Apple Orchard v2n3 1981 Fall

f2 4 INTERNATIONAL eS reas ft DPDpIE Orchard. VOLUME 2 NUMBER 3 _FALL 1981 aa cs . ' ee } | ‘The Apple Nobody Knows — Tasting an Applé “ws : tn, Pri€@ War > SUP'R’MOD II >< SUP'R’TERMINAL >¢ SUP'R’FAN >< SUP'R’SWITCHER SUP‘R'’FAN « Fits inside the APPLE Il case © Powered by 117VAC and does not depend on the Apple Power Supply © Brushless AC Motor for no electrical noise © Does not interfere with all present Apple Peripherals © Mounts with one screw—no drilling required © Will not interfere with magnetic media such as metal cased monitors or disks in close proximity (less than 4% gauss) © Lowers IC surface temperatures © Weighs only 18 02. SUP'R'SWITCHER © 90 to 135 VAC/60Hz or 180 to 270 VAC/50Hz input © Fully protected — voltage/current © Overvoltage protection © 0.50 C full load operating temperature © Output voltage current +5V @ 6A -2V@1A +12V @ 1A -5V@I1A © Weight —2% Ibs © Size 3%” H 9%” D 6%” W © Mounts on left side of Apple II Sufficient current to handle all 8 slots Plugs directly into the Apple II motherboard SUP'R' TERMINAL © 80 Columns by 24 lines, upper and lower case; all 128 ASCII characters @ Includes an Upper and Lower case 5x8 dot matrix ASCII character set, and inverse alpha characters © Character set can be user definable © Shift Lock feature © Works with APPLE PASCAL and APPLE BASIC © Compatible with ALL APPLE Il peripherals © CP/M Output cursor* Pascal 1.1 Keypress and type ahead in firmware* © 3K bytes of bank switched static ram © 2K bytes of ROM © The only board with continuous direct memory mapped screened ram © The only board that interprets VTABS by firmware (version 2.2) © The only board with an adjustable scrolling window © The only 80 column board that is synchronous with the APPLE II ¢ Fully programmable cursor Works with CORVUS and NESTAR Systems ‘Version 25 [APPLE Ilis a trademark of APPLE Computer Co, CP/Mis a trademark of Digital Research SUP‘R’MOD II The SUP'R’MOD Il is a wide band black and white or color compatible interface system intended to convert the home TV toa full video display for home computers, CCTV cameras and similar systems which output NTSC compatible composite video. The SUP'R’'MOD II is pre-tuned to U.S. channel 33 (UHF), includes a coaxial cable and antenna transformer, and in conjunction with a standard home TV set, insures safe isolation and high performance. SYMBOL DESCRIPTION TYPICAL UNIT F Vision Carrier 5915 MHz +05 ee Supply Current 20 Ma VO (Hi) RF Output, Vinoa = 0 15 Mv VO (Low) RF Output, Vinod = 1.5 -20.0 dB Rj,(mod) Modulation input resistance 700.0 Ohm Voe,(Min) Oscillator stop voltage 2.0 Volt ve Voltage +5to+12 Volts DC M &R Enterprises P.O. Box 61011 Sunnyvale, CA 94086 Telephone (408) 738-3772 II GOIN.A.dNS 44 TWNIINAALA.dNS 4 NWAadNS > YAHOLIMS.A.dNsS Turn your Apple into the world’s most versatile personal computer. The SoftCard™ Solution. SoftCard turns your Apple into two computers. A Z-80 and a 6502. By adding a Z-80 microprocessor and CP/M to your Apple, SoftCard turns your Apple into a CP/M based machine. That means you can access the single largest body of microcomputer software in exist- ence. Two computers in one. And, the advantages of both. Plug and go. The SoftCard system starts with a Z-80 based circuit card. Just plug it into any slot (except O) of your Apple. No modifications required. SoftCard supports most of your Apple peripherals, and, in 6502-mode, your Apple is still your Apple. CP/M for your Apple. You get CP/M on disk with the SoftCard package. It’s a powerful and simple-to-use operating system. It supports more software than any other microcomputer operat- ing system. And that's the key to the versatility of the SoftCard/Apple. BASIC included. A powerful tool, BASIC-80 is included in the SoftCard package. Running under CP/M, ANSI Standard BASIC-80 is the most powerful microcomputer BASIC available. It includes extensive disk I/O statements, error trapping, integer variables, 16-digit precision, exten- sive EDIT commands and string func- tions, high and low-res Apple graphics, PRINT USING, CHAIN and COM- MON, plus many additional com- mands. And, it’s a BASIC you can compile with Microsoft's BASIC Compiler. More languages. With SoftCard and CP/M, you can add Microsoft's ANSI Standard COBOL, and FORTRAN, or Basic Compiler and Assembly Lan- guage Development System. All, more powerful tools for your Apple. Seeing is believing. See the SoftCard in operation at your Microsoft or Apple dealer. We think you'll agree that the SoftCard turns your Apple into the world’s most versatile personal computer. Complete information? It’s at your dealer’s now. Or, we'll send it to you and include a dealer list. Write us. Call us. Or, circle the reader service card number below. SoftCard is a trademark of Microsoft. Apple I! and Apple Il Plus are registered trademarks of Apple Computer. Z-80 is a registered trademark of Zilog, Inc. CP/M is a registered trademark of Digital Research, Inc. Microsoft Consumer Products, 400 108th Ave. N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004. (206) 454-1315 MICRO-SCI SQUEEZES MORE OUT OE: YOUR CO OT YOUR If you own an Apple II* or plan to buy one, consider this: The Disk II* subsystem made for your Apple II provides only 35 tracks of storage. But Micro-Sci subsystems made for your Apple II provide up to 70 tracks, without reduced versatility or compatibility. MORE CAPACITY FOR LESS MONEY Our A40 system features 40 tracks, whereas our A70 provides 70 tracks and exactly twice the byte capacity of Disk II. With either Micro-Sci system,you pay a lot less per byte. And with the A40, you could even end up paying considerably less per drive. COMPATIBILITY TO SPARE Micro-Sci has. achieved this extra storage while maintaining compatibility with your existing Apple formated diskettes. Our subsystems opetate with: DOS 3.2 and 3.3, Pascal, and the Z80 SoftCard. VERSATILITY PLUS You can even mix Apple Disk II's; A40’s and A70's on the same com- puter. Micro-Sci's controller sup- ports one or two A40's, one or two A70's or one of each. Single or dual A40 drive sub- systems give you more capacity (20,000 to 40,000 bytes) than Disk II drives, for less money. MICRO-SCI a} Micro-Sci's A40/A70 subsystem) | ‘combines the diskette level com- *) | patibility and interchangeability of} the A40 with the superior storage f capacity. of the A70. Dual A70's provide over half- a-megabyte of storage; at 54" =| floppy prices! ) No matter which Micro-Sci ) subsystem you choose, you'll ha more capacity, compatibility and versatility for your computer—and | more money in your pocket. a Contact.us today for more infor- } mation and the name of your \ nearest Micro-Sci Dealer. Dis Ie a efaiered trademark of Apple Computer, Inc.| Cupertino, CB. Sr santnet es reed tadench of eid 17742 Irvine Boulevard, Suite 205, Tustin, California 92680 / Phone: 714/731-9461 / Telex: 910-346- 6739) MICRO-SCI IS A DIVISION OF STANDUN CONTROLS, INC. FALL 1981 APPLE ORCHARD PAGE 3 is i Take a bité... J 9 A J Vol.2 No.3 Fall 1981 Builda Better Error Trap, Peter C. Weiglin 12 Designing input to reduce crash potential. What Does an Apple Taste Like, Eve? MarionD. Jett 0... 0.6.6. ccc cece eee eee eee eens 16 Symbolism, exegesis and tomorrow. The Apple Nobody Knows, AlanAnderson ........ 00sec ee cece cee cence eee e nee eee e eens 18 The real Apple /// story. The Hero, the Sword, andthe Apple, DonaldBrown........ 0000s eect e eee eee eee eee 23 About those interactive fantasy games. Apple Il Disk Soft Sectoring, Gary Morris... 1... eect eee eee e eens 26 Short nibble on nibbles. Ham ‘n’ Apples, Jim Hassler . . 27 The worldwide Amateur iio Applenet. Apple Telecommunications, LouisH. Milrad.. 1.6... eee eee eee eee teens 30 Or, run your home Apple from the office. Data Communication, Rob Stewart ... 0... cece ee eee eee e eee ene e ene eeeee 33 Modems, carriers, baud and duplex explained. Price War, Joe Budge wsiic8 is ie Hees Oe Os FA REINHORN MG ON HEUTE! AS 64 OS BA EROS 38 A microeconomics simulation. Attach-BIOS Console Driver, Steve Lloyd .. 1... 6... cece ect e tee eeeet eet ene e eens 45 Augmentation for the IAC’s Pascal disk. Integer BASIC Register Loader, Val J.Golding. . . 53 Passage of parameters to machine language. Poorboy Word Processor, Mike Kramer... 6.0.6 cece tee eee teen nent tenes 56 MX-80 lower-case output program. Shape Definition Conversion Table, DavidG. Huffman ........ 0.6 c cece cece cee eee eee eae 78 An easier way to keep track of those pesky arrows. DEPARTMENTS Letters 6 PRINT FRE(ed), Val J. Golding ‘ 8 Plantinga Seed. . . PeterC. Weiglin . 9 President’s Message, Ken Silverman 11 Product Reviews 36 User Group Forum, Randy Fields . 67 Club meetings and organization. IAC Section: Membership Information - 61 InsidetheIAC .. 69 Sponsoring Members . 70 Worldwide Club Roster . 72 Forbidden Fruit, Mark L. Crosby 82 Temptations, delicacies, and necessities. Buffer Overflow, Brian Strong . 96 PAGE 4 APPLE ORCHARD Apple pchard Vol. 2 No.3 Fall 1981 Entire Contents Copyright © 1981 by International Apple Core Peter C. Weiglin—Editor Val. J. Golding—Editorial Associate Mark Crosby—New Products Editor “Dr. Wo”—Pascal/Languages Editor EDITORIAL MATERIAL TO: International Apple Core P.O. Box 976 Daly City, CA 94017 Published for the International Apple Core by dilithium Press, P.O. box 1493, Beaverton, OR 97075 Patricia Miller—Publisher Tymera Coen—Production Manager ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVES: Marla Knauss dilithium Press P.O. Box 1493 Beaverton, OR 97075 (503) 646-2713 SUBSCRIPTIONS—DEALER INFORMATION: Apple Orchard Subscriptions P.O. Box 1493 Beaverton, OR 97075 APPLE ORCHARD (ISSN 0277-1950) is published quarterly by dilithium Press, 11000 SW 1 Ith Street, Beaverton, Oregon 97005. Subscription rates are $ 10.00 for four issues in the U.S., $15.00 U.S. funds for Canada, Mexico, APO and FPO addresses, and $20.00 U.S. funds for overseas and foreign addresses. Send change of address notices and cor respondence concerning subscriptions to: APPLE ORCHARD Subscriptions, P.O. Box 1493, Beaverton, Oregon 97075. Roger Keating ‘Auby Mandel Wolfgang Dederichs Harlan G. Felt James E. Hassler Jerry Vitt Scott Knaster Bemie Urban Tony Cerreta Fred Wilkinson James Simpson Regional Directors FALL 1981 as stab e » be Ps as 3 : 3 ae: | SKS a - INTERNATIONAL APPLE CORE Officers Jerry Vitt Chairman (214) 369-7660 Ken Silverman President (415) 878-9171 Dave Gordon Vice-President (213) 384-0579 David Alpert Treasurer (312) 295.6078 Joe Budge Secretary (919) 489-4284 P.O. Box 448, Double Bay 2048, NSW, Australia 409 Queen St. W., Toronto, Or , Canada M5V 2A5 ‘AufDrenhausen2 4320Hattigen, West Germany (Northern United States) (Northern United States) (Souther United States) (Souther United States) (Eastern United States) (Eastern United States) (Western United States) (Western United States) Committee Chairmen ‘SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS: Co-ordinator Education SIG Ham Radio SIG Handicapped SIG Languages Legal SIG Medical SIG ‘ApNotes Apple Orchard IAC Software IAC Librarian Telecommunications Standards Newsletter Exchange New Club Assistance Louis Milrad Ted Perry James E. Hassler, WB7TRQ David McFarling Tom Woteki Felix B, Clayton Larry L. Stoneburner John Shanes Peter C. Weiglin Neil Lipson Major Terry N. Taylor Craig Vaughan Mark Robbins David Alpert Randy Fields (408) 86-1733 (307) 632-4934 (214) 369-7660 (303) 238-8301 B01) 229-3458 (914) 636-3417 (415) 585-2240 (805) 492.3391 (416) 223-0599 (916) 961-7776 (307) 632-4934 (402) 467-1878 (202) 547-0984 (803) 884-5370 (714) 953-9151 (804) 746-2711 (415) 573-9726 (215) 356-6183 (213) 372-4134 (703) 255-2241 (303) 755-6440 (312) 295-6078 (415) 775-7965 Cover photograph by Tracy I. Borland ODYSSEY: The Compleat Apventure ....