing a group of utility programs, Portable WordStar, Portable Calc and Scheduler, and MBASIC. You can add a 300 baud modem, a 120 K RAM disk, or a "multi" unit consisting of 64 K of RAM disk, a 300 baud modem, and a third ROM socket (Drive I:). These add-on units are all in the shape of a wedge and attach to the bottom of the Geneva adding about two pounds to its weight. There's no disk drive and no parallel port, but there are serial communications and printer ports.
The Geneva's built-in rechargeable battery pack allows you to work for 10 to 20 hours, the propaganda says. In practice the amount of time depends greatly on the state of your battery, your charging practice, whether you use the tape drive or a disk drive, and whether you use the machine continuously or intermittently. My experience has been toward the lower limit of the 10-20 hour period, but the charger unit is lightweight so it's easy enough to carry around if you're travelling.
If you don't have a multi unit or 120K RAM disk added you can configure up to 24K of the 64K nominal RAM as a RAM disk. With WordStar that means you can edit a file up to about 8 K bytes. If you stick VDE into a ROM and turn off the making of BAK files you can edit larger files.
The utility ROM includes PIP, STAT, SUBMIT, XSUB, TERM (a simple communications program), CONFIG (to configure the system), and FILINK (a one-file-at-a-time file transfer program). There are FILINK compatible public domain programs for CP/M and MS-DOS computers (Osborne and Kaypro specific versions are readily availabe). Files can easily be transferred to and from the Geneva with FILINK or a communications program. MEX is also available.
There are a number of Geneva specific programs available. CFOG's Antelope Freeway Remote Access System [(312) 764-5162] has a separate directory for Geneva programs, and there are a lot there. Even more can be found at the PX-DOCK [(313) 538-6968], which is more or less dedicated to support of the Geneva.
The small storage available on the Geneva has generated the creation of a different breed of utility program, called the "DO" program. DO utilities consist of a single program containing several utility programs. When you execute the program you either add command line paramaters to indicate which program you want executed or select your choice from a menu. I've seen as many as seven utility functions crammed into one "DO" utility.
The reason for creation of DO utilities is simple: CP/M requires allocation of units of (in the Geneva's case) 1 K bytes for files. If a program is 128 bytes long, there are 896 bytes of unused space in the 1 K allocated for that program. Many small utility programs have relatively large amounts of unused space allocated. Combining them into a single program with jump commands to execute the desired module recovers a large portion of the otherwise wasted space.
I got the Geneva because I often find myself in meetings interviewing clients or witnesses, attending continuing legal education lectures, at the library doing legal research, or otherwise putting my pencil to pad taking notes. I can type faster than I can write, and my printed notes tend to be more legible and comprehensive than my scribbled ones. I've been taking notes on my office computer during telephone conversations for years, and have found it very effective.
While the Geneva's LCD screen is rather slow, it's not a big issue during note-taking because I'm almost always adding text at the end of a file and not even looking at the display -- I'm looking at the person across the table. When I'm done I send the file 'upstream' to my Osborne or Kaypro where it can be cleaned up and printed. At only six pounds the Geneva is easy enough to put into a briefcase (I bought a separate case from Kaypro that was designed for the Kaypro 2000 but neatly fits the Geneva, it was just $19.00) and carry around.
I've decided to have a couple of ROMs made for my Geneva, so that I can have my choice of programs and get them out of my 120K RAM disk. There's plenty of room there now, but it would be better to get the programs out of there and leave room for the text files I'll be creating. Here's my tentative list:
ZDE.COM 16K DISK.COM 6K ZDR.COM 1K BAT.COM 1K CLS.COM 1K CONFIG.COM 8K CRUNCH.COM 6K UNCR.COM 7K UNERA.COM 1K SUBMIT.COM 3K FILINK.COM 3K
ZDE is the soon to be released successor to VDE. I've selected it mostly because Portable WordStar doesn't have anywhere near as many features as ZDE and requires much more free space in which to edit files because it makes temporary and backup files.
DISK is a 6K NewSweep work-a-like. Actually, it's older than NewSweep. It doesn't have all the features of NewSweep, but it has most of them. DISK's help screen is six lines by 80 columns and it has a separate help screen for mass transfers. These work very nicely on the Geneva's 8 line display.
ZDR is a horizontally alphabetized "super" directory program that also displays the voltage of the battery. BAT gives a battery voltage reading that's more precise, without the directory listing. It's a 'frill', but there's space for it
CLS is a clear screen utility. Again, it's a frill for which there is space, but on the other hand a ^Z doesn't clear the Geneva's screen.
CONFIG is the Geneva's configuration program and a must.
CRUNCH and UNCRunch are choices that will allow me to save some space on the RAM disk when it gets crowded. These save more than 65% in compressing typical text files, so it's nice to have them. If there was some good reason to do so I could eliminate these and substitute NewSweep for DISK since NewSweep has a squeeze / unsqueeze function and takes up only 12K versus 20K for the DISK / CRUNCH / UNCRunch combination. As I said, these are tentative choices.
UNERAse is, well, absolutely essential.
SUBMIT isn't all that important on the Geneva, but it somehow seemed to be a good idea.
FILINK is a compact way of moving files between systems. I'd consider MEX for batch transfers, but since I seldom travel, so serious communications software isn't important.
I have about 11K bytes available. I haven't chosen any of the available DO utilities simply because I found that I had enough room in two 32K ROMs to fit the programs I think I really need and because many of the combinations include utility functions that I don't want or need.
I haven't finalized my choices yet, and I'd be interested in hearing what other Geneva users do with their machines and what choices they have for programs to store in their RAM disks or on ROMs.
DAK Industries [1-800-425-0800] has offered NEW Genevas for quite some time. They sell it, if I recall correctly, with a multi-unit or a 120K RAM disk (but won't sell either separately) for about about $400. You should be able to get a used one with a multi-unit or a 120K RAM disk for about $200, when you find one. The PX-Dock occasionally has offers of Genevas for sale.
CFOG's PIP, March 1989, Volume 8 No. 1, Whole No. 69, page 9
This is just a sample of the MS-DOS uploads to CFOG's Antelope Freeway Remote Access System during February. For a sample of new CP/M uploads, see page 2.
AMTAX88.ARC - MSDOS Utility
Income tax preparation program.
TAX89.ARC - MSDOS Application
1989 Income Tax program for MS-DOS.
123TAX88.ARC - MSDOS
1988 form 1040 income tax preparation worksheet for Lotus 1-2-3.
EZCL-V11.ARC - MSDOS Utility
EZ Copy Lite fast diskette duplicator. Reads a disk into the computer memory to make multiple copies quickly.
EZFL-E11.ARC - MSDOS Utility
EZ Form Lite. Word processing utility to fill-in pre-printed forms.
PRCM243A/B.ARC - MSDOS Modem
Procomm modem communications program version 2.43 (Parts A & B).
CARB-COP.ARC - MSDOS Modem
TANDEM modem communications program. Shareware Carbon Copy-like program. Run all PC functions remotely via modem.
PFM230.ARC - MSDOS Utility
Personal File Manager version 2.30. A MS-DOS shell to copy, delete etc. files with an easy-to-use user interface.
ROWADV.ARC - MSDOS Utility
Batch file utility.
SD59.ARC - MSDOS Utility
SuperDirectory version 5.9.
PARTY.ARC - MSDOS Recreation
Party planner database program. Contains recipes and party game ideas.
F19DEM.ARC - MSDOS Recreation
Full-featured demonstration of F-19 Stealth Fighter by Microprose.
FAS-TYPE.ARC - MSDOS
Excellent touch-typing tutor program.
CDOC.ARC - MSDOS Programming
Input screen designer for 'C'. Draw the screen the way you want it and CSOURCE writes the code for the data input function.
PC-CLOCK.ARC - MSDOS Utility
Full screen digital clock that gives the local time in large digits surrounded by times for cities around the world.