“. A colorful high-res graphics ad land and at sea, in dungeons and Castles; soe Re different each time you play. PI fe) Synergistic strategy, solve the puzzles, Software the endless variety of ha 5221 120th Ave. S.E. PAGE 6 APPLE ORCHARD Letters to the Editor Sir: Enclosed is my check for a one- year subscription. | found the article “Comparing Applesoft Programs for Differences” in the Spring 1981 Or- chard to be very helpful, and well- written, It’s a pleasure to see a pro- gram that not only does the job, but does it with style. In the same issue, the article “Screen Formatting of Text” (which, in general, is very good), the pro- gram for printing more than two col- umns does not work. The only time a “1” should be added is when the number of columns does not evenly divide the number of items. Perhaps the author meant to use the INTeger function. Also, the program should stop after item RN has been printed. Francis A. Greene Hedgesville, WV (The INT function was intended, and was lost somewhere. —Ed.) Sir: On Page 87 of the summer Apple Orchard is a question about weird numbers with the Applesoft Renum- ber. Because this kind of thing had been happening to me, | breathlessly turned the page for the rest of the answer. . .and no answer. Is there a “fix”? Or were you just kidding? R. E. Johnson Houston There is a fix, no kidding. Here it is (I hope. . .)—PCW AFTER USING THE RENUMBER PROGRAM, | GET SOME WEIRD CALCULATIONS. WHY? Renumber is a very powerful tool for developing programs, but after you use it you may find some strange calculations in your program. What happens is that the number after an asterisk (“*”), as for multiplication, is sometimes mistaken as a line number, and Renumber renum- bers it. So if you had a line: 10 A=B*10 it might renumber as 20 A=B*20 The fix is: For RAM Applesoft ] LOAD RENUMBER ] POKE 14342,172 ] POKE 14343,171 1 SAVE RENUMBER For ROM Applesoft ] LOAD RENUMBER ] POKE 4815,172 ] POKE 4816,171 ] SAVE RENUMBER (Do this on Renumber after copying it onto your work disk.) FALL 1981 ¥ : Sememeeeece a 8 bes $08, a oe a K D4 SPSS ms Leh RECTES. Sir: I read “Low Resolution Graphics in Pascal” by Bill Shepard in the Spring Apple Orchard with great interest. (I am trying to learn programming with Pascal instead of BASIC.) Unfor- tunately, | could not compile my in- put. | believe there is an error some- where on Pages 82, 83, or 84. Can you help? Thomas Kwai Wappinger’s Falls, New York Yes. The VAR declaration at the top of Page 82 should have been at the top of Page 84. On Pages 62 and 63 of this issue you will find the pages from his original listing, showing the “contexts” I have de- scribed. It was not Mr. Shepard's er- ror. Note: for the full listing, we re- mind you that back issues are available. Maybe an answer is to publish disks containing the pro- grams used in the Apple Orchard. What do you think?—PCW Send your comments to: International Apple Core P.O. BOx 976 Daly City, CA 94017 When we set out to design games based on the Battle of Shiloh and the Battle of the Bulge, we knew we had to give these classic, favorite themes a fresh, new look and feel. After all, we've established a reputation in strategy gaming for unsurpassed innovation, excitement, and sophistication. First, we put the games on the Apple® II* programming it perfectly to eliminate all organizational and administrative headaches so you can give your undivided attention to strategy planning. Then we gave both games the realism and playability you're looking for. An elegant yet easy-to-use move- ment system for unimpeded play. a: Historical detail and accuracy for rich- THE BATTLE OF SHILOH: A brigade- level simulation of the first grand battle of the Civil War, Ness and color. Hi-Res graphics that pitting the Confederate Army against Grant's troops and Union gunboats. add even more color. Great solitaire scenarios against the computer. Zones of control. A step-reduction THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE: Baeeaens @ Finally, we threw in features you wouldn't expect. For example, TIGERS IN THE SNOW has artillery and airpower allocations along with fuel and supply limitations. THE BATTLE OF SHILOH allows you to fine-tune combat strengths for each side, providing for the ultimate in play balance. It even lets you select risk levels and ferocity of attack (or defense). For $39.95 each, these are extraordinary games at quite an ordinary price. So head on down to your local store and check them out today! VISA and M/C holders can order by calling 800-227-1617, ext. 335 (toll free). In California, call 800-772-3545, ext. 335, To order by mail, send your check to: Strategic Simulations Inc, 465 Fairchild Dr. Suite 108, Mountain View, CA 94043. All our games carry a 14-day money- back guarantee. *48K disc for Apple® Il with ROM Card or Apple® Il Plus. TIGERS IN THE SNOW: Ghostlike Nazi Tiger tanks and infantry sweep across the dark, frozen forests of the Ardennes against a surprised U.S. force in this division/ regiment-level simulation of Hitler's last desperate attack - —— As part of our demanding standards of excellence, we use M€XEll floppy discs. Apple isa reistered trademark of Apple Computer Inc PAGE 8 Ain't Apple grand! This is the thought that crosses our mind as we sit down to have a blank sheet of paper and a cranky typewriter stare us in the face. (Word processing— what's that?) In a lot of ways, we are old-fash- ioned; we don’t always accept change readily. But accept or not, it occurs and we must live with it. Growing up with the Apple from its earliest stages adds a dimension not shared by newer owners. Who ever heard of a printer interface card (there was always the game I/O) or a disk drive (sure tape worked just dandy). Now we have the Apple ///; we have an Apple Il so loaded with cards there is room for no more, and APPLE ORCHARD PRINT FRE(ed) by Val J. Golding Editorial Associate what is to come; what can we look forward to. Recent computer shows shed a glimmer of light. There are many new machines out there, some of which, on the surface at least, appear to offer stiff competition to Apple. Some will survive, become preda- tors; others will not. What will the position of the IAC be? Some rumors that the XXXX computer will even handle Apple software! This is good cause for the IAC clubs to do some serious thinking. Here are some thoughts we would like to nominate: What percentage of our mem- bership is interested in the Apple from a utilitarian standpoint, i.e., applications only. FALL 1981 Is the percentage of program- mers and hobbyists shrinking? If so, is this unique only to the Apple world as a whole, or is it also true within the clubs? To what extent do we (as clubs) want to support the Apple ///? Do we want material on the /// in- cluded in the Orchard? This is but a shadow of the possibili- ties that come to mind, but the time is ripe. Members can contact their regional directors, or they may ad- dress the Orchard directly. What is important is that the IAC needs your thinking. IAC does not set policy, the members do. s INTERNATIONAL APPLE CORE” APPLE ORCHARD BACK ISSUES Back issues of Apple Orchard are available, while supplies last, as follows: Volume 1, Number 1—$5.00 each All other issues— $3.50 each (No. 2 is no longer available) Please send your name, address, and issue number(s), along with a check, money order, or your VISA or Master- Card number and expiration date to: Apple Orchard Subscriptions P.O. Box 1493 Beaverton, Oregon 97075 i FALL 1981 Plantins a sé€ed... APPLE ORCHARD PAGE 9 Pn Dt ‘a’ ‘ ep ane » » § sas DS abe " A jee Rese ay Gl oo a THE NON-DISCRIMINATOR The Apple neither knows nor cares what color the fingers of its operators are, or which religious Book those fingers hold, if any. It cares not how old those fingers are, what kind of bodies those fingers may caress, nor whether the opera- tor’s chair has legs, casters. . .or wheels. It doesn’t even matter whether fingers are used, or a stick held between teeth. Which makes the Apple the ulti- mate non-discriminator. Well, that’s obvious; it’s a machine. (Strange how we have to remind ourselves of that occasionally.) Humans discri- minate on grounds of personal char- acteristics, machines don’t. No great intellectual or moral revelation here. Apples have become the means to more effective communication for an increasing number of handi- capped people, and the means to ac- ceptance and income for a number of people who might have been dis- criminated against. Example: what other industry so readily accepts the work of a 15-year old as a viable commercial reality, treating it no differently than the work of a 30 or 40-year old if it’s as good, which it frequently is. Look around your user groups too, and the diverse cross-section of personalities (not to mention physi- cal varieties!) present there. And if you are a male with a hang-up about females who are competent in pro- fessional and intellectual pursuits, stay away; some of the Apple's best friends are women—women who are using the Apple to help express themselves as people. Come to think of it, we're all using the Apple to help express ourselves, aren't we? And we don't even think about the personal characteristics of the person who wrote a program, or designed a piece of hardware, or wrote about it. The question is, did the product of that intellect work well or didn’t it? The “Beautiful Peo- ple” have as much trouble learning Pascal as the rest of us, while a per- son that society might otherwise overlook, for stupid but human rea- sons, may wind up revolutionizing something. Because success comes only from intense individual effort, every- body starts on an equal footing. Some wind up in a business activity growing out of Apple involvement. Many, if not all, of the businesses serving the microcomputer industry started as ideas, and were first worked on part-time, the classic story being two guys named Steve who hocked a VW van and started building a funny-looking printed cir- cuit board. One only has to look around the San Francisco Bay Area to realize that, particularly in today’s econ- omy, there is no hobby, industry or business that has a greater disregard for personal characteristics, while at the same time providing a wide range of opportunities for self- advancement and self-fulfillment. The main point of this discourse is this: in this microcomputer field, personal characteristics don’t mat- ter. Nobody gives a reject chip about majority or minority status, physical characteristics, lifestyles, etc. The individual effort put into a program, hardware item, or accessory, can be put in by anyone. What does matter is the effort and the result. There are, of course, no guarantees of success. The market- place rewards those who find one or more needs and desires, and fills those needs and desires. In one sense, it’s a shame that a large seg- ment of America has forgotten that fact. But there is this benefit: that forgetfulness leaves more oppor- tunity open for you. Whoever, or whatever, you are. Feel. e PAGE 10 APPLE ORCHARD FALL 1981 GREETINGS FROM CALIFORNIA... ... AT LEAST SOME APPLES ARE LEAVING THE MEDFLY ZONE... FALL 1981 APPLE ORCHARD PAGE 11 President’s Méssase Ken Silverman President, International Apple Core Are you looking for help in the areas of programming, special uses for the Apple, hardware, or some special interest? The best place to find help—answers to these and other questions—is an Apple User Group, which is a place to share information. The International Apple Core re- ceives many calls asking, “Where is the closest User Group in the area of "In most cases, an existing Club is close by and the caller can join. You'll find a current listing of the IAC member Clubs in this issue of the Apple Orchard. Once in a while, there are no groups close to the caller’s location. When this happens, the IAC sug- gests that the caller start just such a group. The response is, “HOW?” The IAC has just completed pro- duction of a manual to help in start- ing up a user group. The name is “INIT USER GROUP” (Initialize/ ln Start Up/How to Do it). The manual includes basic information on for- mation, organization, publicity, put- ting together a newsletter, starting a software library (disks to do this are included with the manual), and some sample by-laws. The manual isn’t designed to cover all possibilities; your user group will be different from all other user groups. If you have been opera- tional for a while, this manual will be of less use to you than if you were not yet started. The IAC’s INIT USER GROUP manual costs $50.00. If you do start a User Group, however, and join the IAC, there is a coupon in the manual which will allow your first year's dues to be reduced from $50 to $25. This makes the manual’s ccst $25.00. If you require more informa- tion before purchasing, please write or call the IAC. On another subject, the IAC Board of Directors is now in the planning stages of obtaining a full- time staff and opening an IAC office. The growth of the IAC has been fan- tastic, and with that growth comes a great deal of work. Up to this time, that work has been done by volun- teers. While volunteer efforts will re- main the backbone of the IAC’s acti- vities, certain administrative and clerical tasks have reached the point where an effective response to your—the member Club’s—needs requires this “system reconfigura- tion”. The manner in which you in- put, vote, and obtain information will stay the same. Your Board of Directors will still be responsible to the member Clubs in their respec- tive areas; the Board will set policies and goals for the operating staff. More information will be forthcom- ing on this as it develops. 4 PAGE 12 APPLE ORCHARD OO FALL 1981 BUILD A BETTER ERROR TRAP So you set up a program which re- quires that data be INPUTed from time to time; a simple idea. . . just tell the Apple what it wants to know. That may be a number “YOUR CHOICE? (1 to 5)”, or a string, like “WANT TO GO ON? (YES OR NO)”, or “NAME OF STATE CAPITAL:?” The request is placed there as part of an INPUT statement, which re- quires a [RETURN] after the date, ora GET statement, which does not re- quires a [RETURN]. The information is then processed by program state- ments which follow the request. In most cases, the range of poten- tial answers desired by the program is limited; numbers above or below a valid range (as with a menu) could cause undesirable results. Further, if the request is for a “Yes or No” re- sponse, or for the capital of North Carolina, and you input JOE BUDGE, the poor machine is likely to be confused, unless you have taken precautions. Hence the error trap, a routine for filtering out inappropriate responses before they scramble the program's correct execution (read “CRASH”. It is not news that this process involves the use of IF statements. The idea is to anticipate every potential re- sponse, and cause the program to re- ject any response which does not fit the situation. The rejection may be communicated with as much tact or venom as you desire. NUMBERS Take the case of a menu with five choices; the program might look like this: 250 INPUT “YOUR CHOICE: ”;A 260 IFA< 1 GOTO 250 270 IFA>5 GOTO 250 (etc.) Despite the repeated “YOUR CHOICE” printing until a correct in- by Peter C. Weiglin Cider Press put, there is no real explanation of the problem. One solution is: 230 GOTO 250 240 PRINT “NUMBER BETWEEN 1 AND 5 PLEASE, DUMMY.”: PRINT 250 INPUT “YOUR CHOICE: ”;A. 260 IFA<1GOTO 240 270 IFA>5 GOTO 240 (etc.) But, that’s cumbersome. There's a “GOTO on every cycle even if there’s no error (most of the time, we hope), and two ‘IF’ statements where one could do the job. Like this: 250 INPUT “YOUR CHOICE: ”;A 260 IF A<OR A> THEN PRINT: PRINT “NOMBER BETWEEN 1 AND 5, PLEASE.”:PRINT:GOTO 250 (etc.) The result is a more streamlined execution. Still more streamlining could result if the ABS function is used, this way: 260 IF ABS(3—A)>2 THEN... (etc.) range were from 1 to 6, then the pro- gram line would read: 260 IF ABS(3.5—A)>2 THEN... (etc.) This brings up another wrinkle. In Applesoft, a number like ‘4.2’ could be input. This will truncate to the lower integer. But if the expected answer is an integer (which takes up less memory space than an FP num- ber), you might as well use ‘A%’, the integer variable. STRINGS The other type of information in- put is a string, viz. 350 INPUT “YOUR NAME: ”;A$ or 450 INPUT “WANT TO GO ON (Y OR N)”;A$ in the ‘name’ case, or any other item of information, your first concern is that the length of the string not foul up your overall format. Try this: 360 IF LEN(A$)> 8 THEN A$ = LEFTS(AS,8) For the Y/N or ‘yes/no’ condition, you want the program to branch one way or the other. The idea here would seem to be to branch on the less likely answer, and to cause a default condition to the least “damaging” outcome; €.g.: 460 IFA$=“Y” GOTO 700: REM BRANCH 470 IF A$< >“N” THEN PRINT “ONE MORE TIME, FAT- HEAD!”:GOTO 450: REM TRY AGAIN Note that line 460 gets the “Y” off on its way. If the answer isn't “N” in line 470, something's wrong, and you need a new answer. Now, you may say that, “this stuff is great if lots of people will use the program, but I'm the only one who'll use it, and designed the program, so I don’t need all this error trapping. Chances are you believe in the Easter Bunny too. Your memory (human) isn’t as good as you think it is. A year or more later, as you enter data, you just might make a mistake as the keyboard shifts underneath your flying fingers (at least that’s what happens to me). The best solu- tion is to protect you from youself, or anyone else entering data. Build a better error trap. ..and valid data will beat a path to your Apple. @ aw Computers for Everybody Jerry Willis and Merl Miller This fun-to-read book covers all the things you should know about computers. If you’re anxious to buy one, use one or just want to find out about them, read this book first. ISBN 0-918398-49-5 $4.95 32 BASIC Programs for the Apple Computer Tom Rugg and Phil Feldman Chock full of programs with practical applications, educational uses, games and graphics, this new book for Apple users also includes a special 8 page color section. ISBN 0-918398-34-7 $17.95 How to Get Started with CP/M Carl Townsend One of the world’s most popular operating systems is explained in simple terms. Includes a handy guide on shopping for an operating system, a glos- sary, a list of hardware manufacturers supporting CP/M and a list of major CP/M software. ISBN 0-918398-32-0 $9.95 From dilithium Press Write or call for free catalog! 800-547-1842 Most bookstores and computer stores carry our books. Call us on our toll free number and we'll tell you the one nearest you. dilithium Press, P.O. Box 606, Beaverton, OR 97075 OF TITLES Take AIM: Volume One James H. Clark This lab and learning manual for the AIM-65 and other 6502 microcomputers includes computer precautions, programming basics, and 30 full documented utility and game programs whic! teach math, data handling, simulation and more ISBN 0-916460-29-0 $16.95 Year of the Robot Wayne Chen This thought-provoking book illustrates how a robot encroaches upon the turfs of religion, moral- ity and philosophy, teaching us how to behave. 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RESULT: Modules can retain their data between CALLs (local variables} Modules may CALL one another and/or may be CALLed from a real Applesoft program running under the interpreter. @ FULL COMPATIBILITY! All Applesoft features are sup- Ported except: 1) dynamic array dimensioning, and 2) those few statements that no longer make sense outside of an interpreter environment, such as LIST and TRACE. RESULT: In executing the source program, the fact of compila- tion is transparent to the user. @ SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: The Hayden Applesoft Compiler requires 48K of RAM, Applesoft, the Autostart ROM, and at least one disk drive. No other hardware is required, and the product WILL operate in a 64K environment, with a RAM card or Language card, but there will be no increase in compiler space, since the Compiler makes CALLs to the Applesoft ROMs #08809, Apple Il Disk, $200 The Solution to ALong Standing Dilemma! *Apple and Applesoft are trademarks of Apple Computer Co.., Inc. and are not affiliated with Hayden Book Co.. Inc 50 Essex Street, Rochelle Park, NJ07662 Book« Company, Inc. The BEST games are from Creative Computing Software 1978: Adventu: Air Traffic Controller “1979: rt a?) 1 < 1980: Super Invader 1981: Blister Ball and Mad Bomber Blister Ball Blister Bail is the first completely original arcade-type game for a computer. Not a copy, not an adaptation, nota spinoff. Blister Ball is new—it’s a new idea—better than Invaders, better than Circus, better than Asteroids, better than Galaxian. If you've played other games for hours, you'll play Blister Ball for days. Dott G1 9000 oooD B ie ES 5 Te E R B a iB q How does it work? Well, some mean but fun-loving aliens have produced some bouncing bombs. First they drop one and you've got to position yourself under it and zap it with your laser. If you miss, that’s OK. It will bounce around, although each bounce is lower, and you have several chances to zap it. Got the hang of it? OK, here come two bouncing bombs. You zap them. Then you're faced with three, then four and five. As they bounce longer and longer the walls begin to close in so you're faced with either zapping the bombs or being hit. Each hit knocks you a little further toward the gutter. But you can survive two hits which is usually enough to zap all the bombs. Feeling confident? Don't. Because after 5 bombs the murderous little devils drop 5 bonus bombs, worth ten times as much These don't bounce, so you get only one shot. You need nerves of steel and the reflexes of a tail gunner. After you complete one round,the game starts again with bombs that bounce faster and lower (and are worth more) than the previous ones. Blister Ball is a fantastic solo game. But there are two-player options as well in which players can play as a team or as opponents. Each player can move the entire width of the screen and zap any of the bombs. Here, you're not only trying to survive, but trying to outscore your opponent. The game has two skill levels. Mad Bomber In Mad Bomber you are faced with aliens in a huge ship hovering overhead. They have bomb racks which they constantly fill with bombs. Your object is to move from side to side on the ground and zap the bombs in the bomb racks or as they fall. As the game progresses, the aliens fill up their bomb racks more quickly and the bombs fall faster. You lose after ten bombs have hit the area which you are defending Mad Bomber can be played by one player solo or by two players as a team or as opponents. Two skill levels. Order Today Blister Ball and Mad Bomber are available together for $29.95 on disk (DOS 3.2) only and require a 48K Apple with paddle controls. (We recommend using the Super Paddles from Peripherals Plus). To order send $29.95 plus $2.00 shipping and handling to the address below. Credit card customers should include card number and expiration date of Visa, MasterCard or American Express card. Credit card orders may also be called in to our toll-free number in the continental U.S. If you also wish to order a set of Super Paddles from our Peripherals Plus subsidiary, the cost is just $39.95. The paddles are backed by a 90-day limited warranty from the manufacturer as well as Peripherals Plus’ moneyback guarantee of satisfac- tion. Blister Ball and Mad Bomber are colorful, challenging, fast and noisy. They are the games of the year from Sensational Soft- a creative corepatirg Attn: Helen 39 E. Hanover Avenue Morris Plains, NJ 07950 Toll-free 800-631-8112 In NJ 201-540-0445 PAGE 16 APPLE ORCHARD FALL 1981 an Apple Taste Like, Eve? I drew the Apple pendant across my palm, thinking how it symbolized the love of friends—an early birthday gift from fellow Apple owners far away. The word “symbol” turned a switch inside my brain and | began to look at the dangling metal apple closely, seeking its meaning, its symbolism. “Why an apple?”, | asked aloud. Why not a plum or pear or berry, | wondered. And why a rainbow-hued apple? Why not a red or yellow or green one? What did | hold in my hand? What did it mean? I let my consciousness stream on until, after a few moments, | had reached a few conclusions. I'd like to share them with you—one woman's fanciful attempt to explain, “Why an Apple?” l asked myself, “What was the ap- ple’s genesis?” Ah, Genesis! | thought, and pure fantasy overtook me. There’s a great deal of Biblical symbolism in this little apple. (Bear with me, agnostics and atheists; look at this as the literary legacy of an an- cient people trying to explain their by Marion D. Jett origins.