22NCE124.ARC - MSDOS Utility
Latest version of Sydex's 22NICE CP/M 2.2 emulator. Loads a memory resident module that allows running CP/M programs right from the PC's drive. Includes terminal emulators to emulate popular CP/M computers and terminals. This updated version does not need to be always present in memory -- it can be loaded as needed to run CP/M programs. Shareware.
22DSK124.ARC - MSDOS Utility
Latest release of Sydex's 22DISK CP/M disk utility for MS-DOS computers. Allows a PC to read, write to, and format over 100 CP/M formats. Shareware.
2ZIP12.ZIP - MSDOS Utility
Phil Katz's utility to convert .ARC and .PAK files to the new .ZIP format.
ZIP123.ARC - MSDOS Utility
Version 1.23 of Eric Meyer's ZIP PC-to-PC file transfer utility. Sends files from one PC to another at 115K baud. Great for transfering files from a desktop PC with a 5 1/2" drive to a laptop computer with 3 1/4" drives. Version 1.23 features menu-driven operation.
BOYAN4OA/B/C.ARC - MSDOS Modem - Three Parts
Boyan modem communication program version 4.0. A popular script-driven shareware program. Written by Justin Boyan (now a student at the University of Chicago).
ZIPPHONE.ARC - MSDOS Utility
Contains a huge database utility for the telephone area codes and postal ZIP codes for cities across the US.
AM40X.ARC - MSDOS Utility
ArcMaster version 4.0. A powerful front-end shell for the ARC program.
BATCMDR7.ARC - MSDOS Utility
BAT commander. Combines small .BAT files into one to save disk space. One 2K file can hold dozens of .BAT routines.
ARC600.EXE, ARCE.OBJ, ARCE.DOC - MSDOS Utility
Version 6.00 of SEA's ARC utilities. Creates, extracts from, and views .ARC file collections. ARCE is file extractor utility.
ZIP-KIT2.ARC - MSDOS Utility
Phil Katz's ZIP file routines for inclusion in other programs.
SLURVIAN.ARC - MSDOS Application
A text file containing a language translation for American Slurvian.
SIGNTEXT.ARC - MSDOS Application
A text file with a collection of unintentionally funny signs posted around the country.
GETKEY.ARC - MSDOS Application
A batch file utility to return a ERRORLEVEL based on what key was pressed at the keyboard.
SECRET.ARC - MSDOS Application
A utility to create a secret subdirectory on the disk.
SILENCE.ARC - MSDOS Application
A utility to turn of the PC's internal speaker.
DEEPFIND.ARC - MSDOS Application
A search utility that checks across all directories of the drive even looking into .ARC files to find a file.
ATALK.ARC - MSDOS Application
A program to make your PC talk in human-like speech. Includes a collection of clever thing for your PC to say.
BLURP.ARC - MSDOS Application
A little joke utility to trick your friends. Makes the screen go nuts with an erratic sound from the speaker. Makes it look like the PC is about to explode. Press <ESC> to end.
CFOG's PIP, March 1989, Volume 8 No. 1, Whole No. 69, page 10
CFOG Sunday meetings are held at
Skokie Public Library
5215 Oakton Street
Skokie
and commence at 1:00 p.m. The meeting ends sometime bcfore 5:00 p.m. (when the Library closes). Members are encouraged to bring transportable computers to the meeting to assist in disk copying. The schedule of meetings is:
March 19, 1989
April 30, 1989
You may check out the planned program for the meeting by calling our 24 hour hotline answering machine at 726-3569.
CFOG's PIP, March 1989, Volume 8 No. 1, Whole No. 69, page 10
CFOG Thursday meetings are held at
55 West Monroe Street 2400
Chicago
and start at 6:00 p.m. For those who work downtown or otherwise find it convenient to eat at the meeting, there is pizza ($7.00). Please call the 24 hour hotline answering machine at 726-3569 and leave a message if you are planning to join in the pizza. The meeting usually ends around 9:30.
Schedule of Meetings:
March 9
April 13
May 11
June 7 (Wednesday!)
Downtown meetings do not normally have a planned program. We try to answer any questions which users may have and provide disk copying service. There are CP/M and MS-DOS computers at this location and it is not necessary to bring a computer for disk copying.