* In Genesis, the first book of the Bible, is recorded the story of the famous apple in Eden's garden. That apple hung on the tree of the knowl- edge of good and evil and Man could not resist its temptation (Gen. 2:15-25; 3:1-24,RSV). Eve bit and so did Adam. So, now! was left with an apple (no color re- corded) with a bite out of it. It was probably Adam's apple which was left; Eve must have eaten all of hers. The phrase, “tree of the knowl- edge of good and evil,” kept echoing in my head. Good and evil. . . plus and minus...truth and non- truth. . .aha! 1 and 0! That's the way an Apple sorts data. It fit. . . knowl- edge like that of the Gods... infallible. But why was the apple multi- colored? What was the genesis of that? Back to the Book. Genesis 6:5 begins the Noah story that ends after the flood with a cove- nant between God and Maan; its sign was the rainbow (Gen. 9:17). Rain- bows become God’s memory hooks. They always reminded Him to turn off the rains before another world- wide flood began. Great, | thought; rainbows are for remembering. Of course! ROM, RAM, disks, tapes. . . all parts of a well-known system for remem- bering. But I still wasn't satisfied. None of my speculations had pierced the core of the symbolism I sought. | fell back to Man’s most elementary method of seeking knowledge of a strange new object. | examined the apple lying in my hand with my five senses. Quickly, the checklist: 1) Hear- ing— silent; 2) Sight—as described above; 3) Touch—not applicable for symbols; 4) Smell-nothing. But 5) Taste, gave me pause. No, I didn’t bite the metal neck- lace. | just looked again at the miss- ing bite of the design and asked, “What did that Old Testament apple taste like when man and woman first knew it?” Well, after eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve traded eternal days of joy in Eden for the uncertain tomorrows of the world-at-large. “THAT'S IT!” | yelled. That’s what it tasted like. It was a taste of tomorrow! FALL 1981 APPLE ORCHARD PAGE 17 Sighing with contentment, | hung the necklace on its hook in my jewel box. | walked downstairs, sat at the Apple keyboard and looked around the family room where it was set up. Across the room stood a television set with interactive cable. Tomor- row, not too long after today, tech- nology will join the TV set and the Apple to the world and I'll be doing my shopping and banking in this room. | glanced at all the “peripher- als” my husband had assembled to operate our security system, the kitchen appliances, and all of the toys and gadgets we own. What marvels lay within our reach! Already our finance and cor- respondence were stored on disks. Maybe tomorrow would bring a robot to clean the house. After all, our Apple Il Plus was but an hors d’oeuvre of the banquet ahead. As | turned back to the Apple, the bright logos on the keyboard and disk drives stood out boldly against their neutral backgrounds, symbols of the machines waiting to serve me. Yes, now | know what I'll think each time I see those symbols. The Apple has given us, its users, a look at what is coming. It has given us a taste of tomorrow! ©1981 by Marion D. Jett. Marion D. (“Rusty”) Jett and her doc- tor husband Roy succumbed to temptation and purchased an Apple Il Plus in late 1980. Mrs. Jett is a “housewife” who writes, who is busi- ness manager of a medical practice, who enjoys travelling with her hus- band (they're both licensed pilots), and who is active in politics and government service. Until recently, she was President of the Transit Authority serving the Cincinnati, Ohio area. Roy and Rusty have also become active in the Cincinnati Apple-Siders. n *The author understands that none of the preceding ideas may have been in the thoughts of those who chose a bit- ten, rainbow-colored apple for the Apple Computer logotype. She also under- stands the difference between exegesis and proof-texting when seeking inspira- tion or confirmation from the Bible. She trusts God forgives her her whimsical ways and begs all readers to to likewise. PAGE 18 APPLE ORCHARD FALL 1981 THE APPLE NOBODY KNOWS The story of the Apple /// is a fas- cinating one. Although this compu- ter has only been public knowledge for about a year, its existence has had a profound effect on Apple Compu- ter, Inc. and those of us who use their products. If you own or use an Apple Il, you know about the Apple ///. You may have seen it lurking in a corner of your local computer store, with full color horses parading across the screen; you may have read about it in various magazines that have detailed its problems; but you probably have not discovered the real inner work- ings of this system. If you are a busi- ness user, you may be surprised to hear of some of its potential applica- tions; if you a computer hobbyist, you will be interested in the amazing power hidden inside that curved chassis. Now let’s explore together the past, present, and future of the still-mysterious Apple ///. What Happened The fact that an Apple /// would someday appear was never a secret. For at least a year before the Apple /// was introduced at the National Com- puter Conference in May 1980, the rumors flew fast and hard. But when Apple introduced the new system, the predictors were caught off guard. Apple Magazine proclaimed “A New Star is Born”, but there were mutter- ings of “birth defects”; many were not impressed. Sure, it was pretty, but where was the hard-disk drive? No built-in color monitor? No Pascal in ROM? No 68000 microprocessor? Of course, the Apple /// was miss- ing these and other things that some folks had decided were essential. If the new computer had had a normal chance to show itself off, these de- sign decisions would have been ade- quately explained at your local by Alan Anderson dealer. But a “normal” introduction period for the /// was hardly what occurred, Of Clocks and Sockets At NCC, Apple said that the first shipments of Apple ///'s would be dealer demos, one per store, andthat they would start shipping in June. That schedule was quite optimistic, and it soon began slipping by several weeks. Then, it got worse: Apple began shipping demos, but they rarely worked. Apple's reputation for quality, won with thousands of trouble-free II's, began to deteriorate as the Apple /// saga unfolded. Example: Apple discovered that their chip sockets were doing a lousy job of holding the integrated circuits in place, and that the slightest vibra- tion in your friendly freight truck was enough to unseat the chips, placing the /// out of commission. This was a rude surprise for the unsuspecting Apple dealers. Ruder surprises awaited those who bought the first working computers; they frequently went dead after being installed in home or office, adding to the hassle. One solution was to allow the /// to fall vertically for 6-9 inches to a sur- face capable of providing a sudden stop, jarring the chips into place. The apparent brutality of this celebrated “drop fix” for sophisticated equip- ment gave rise to the suggestion that the “drop fix” might well be applied to a few engineers and marketeers. So, new sockets were used, with a tighter grip, but Apple ///’s were still failing. Eventually, Apple discovered that the new sockets were tighter all right, but were jamming the chip pins back around, missing the socket. Again, they fixed the prob- lem. Still, there were other hardware problems. The built-in disk drive sometimes didn’t work if a plastic- enclosed monitor was placed on top of the unit. There were rumors of a nasty solder bridge on the mother- board, and of inadequate heat dissi- pation. Finally, after much work, Ap- ple declared its reliability problems solved. It should be noted that until June 1981, Apple's repair policy on ///'s was a model of simplicity: you send yours back and they send you a new one, fast. Having been through this procedure, | must say that even the most skeptical user comes out with his feelings soothed. Apple didn't even wait until the sick one got there before shipping the new one. More recently, Apple has started selling Apple /// service kits to its Level | ser- vice centers. Then, there’s the clock. When Ap- ple announced the ///, one of its proudest features was a built-in clock/calendar chip that linked it to the operating system and stamped time and date on all your files. Well, bizarre things started occurring with the clock. The month began showing us as “???”, and the hour would climb whimsically into the 30's and 40's before realizing that a new day was dawning. Since any boot disk- ette automatically displayed time and date, this particular black eye got great exposure. Eventually, Apple announced that it was unable to find a reliable large- volume source for the clock chips, and stopped putting them in. The re- tail price was lowered $50, and Apple // owners were offered a $50 rebate. Someday, when good chips can be obtained, the clock will go back. Someday... But What Will it Do? The Apple ///'s hardships have not been limited to hardware. The Sophisticated Operating System FALL 1981 (SOS) had some problems, quickly resolved, but became known as a memory-eater. Business BASIC still contains bugs, but the /// does a good job of emulating a single-language Apple Il. There was virtually no soft- ware, except for the 80-column Visi- Calc ///; people were hearing things like, “I spent $4000 +, and got Visi- Calc and a paperweight!” Schedules and release dates slipped further and further from ini- tial estimates. Pascal was scheduled for August 1981 release. . . see if it’s out with this issue of the Apple Or- chard. Other languages and soft- ware, like COBOL and Fortran, have also been subject to delays. The big- gest blot in the software area has been Word Painter, Apple's high- quality word processor. This product is now more than a year behind schedule and is forecast to appear late this year. These delays, it seems, will have been worth it; the products are undergoing extensive testing, and will be of higher quality than if Apple had rushed them to judgment in the rumor-ridden marketplace. The Past is Behind Us At last, it look like Apple /// the Product is coming together. Local service is becoming available, as is the Extended Warranty. Reliability is up, says Apple, toa level comparable with the Apple Il. And there are fewer gripes, growls, and whines coming APPLE ORCHARD from Apple /// owners within my ear- shot. (Not “none”, just “fewer”.) So what's holding it back now? Two things. The first is the acute shortage of software. There are vir- tually no application programs avail- able, and programming tools are likewise non-existent. There is as yet no assembler which provides the proper interfaces with the Apple /// operating system. The appearance of abundant software would greatly help the Apple ///. But that's one of the things being retarded by the second problem, which is the image of the Apple /// as a stiff! Until dealers and consumers see the system running reliably, it will not be accepted as the Apple II has been. The tragedy is that public perception lags behind the actual im- provements by three to six months; programmers who could solve the software shortage are reluctant to in- vest time in a machine which they hear has problems. Only time can cure this one, depending on the rate of improvement of the Apple ///’s public image. The Goodies Now that I’ve spent your time tell- ing you about the checkered history of the Apple///, why should you be in- terested in hearing more about the thing? Because the Apple /// is a uniquely well-designed personal computer system, remarkably PAGE 19 powerful, and it has been plagued by stupid things like bent pins, solder bridges, corporate PR games (“what clock?”) and negative attitudes. The Apple /// itself deserves a closer look. The most obvious factor in the Ap- ple///’s design is the legacy of the Ap- ple Il. The /// reflects many of the things that were done right on the Il, such as expansion capabilities; and corrects some of the hassles of the Il, such as combining all languages under one operating system. With the Apple Il as a sound base, the Ap- ple ///'s design begins to take form. The standard memory configuration is 128K RAM. The microprocessor starts out as a 6502 A, a faster ver- sion of the Apple II's brain, and then has its capabilities enlarged by some additional circuitry. The built-in disk drive is basically the same as the ones we get for Apple Ils, with the same 140K bytes of data per disk- ette. Up to three more drives can be plugged into the back with no addi- tional controller needed. The Apple ///’s keyboard is a more complete version of the II's. All 128 ASCII characters are typeable, in- cluding full upper/lower case and alpha lock key. All keys have auto- repeat just by holding them down. A numeric keypad sits adjacent to the main kéyboard. There are arrow keys for all four main points to the com- pass, and each of these keys has auto-repeat with two speeds, depending on how hard the key is pressed. The Apple /// provides three differ- ent forms of text screen output, start- ing with the 40-character wide by 24-line high screen we see on the standard Apple Il (40 x 24). The sec- ond mode is 80 characters wide by 24 lines high (80x24). The third mode is 40 x 24, but with the capa- bility to make each letter, and each letter’s background, any of 16 colors! But the real topper is that for all three text modes, the character set is de- fined in Random Access Memory (RAM), not frozen in Read-only Memory (ROM). This means that you can redefine the way characters look; so you can print different fonts, Japanese characters, even charac- ters that look like horses. (Uh huh. ..that 16-color horse demo you see isn’t graphics at all; it's text mode, with the characters redefined.) Those of you who have seen the Hi-Res Character Generator in Apple’s DOS Tool Kit are familiar PAGE 20 with the technique of redefining the character set. However, there's a big difference: on the Il, this has to be done in graphics mode, andit’s slow. On the ///, it's done in text mode, so it’s just as fast to print horses, frogs, and Greek as it is to print the English alphabet. One of the Apple ///’s more inter- esting concepts is its lack of ROM; the only ROM code in the machine is a4K byte program which simply runs a quick test on the unit’s hardware and then boots the disk. Once that disk is done, this ROM is replaced in memory by RAM—no space wasted. If you're familiar with the Apple II's insides, you know that the memory from $C000 to $CFFF is used for in- put/output by built-in and peripheral devices. Well, in the Apple ///, that’s how it's used too. ..sometimes. There’s another neat little trick in the /// that causes this area to be RAM too. Those of you in the audience who are quick-witted will notice that, with the switches set properly, the i's memory looks an awful lot like APPLE ORCHARD an Apple Il; at other times, the whole memory space becomes RAM. (See Figure 1). Why have all this RAM? It makes the Apple /// very “open-minded”. With no language in ROM, the /// doesn't lock itself to the present selection of languages. If the Apple Il had been made with all RAM, we wouldn't need a Language Card to run Pascal. Of course, we would have had to load BASIC by cassette, since the disk drives didn’t exist when the ll first appeared. But with the ///, every- body has a disk drive, so loading the language—any language—is fast and easy. By the way, not only does the /// load the language from disk, but also all the operating software, the character set, even the keyboard layout which designates how the keys correspond to the character set. Speak to Me The Apple /// has interfacing capa- bilities too. Even the standard I/O is kinda fancy. For example, there are three different video signals avail- Apple /i/ Memory Native mode Emulation mode SFFFF $F00O $E000 write-protected RAM $D000 | $C000 /O space BAM $80000 RAM $0 Figure 1 FALL 1981 able: NTSC (standard) black and white; NTSC color, and RGB (studio quality) color. The black-and-white plug causes the colors to appear as sixteen shades of gray. There are also three different audio generators. One makes a beep, another makes various one-bit sounds (just like the Apple Il), and the third is a 6-bit digital-to-analog converter that gives greater resolution to sounds. The Apple /// has a serial interface built in, suitable for hooking up printers and modems. There is alsoa built-in interface for Apple's Silen- type printer. The Silentype connec- tor and one.other port are also joy- stick hookups, and it’s quite simple to modify many of the existing joy- sticks for use with the ///. Inside the Apple are four 50-pin slots very much like the ones in the Apple ll. In fact, the FCC may not like it, but you can plug in many Apple II peripheral cards and they will work fine. And Now, the Rest of the Story This part is for the hobbyist, the experimenters, and the curious hackers among you. If you've had your Apple Il long enough to remem- ber the discovery of (POKE 33,33) in editing, the advent of the S. H. Lam Monitor routine, or the first CHR$ function for Integer BASIC, then you know what the early days were like. Well friends, come join me as we ex- plore the secrets of the Apple ///. Most of these things are not yet docu- mented, but already they are starting to become known. One day, Apple Computer Inc. will document them, and then we'll all know these things work to a very high degree. Until then, we present for your interest, Untold Stores of the Apple ///! 1. The Monitor Lurks Within Inside that 4K diagnosti¢/boot ROM mentioned earlier is the first real development tool available for the ///: the Monitor. The Monitor is based on the Apple Il Monitor. Several commands are the same as the ll; specifically: the ones for dump- ing, moving, and verifying memory, and the G command are the same. The existence of this Monitor, though undocumented publicly, is now fairly well known. (But, people at Apple have said that the Monitor may not be included in Apple ///s after some point.—PCW) 32k x15 banks user FALL 1981 APPLE ORCHARD Apple /i/ Memory $0 8K used by system $1FFF $2000 bank © bank 1 Ber bank E SOFFF acai $A000 m| $CO00-$CFFF can be I/O space 24k used by system 4 $F0OO-$FFFF can be ROM SFFFF Figure 2 Here are the other commands: A. (byte)<(addrs) . S —searches the range of ad- dresses (addrs) for the given byte. Example: B5 < 3000.3FFFS B. (blocknum)< (addrs) R (blocknum)<(addrs) . (addrs) R —reads the disk from the given block number into the given addresses. Blocks are 512 ($200) byte chunks, as with Pascal. One diskette con- tains 280 ($118) blocks. If you use the second form, enough consecutive blocks to fill the address space given will be read. Examples: 4A< 1000R (reads $4A into $1000-$11FF) 107 < 2500.28FFR (reads blocks $ 107-108 into $2500-28FF) C. (blocknum)< (addrs) W (blocknum)< (addrs) . (addrs) W —writes to the disk. Analo- gous to the READ command above. D. (addrs) J —performs a jump (JMP) to the address given. The Monitor comes up in 40-char- acter mode. To switch to 80-column mode, press (ESC)-8. Pressing (ESC)-4 puts you back in 40-mode. To put more than one command ona line, put a slash between each pair. a PAGE 21 To stop and start video output, press the space bar. Press (TAB) to abort a listing. To enter the Monitor, press and hold (CTRL) and (OPEN APPLE) down; press and release (RESET). Keep holding the others until the Ap- ple beeps. Have fun! 2. Banks for the Memories One of the most oft-asked ques- tions about the Apple /// is, of course, “How does the 6502 address all that memory?” There are lots of cute answers to that one: “Very care- fully...”, “With mirrors...”, “Slowly. ..”, and others. Actually, the masses of memory in the /// are handled through the time honored tradition of bank switching. Figure 2 gives you an idea of how it works. First, you'll note that the 32K chunk from $2000 to $9FFF is repli- cated a number of times. This is called the User Area, and in the 512K Apple /// (theoretical for now) there are 15 of these, numbered from $0 to $E. Each of these 32K areas is called a bank. The one currently being ad- dressed is determined by a memory- mapped register called the bank register (pretty tricky, eh?). This register is located at $F FEF, and you can change it in the Monitor. Nor- mally, SOS handles all the necessary switches between banks from high- level languages. Oh. . . the present 128K Apple /// contains three User Areas, numbered $0 to $2. Some owners have added a fourth area ($3). ..they hope. . .by upgrading memory to 160K. In addition to this switching of RAM areas, the /// has two other bank switches. One controls the area from $C000 to $CFFF, selecting whether this space is RAM or I/O ROM. The other controls $FO00O through $FFFF, which can be ROM or RAM, as mentioned earlier. These switches are kept in the environment register, described next (read on!), 3. Environmental Impact Some of the Apple ///'s magic tricks are controlled by another memory-mapped register, the envi- ronment register. This register is mapped in at $FFDF and is shown in Figure 3. Explanation: Bit 7: When in the Emulator mode, this switch is set for 1 MHz to emulate the Apple II's clock. PAGE 22 Bit 6: This switch chooses what goes in $C000-$CFFF (see bank discussion above.) Bit 5: This switch allows the video generator to go off, thus speeding up processing. Bit 4: Turns off (RESET). Bit 3: Used to write-protect $C000-$CFFF in emulation mode. Bit 2: Maps the 6502 stack to a dif- ferent location or normal ($100-$1FF) location. Bit 1: Selects between two ROMs which may be mapped into the $F000-$FFFF space. APPLE ORCHARD Bit 0: This switch chooses whether RAM or ROM goes into $F000-SFFFF. Of course, this register may also be manipulated in the Monitor. Warning: it’s easy to lose control and be forced to power off-and-on. However, you can’t hurt the hard- ware, so your investment is pro- tected. In future articles, we'll cover some of these items: —How to write Invokable Modules for Fun and Profit; BIT USE Video Output RESET key Stack $F000-$FFFF or nwauan Microprocessor speed $C000-$CFFF switch Write-lock $C000-$CFFF $F000-$FFFF switch if off if on 2 MHz 1 MHz RAM VO ROM off on disabled enabled unprotected _ protected alternate $100-$1FF chip A chip B RAM ROM FALL 1981 —How to communicate with the omnipresent SOS; —Low-level secrets of the Mysteri- ous Keyboard; —and even more! Stay tuned to the Apple Orchard for future developments, and per- haps the Apple /// will no longer be “the Apple Nobody Knows”. Alan Anderson is a writer and computer programmer who has a number of products and prod- uct improvements to his credit. His articles have appeared in vir- tually every popular journal of the Apple /// world, admittedly a limited circulation so far. He is also an advocate of chemical spraying to prevent software bugs. Mr. Anderson purchased an Apple /// during the Dark Days, and has stayed with it through thin and thin. We hope to chron- icle his and everyone’s progress toward the brave new Apple ///, world. FALL 1981 APPLE ORCHARD PAGE 23 THE HERO, THE SWORD, AND THE APPLE Anew type of game has swept the world’s computers. No longer are gamers sweeping away foolish Klin- gons (or Klarnons or Klopklops). No more little bricks are being knocked out. No invaders are being wiped out with beeps and buzzes. Instead, the gamers are wandering through underground tunnels and old houses, trying to defeat the puzzles and monsters that abound. These new games are called “role- playing” games, although that isn’t quite accurate because almost all computer games put you in a differ- ent role. (You don't really clear asteroid fields for a living, do you?) The difference is that these games have you directing the action of an individual, not the ship or whatever vehicle around him/her. These games are the foster child (1 might use another parental description, but not in a family magazine!) of a non-computerized game called “Dungeons and Dragons”. So this article will try to shed some light on these games—how they came to be, what's there now, and what they might become. I'll be mentioning a new game called SwordThrust, which in my unbiased opinion is the absolute best Compu- terized Fantasy Role Playing (CFRP) game available today. (Mr. Brown’s opinion of SwordThrust is under- standable, inasmuch as he wrote it.—Ed.) The slew of CFRP games can trace their inspiration back to the first fantasy role playing game of Dungeons and Dragons by Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax. Although many other FRP games (non- computerized) have come along, D&D is still the prototype for fantasy role-playing. by Donald Brown In D&D and the like, roughly six people get together to play the game. All but one of the people assume the roles of characters that exist in a weird, magical world. Numbers are randomly generated to define how strong, agile, intelligent, and attractive these characters are. The players also buy armor, wea- ponry, and other supplies for their characters to use. The remaining player is called the Dungeon Master, and he represents the rest of the universe. Before the other people come, the Dungeon Master designs a tunnel complex (or a building, or whatever) that the characters will be exploring. Then, when everybody gets together, the Dungeon Master runs the game by telling the other players what their characters see, and interpreting the results of the characters’ actions. For example, the Dungeon Master might tell the party that they are in.a long corridor with a door at the north end. One of the players says that his character, Sidney the elf, tries to open the door. Chuckling evilly, the Dungeon Master tells the group that the door was booby- trapped; when it was opened, a trap- door opened in the floor, and the en- tire party fell in. They now find themselves facing a dragon, one flight down. Eventually, the characters will have killed all of the monsters, and will have taken the treasure from the place (or, will have been so badly scared that they leave, vowing never to return). These characters then re- PAGE 24 turn to a town where they can pur- chase new and better gear to be used in the next set of crises to be devised by the Dungeon Master. No two ways about it, after a hard day’s work at the office there's nothing that beats relaxing by slaughtering an orc patrol. Unfor- tunately, not only do you need a fairly large number of people around to play the game, but you also need a person with a creative mind anda capacity for work (read “sucker”) to act as Dungeon Master. Not only does Dungeon Mastering require a lot of work, but a poorly run game is worse than watching “My Mother the Car” reruns on the boob tube. Since the major problem in fantasy games is the quality of the Dungeon Master, there must be a better way...and for one or two people too, not only a larger group. Hmmm. . .maybe a computer. . . Enter Woods and Crowthers, from MIT. They developed the first game of Adventure. In it, you talked to the computer, giving one- or two- word commands as it led you through the Colossal Caves. Your goal was to pick up as much trea- sure as possible by getting around inanimate blockades. (Some of APPLE ORCHARD these blockades were disguised as monsters, but they merely sat there, blocking your way. Speaking of which, how do you get past the green snake?) Many other Adventure games have been written. Although most games use the same format as the original Adventure, some games have added graphics, trying to repre- sent what you see on the screen. This isn’t necessarily a step forward, as the computer display images are far less detailed than what the mind might conjure up unaided. Put another way, nobody can scare you as thoroughly as you can. However, the pictures on many adventures— particularly the superlative “Wizard and the Princess” by On-Line Sys- tems—are quite good. Automated Simulations has tried to satisfy both sides by drawing a picture on the computer's screen, and also having descriptions in a booklet to which you can refer. Trying to look up these descriptions can be distracting, but they're there. Probably the consistently highest quality adventures have been written by Scott Adams, but many other authors have entered the act. A few I'd personally recommend are “The “with our team of design, specialists. ~~-« paanytity strictest confidence. SOFTWARE AUTHORS! for Apple, Atari, TRS-80, NEC, Hitachi. ... Brdderbund Software is looking for new authors to join its international team of programmers. If you have a product for the micro market, let us show you the advantages of working Call or write for our free Authors Kit today or send us a machine readable copy of your work for prompt review under, gderbund Software¢g production and distribution ey 2 Vista Wood Way.s San Rofael, cA Cael (445) 45 pm FALL 1981 Wizard and the Princess” by On-Line Systems, “Lords of Karma” by Ava- lon Hill, and “The Prisoner” by Edu- Ware (be prepared for hours of utter frustration with this one). What's wrong with today’s crop of games? Well, starting with a minor gripe, | have grown very tired of “Guess the Word | Want”. This is a sub-game which the computer plays with you; you know what you want to do, but what syntax will enable the machine to understand? The very worst case I found was in one game. I was standing in front of an open door to the north of me. | want to go through the door. | try “NORTH”, “ENTER”, “ENTER DOOR”, “ENTER BUILDING”, all with no luck. Believe it or not, it wants and will accept only “GO DOOR’, which may come naturally to the Incredible Hulk, but not to us semi-normal types. The problem is confounded by the fact that there is (usually) no way togeta list of acceptable commands. Even a list of the acceptable action verbs would be a great help. This is part of the overall problem that any computer program is not going to be as intelligent as a human running the dungeon would be. A far more serious result is that the com- puter program will permit the player to be no more creative than the pro- grammer was. Example: a locked door in the dungeon. Elsewhere, a chopped-down tree. Aha. We'll get the tree and use it as a battering ram to knock down the door. But if the programmer didn’t tell the computer what to do when a player tries this, the computer can only give a small “I DON'T UNDERSTAND” or “NO- THING HAPPENS” (which is patently ridiculous). Unfortunately, this prob- lem is not likely to be solved; a good human Dungeon Master will outper- form the machine. (Whew!!—Ed.) Another major area in which most adventure games fall short in com- parison to fantasy role-playing games is in combat. Most Adventure games simply do not have satisfying combat rules. Combat is either pre- determined (if you attack the first beastie you kill it, if you attack the second beastie it kills you, etc.); or governed by one random number re- gardless of conditions (you will kill the dwarf 50 percent of the time, the dwarf will kill you 25 percent of the time, etc.). The non-computerized games have a much richer combat system, with your chance of hitting FALL 1981 (and how much damage you do) based on a variety of factors such as your dexterity, the weapon you use, and your experience. For the dedicated game-player, the greatest shortcoming of the com- puter games has been the survival and growth of characters after each episode. The non-computerized D&D process involves such growth in wealth and skills for the char- acters. The party leaving a dungeon has new knowledge that will help them in the future, they have gold to buy more supplies, and possibly a powerful new weapon or two. In many computer games, once your character has killed the vile beastie, has stripped the rooms of all their treasure, or has escaped from the is- land alive, that’s it. You could play another game, or even play that game again (if there is enough ran- domness to make it interesting), but all that effort you put into the dun- geon and all of the wealth you took out is irrelevant. This concept of character growth was important to me in writing SwordThrust. The first or master diskette has programs that control the creation and equipping of your new characters, and there is acavern APPLE ORCHARD provided as a scene for their explora- tion and looting activity. Further ad- ventures are and will be on separate diskettes, but the characters’ per- sonal histories and accumulations will be stored. | have also tried to make the combat situations more realistic. The type of weapon you choose has a great effect on how ef- fective you'll be with it; and the longer you use a weapon, the better you'll become with it. The “richness” of a game is pro- portional to the amount of detail and the number of alternative courses and effects. These in turn are limited by the computer's available memory and the disk’s capacity for storing data. HiRes displays in particular are large memory consumers. The two- disk system is one solution to the problem of memory capacity. And with hard disk storage using the con- tents of many diskettes online. . .oh boy! What's to come in CFRP games? In a word, more. In addition to new, exciting, and even more clever text adventures, HiRes graphics adven- tures are possible. Even animation. Competitive games between two players are in the planning stage. This could even be two or more play- PAGE 25 ers with separate computers, con- nected by ‘phone line and Modem. How about games using speech syn- thesizers and speech recognizers? Games using bio-feedback units? As with magic, with computers, all things are possible. But lo! Hear the muttering of mon- sters from your RAM chips! See the shine of gold glowing from your key- board! Smell the mildewed walls ris- ing from your disk drive! The dun- geons are waiting. Put aside your word processor, your CalcCalc pro- gram, your checkbook...and come! a Donald Brownisa recent graduate of Drake University. He became in- volved in microcomputing when his father bought an Apple Il witha serial number of 124. Many popular pro- grams by him can be found invarious computer clubs’ program libraries, including AUTOMATIC MEN, STAR WARS ADVENTQRE, FIZZ- BIN, and THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF EAMON. Heis currently working for CE Software, a new soft- ware firm from Des Moines, IA. ) PAGE 26 APPLE ORCHARD FALL 1981 APPLE Il DISK SOFT SECTORING DISKETTE NIBBLIZING Data stored on a diskette is en- coded into nibbles. There are 128 possible nibbles (because bit 7 must always be a 1), however some are re- served for markers and sync. When encoding data, the 256-8 bit bytes are split up into 342-6 bit nibbles. When writing nibbles it takes 32 microseconds to shift out the 8 bits, plus one extra shift produces the trailing zero. A nibble is read from the shift re- gister by waiting until the byte in the shift register is negative (bit 7 is 1). This signals that the nibble is fully shifted in. The shift register is zeroed before the shift is started, and all nib- bles havea 1 inbit 7 soitis easy to tell when the shift is complete. A bit is shifted in every 4 microseconds, it takes 32 microseconds to fill the shift register plus an extra 4 for the 0 after the nibble, for a total time of 36 microseconds. SELF SYNC The self sync feature allows the software to search the data coming from the disk entering at any point. The program looks until it finds the sync field. Then it locks on and steps into the true data and address infor- mation. The bit pattern is then read in the proper sequence. Zeroes act as frame for 8 bit sync byte. See the dia- gram at the end of this article. The following dump is of actual nibbles that were stored on a disk- ette. It is from a 16 sector disk. The actual data contents of the sector was 256 bytes of 0's. by Gary Morris *1328.14AF 1328-.. FE.FE EF FF FF FF FF FF 1330- FF FF FF D5 AA 96 AA AB 1338- AB BA AA AB AB BA DE AA 1340- E9 83 FE FF FC FF FF FF 1348- FF D5 AA AD 96 96 96 96 1350- 96 96 96 96 96 96 96 1358- 96 96 96 96 96 96 96 1360- 96 96 96 96 96 96 96 1368- 96 96 96 96 96 96 96 1370- 96 96 96 96 96 96 96 1378- 96 96 96 96 96 96 96 1380- 96 96 96 96 96 96 96 1488- 96 96 96 96 96 96 96 1490- 96 96 96 96 96 96 96 1498- 96 96 96 96 96 96 96 14A0- 96 96 96 DE AA EB EE 14A8- FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FASSEE8EEEESE SOFT SECTOR FORMAT SYNC all $FF's ADDRESS MARKERS, SDS, 8AAS96 ADDRESS 4 pairs of nibbles, vol, FIELD track, sector, checksum TRAIL MARK $DE,$AA,$EB inter-record gap, contains sync nibbles. SYNC all $FF's DATA MARK $D5,$AA,$AD DATA FIELD actual data nibbles 342 NIBBLES 256 BYTES checksum of data, CHECKSUM OR of all data nibbles TRAIL MARK $DE,$AA,$EB inter-record gap leading to next sector SELF-SYNC DIAGRAM bit stream—> 011111111011 FB A Note: (1) 171111011111111011111111 FD FE , FF (2) 0111111110111111110111111110 FF FF FF (1) Co-incidental entry point with state-machine reading data. (2) Found sync, 8 bit bytes all ones tells software that data is properly, framed to sync into data field. @ FALL 1981 APPLE ORCHARD PAGE 27 HAM ’N APPLES by Jim Hassler WB7TRQ HN yi FD gi air a mM RADIO. Our Apple computers are like common aspirins; every day, a new use for them is found. Take for ex- ample, my “other” hobby, Amateur Radio. Another term for amateur radio is “Ham” radio, and the Apple and ham radio go together like ham and eggs. How would you like to have a friend in Europe who has a great program he has just finished and in five minutes have it; even though you live several thousand miles away? It’s now possible. Or, say you are having a problem writing a program and it has you stumped. You mention it to a friend in Asia and right away he gives you an answer for your problem. You're probably thinking that you're not the type of person to be- come an amateur radio operator. Let me mention the names of a cou- ple of people who have been ham: Steve Wozniak (who also flies an air- a plane). Ken Silverman, your Interna- tional Apple Core President. And quite a few other Apple owners, as you'll see shortly. Can you still say you're not the type? Some of you just don’t have the time required to study for the test; more on this later. But that shouldn't stop you from enjoying part of ham radio, because no license is required to listen. (Now, tell me what your ex- cuse is. . .) When a group of hams get to- gether, it’s not called a “club”, it’s called a “net”. There are currently four Apple computer nets on ham radio. One meets EVERY Sunday night, two meet EVERY Saturday morning, and the fourth meets on Wednesday night. A great many people just listen; the mail I get indi- cates that we have a lot more re- ceivers than transmitters out there. Let’s look at what goes on during a typical Sunday night “AppleNet”. The net starts at 0100 GMT. That's 6 PM in the Pacific time zone, 7 PM here in Wyoming (Mountain time), and 9 PM in The Eastern time zone. Remember, this is EVERY Sunday. You'll find the Net at 14.329 MHz. I'm “Net Control”, another word for President. My amateur call sign is WB7TRQ. (TRQ?? Lucky that Jim wasn’t two applications lower in the stack, or we'd really have confu- sion.—PCW.) The net starts with my giving out all the information | have scrounged during the past week. It may be the latest on graphics for the MX80 printer, the latest on new stuff from Apple and others, a report on a new program that | have just received and like or dislike. This is one of the purposes of the Net; to evaluate new software and hardware, and possibly to help you make a better-informed decision on whether an item is what you're looking for. We then go to PAGE 28 AF6W and WA6SZC, Alex and Micky in California, to see what they have gleaned in the past week con- cerning the Apple and anything related to it. And so it goes. . .news and more news about our favorite computer. We then ask if anyone has an Ap- ple in need of repair and, if so, would they please tell us what the problem is. The Net is queried for someone who may have the answer. (Two Steves can be proud, because not much time is spent on this part of the Net). Next, we ask if there are any check-ins outside North America. If memory serves me cor- rectly, Africa, England, Germany, Iceland, Sweden, South America, islands in the Caribbean and many other countries and continents have checked into “The Apple Computer Net”. After talking to these far-away countries, answering their questions and receiving their comments, we start taking “local” North American check-ins. When someone asks a question, the whole net of transmit- ters is available to answer it. Each question may not be answered that week, but next week you can be sure someone will have the answer. The Net will last about three hours, so you can imagine all the information exchange that goes on. Well, have | raised any interest in ham radio? For those of you who have a short wave radio, remember 14.329 MHz Sunday nights at 0100 GMT. The other Apple nets are more or less local nets; you'll probably need to be within 700 miles of their net control to receive them. They are: ¢ West Coast Apple Net, Net Con- trol WA6SZC, Mickey Hicks, 4301 Garnsey Lane, Bakers- field, CA 93309. Meets EVERY Saturday morning at 9 AM Pa- cific time on 7.230 MHz. * East Coast Apple Computer Net, Net Control WA1UKZ, Dave Allen, 19 Damon Road, Scituate, MA 02066. Meets EVERY Saturday morning at 9 AM Eastern time on 7.260 MHz. © The fourth Apple Net is just get- ting started. Net control is WDOGRC up in the Dakotas, which meets EVERY Wednes- day night at 7 PM his local time on 7.260 MHz. APPLE ORCHARD Anyone wishing to start another Apple Computer net at a different time, day, or location is sure wel- come to do so. Many of our mem- bers have regular times set up to meet their Apple friends on ham radio. It takes a very good radio to receive the ham radio frequencies; one with the required selectivity to separate all of the signals heard. If you don’t have a radio, please don’t buy one without first contacting one of us or another ham. You could make a very expensive mistake and purchase what you think is a good radio, but which is not suited for ham radio. Any Hams reading this who would like to set up a meeting with me to just rag chew about the Apple, drop me a line or ‘phone me (see the masthead page in this issue) and we can switch over from Ma Bell to Ham Radio. One sidelight to the Apple Computer Net is our public domain exchange library, Apple Avocation Alliance, 721 Pike Street, Chey- enne, WY 82001. It has more than 2,000 programs so far. Let’s leave our Apples for a while and explain in some detail about ob- taining an Amateur Radio License from the Federal Communications Commission. As | said earlier, you need the license only if you wish to transmit. Anyone can receive with no license at all. There are five different classes of Amateur Radio licenses; Novice, Technician, General, Advanced, and Extra. The higher you do in your li- cense, the more privileges you are given by the FCC. Did you know you can send and receive a form of TV with your Apple? (Oops. ..1 said let's leave the Apples for a while, didn't I?) The license most people start with is Novice. The requirements for the novice license are: To be able to send “CW” (Continuous Wave, or Morse Code) at five words per minute; and to know very basic radio theory. You don’t have to go to the FCC office to obtain a Novice license; any ham with a General or higher license may administer the Novice exam. If you don’t know a ham in your area, contact me and I'll try my best to put you in contact with someone in your area. a FALL 1981 And how would you learn the Morse Code? Well, we're back to the Apple. Send me a disk with a return envelope and I'll be glad to send you a group of public domain programs that teach you the Code with sight and sound, on your Apple. How long will it take to learn code at five WPM? One week (7 days), 90 minutes a day will more than do it. Break those 90 minutes down into 4 different periods each day. Don't try to do it all at once, and don't skip a day. One week from when you start, you should be ready to take your code test. By the way, if you give the code program | send you to the Ham who is going to give you the test, he may give you the code test using the Apple to generate the code. The Ham will send in the FCC form you have filled out, and in a few weeks he will receive your written test. Use those few weeks to study basic radio theory. There are several good books on basic theory; your local Ham or I can help you find them. I did have hopes of being able to supply basic Ham theory on a disk, but that disk isn’t done. (Actually, it's not even started.) If any person or group does have Novice theory on a disk, please send it to me and I'll make sure it gets on the same disk that the code is on. There is a Question and Answer book that gives samples of what you'll find on the FCC Amateur Novice exam. It's available from the American Radio Relay League, 225 Main Street, Newington, CT 06111. Ask for the “Novice Q & A Book”. In- clude $2 U.S., $2.50 elsewhere. The ARRL also publishes a magazine called QST, devoted entirely to Amateur Radio. Cost is $25 for 12 issues, same address. QST has arti- cles directed at all levels of Hams, from Novice to Extra, and plenty of advertising, for new and used ham equipment. After the Ham examiner sends in your written test, you may receive a notice in about two weeks that you failed. If nothing comes in about three weeks, you can start to breathe more easily, because if you have passed, it takes about 6 weeks for you to get your license. If you follow my instructions, 95 percent of you will pass and receive your licenses. To those other 5 percent, who know FALL 1981 it all, well, join me. It took me three tries to get my Novice license. Y’see, I'd study code for 30 minutes one day and then skip two or three days, study for another 20 minutes and skip a day. Then I'd wonder why | couldn't pass the durn code test. To those of you who are going to say you're too old, too young, too busy, too lazy, too anything to get your ham license, | say that this is why Ham Radio is so great: only those who are willing to put out some ef- fort will get the license. Did you ever receive something for nothing that was worth anything? There is no cost for the Novice license. It’s good for 5 years and may be renewed. With your Novice license, you may contact just about the whole world. You will be learning about Ham radio procedures and in- creasing your code speed. You'll also be having a great deal of fun. The next step up the Ham ladder is Technician. For this one, you must take a tougher written test on ham radio theory, but the code APPLE ORCHARD speed requirement remains 5 WPM. If you know radio and 5 WPM code, you could go directly to Technician, skipping Novice. Tests for Techni- cian and up are only given at FCC offices. After Technician comes the Gen- eral class. This one has the same level of difficulty as the Technician in the theory test, but the code re- quirement is higher; it’s 13 WPM. Next is the Advanced class li- cense. Now the written test starts to get hard; ask me, I've failed it four times. But that’s because I'm using Jim’s “I don’t need to study” way; in- stead of studying, | just wish. (Well, maybe the time Jim consumes with his Apple and IAC responsibilities has something to do with having lit- tle time to study. . .—PCW) As | said before, nothing comes for nothing; someday I'll wise up. The code requirement for Advanced is the same as for General. At the top is the Extra class. The written test must have been created by an engineering Ph. D., and the code requirements are 20 WPM. Whew! PAGE 29 Each time you upgrade your license the FCC gives you a larger range of frequencies to use, and per- mits you to use some of the more exotic ways of communication. Of course, there is some snob appeal in being able to say that you have an Extra Class License. (I should have that problem!) But you don’t need that extra class license to get started using ham radio to increase the enjoy- ment of your Apple, so it’s not as dif- ficult as you may have thought, is it? With a General license, you can make contacts around the world with other hams; exchange pro- grams and information via ham radio, and send and receive slow scan TV using your Apple and ham transceiver. So we complete the circle; Apple owners using ham radio to help them enjoy ham radio. Check it out, and you'll agree that Ham ’n’ Apples is a great combination. With luck, we'll meet soon, on the air. fa Cntil then, “73”. @ THE INSPECTOR These utilities enable the user to examine data both in the Apple's memory and on disks. Simple ‘commands allow scanning through RAM and ROM memory as well as reading, displaying and changing data on disk Read and rewrite sections of Random Access files. Reconstruct a blown VTOC. Weed out unwanted control_characters_ in CATALOG _ listings. UnDELETE deleted files or programs. Repair files that have erroneous data. Alll without being under program control. and more... You may transfer sectors between disks. This allows you to transfer DOS from one disk to another thereby saving a blown disk whenall that’s blown is DOS itself; or to restore a portion of a blown disk from its backup disk Its unique NIBBLE read routine provides a HiRes graphical representation of the data on any track allowing you to immediately ascertain whether your disk is 13 sector or 16 sector. Get an /O error... it because you have the wrong DOS up? is it because of a bad address field? or a bad data field? or because a track was erased? This will allow you to tel in an instant without blowing away any program in memory. APPLE DISK & MEMORY UTILITY © Repairs Blown Disks * Reads Nibbles * Maps Disk Space © Searches Disks The INSPECTOR even lets you search through an entire disk or through on-board memory for the appearance of a string. Now you can easily add lower case to your programs (with LCA). Do you want to add so-called illegal line numbers into your program? or have several of the same line numbers in a program (like the professional programmers do)? or input unavailable commands (like HIMEM to Integer Basic)? or put quotation marks into PRINT statements? Here’s the easy way to do them all! AND MORE The INSPECTOR provides a USER exit that will interface your own subroutines with those of the INSPECTOR itself. For example, just put a screen dump routine (sample included in documentation) at HEX 0300 and press CTRL-Z. The contents of the screen page will print to your printer ROM RESIDENT ROUTINES The INSPECTOR utilities come on an easily installed EPROM. This makes them always available for instant use. No need to load a disk and run a program. FULLY DOCUMENTED Unlike other software of its kind, The INSPECTOR comes with an EASY to understand manual and reference card. Examples and graphics help even the uninitiated use the power of these utilities. And furthermore, we offer the kind of personal service which you have never experienced from a software vendor before. ¢ Searches Memory ¢ Edits Disk Sectors © Outputs Screen to Printer © Displays Memory In HEX/ASCII See your LOCAL DEALER OR. . . Mastercard or Visa users call TOLL FREE 1- 800-835-2246. Kansas residents call 1-800- 362-2421. Or send $49.95. Illinois residents add $3 sales tax. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS All Apple Il configurations that have access to Integer Basic (either in ROM or RAM) will support The INSPECTOR. Just place the chip in empty socket D8 either on the mother board or in an Integer firmware card. Apple Il+ systems with RAM expansion boards or language systems will receive the INSPECTOR on disk to merge and load with INTBASIC. And...if you have an Apple Il+, without either RAM or ROM access to Integer Basic, you will still be able to use The INSPECTOR because we are making available 16k RAM ‘expansion boards at a very affordable price. Not only will you be able to use The INSPECTOR, but you will also have access to Integer Basic and other languages. Our price for BOTH the INSPECTOR and our 16k RAM board is $169.95, less than most RAM boards alone. Call our office for details. Another Quality Product from Omega Software Products, Inc. 222 S. Riverside Plaza, Chicago, IL 60606 Phone (312) 648-1944 © 1981 Omega Software Products, Inc. (tee Apple is a registered trademark of Apple Computer, Inc. PAGE 30 APPLE ORCHARD FALL 1981 APPLE TELECOMMUNICATIONS The problem was simple enough, but the solution appeared costly. The result which I was endeavouring to achieve was the ability to imple- ment my Apple, which was to re- main resident at my home, into my legal practice without the expense of acquiring a second computer. The initial application which | had in mind consisted primarily of main- taining a diary and appointment calendar as well as recording time charges for my clients by way of some form of data base manage- ment. It was also my intention even- tually to incorporate part of my bookkeeping and accounting func- tions on the computer. My system configuration was fairly simple: a 48K Apple Il Plus, In- teger Card, two disk drives, anda D. C. Hayes Micromodem. Up until a couple of months ago, my appoint- ment calendar, consisting of day-to- day appointments, reminders, etc., was maintained manually in my of- fice, and entered into the Apple each evening after arriving home. This was followed by hard copy printouts onan almost daily basis, which were kept at my office for access by either my secretary or myself. Needless to say, the system was cumbersome and less than suitable, for it only provided my schedule for the imme- diate future (probably no more than two or three weeks in advance at any one time), and there was always the element that it was not completely up to date. Any changes or additions were entered manually, and of course, due to my schedule chang- ing two or three times a week with new appointments and cancella: by Louis H. Milrad tions, there was the continual prob- lem of keeping my calendar current. It became quite evident that more immediate accessibility was re- quired than what was available at the time. The problem might very well have been overcome by removing the en- tire system to my office. Of course, this had many drawbacks, the main one of which was the inability to work on or play around with (prob- ably the latter more so than the former) my system in the evening or on weekends when I had available time at home. There was also the practical difficulty of disrupting my family life, turning my wife into a computer widow and my children into computer orphans. In assessing the elements of a practical solution to this problem, two courses of action became appar- ent to me. The first would have been to acquire a second Apple, thereby duplicating the expense already in- curred in my system configuration. There were certain advantages to this approach in that I would be able to run virtually any program on either unit, and would not be re- stricted with graphics transmission and other telecommunication diffi- culties. The cost, however, was a major factor in persuading me that this would not be the preferable route to follow. A second solution then came to mind which would cost me virtually nothing to try out; and if in fact it worked, would be a rea- sonably economical approach to ac- complishing my goal. An Inexpensive and Efficient Approach I was using a DEC LA34 as my printer. Although the speed is some- what limited to 300 baud maximum, the quality of the unit as a printer in that price range was more than at- tractive; the price was in fact quite instrumental in my determination to acquire it. There was also an added advantage which | had not bar- gained for: not only was the DEC- writer able to serve as a printer, but its design capability included the fact that it was an RS 232 hardcopy terminal. The unit is quite transport- able, being really not much larger (and certainly lighter) than an IBM Selectric. Rather delighted with my reason- ing, I transported the unit down to my office in anticipation of being able to control my Apple remotely; | envisaged drawing upon the multi- tude of programs that I had available which were quite useful to my prac- tice and, more importantly, having available an immediate hard copy printout. Just imagine how a client would be impressed if, after discuss- ing a proposed financing deal, | could provide him almost imme- diately with a printout comparing the advantages and disadvantages of leasing as opposed to outright purchase; or even to furnish a com- plete amortization schedule! If | could draw upon this information immediately, there it would be in black and white for the client and myself to assess. Similarly, my calendar was teadily accessible. This gave me greater flexibility than the normal FALL 1981 APPLE ORCHARD wb Current diary that one keeps in an office, for it would extend beyond the calendar year. In theory, | could diarize years ahead and therefore advise a client of the date and time of our meeting and give him a hardcopy reminder; or notify him through a reminder system of the date of maturity of his mortgage or likewise perhaps notify him of a court date. At the same time, | would be able to incorporate periodic reminders and follow-up items for myself. When | started thinking about it, the applications were virtually limitless. All of my time and charges could be recorded over the telephone lines, and when it came time to billa client | could call up the file, get a printout of the dates, time spent, charges, disbursements and the like; and to have all this information immediately accessible so that in theory all | would have to do is hand it over to my secretary so she could type it out in final form. As well, we could concurrently start running the bookkeeping function on the computer. | had already invested in the cost of the terminal, so there would only be one further expense, namely the cost of a modem. With dollars in hand, | immediately rushed to my local supplier, purchased a Cat modem, took it back to the office and connected the RS 232 cable to the terminal. | plugged it into the wall, turned it on, dialed my home number, put the receiver in the cradle and waited. . . andwaited. . . and waited. Nothing happened! | had forgot- ten to incorporate an auto-answer i routine onto disk. | frantically called home and (verbally) instructed my wife to key in the auto-answer pro- gram for the D. C. Hayes. Upon call- ing back, | was delighted to see my DEC print out the usual “Hello” pro- gram with some additional garbage. This was quickly remedied by play- ing around with the DIP switches so that the duplex, parity, etc. were all properly set; the whole process took approximately ten minutes. | then took the Apple through a series of routines starting with the old favor- ite of CATALOG, re-booting, run- ning, listing, stopping list, etc. It worked beautifully! In order to have the system func- tion properly, it was necessary for me to incorporate the auto-answer program as my Hello program on Disk 1; it was also necessary to remove all graphics applications from my programs so that, for ex- ample, INVERSE and FLASH be- came NORMAL video. The system functions exceptionally well, but for the occasional “hang”, which occurs primarily in any program having a graphic application not yet re- moved. Fortunately, there is some- one home at all times, so this merely necessitates having to re-boot the system; the frequency, however, is greatly diminished and most of the glitches have now been eliminated. Now for a seemingly happy end- ing. For merely the cost of a modem, | am able to use it in my practice on an almost hourly basis while at the same time I have its full capability available to me in the evening and on weekends. | am cur- rently toying with the idea of con- PAGE 31 verting my programs to Pascal; it will be interesting to see what effect, if any, the Language Card will have on the system or what effect expand- ing the number of drives might have. With two drives, there has not yet been a problem of accessibility. With the availability of DOS 3.3 and increased storage on disk, no further disk drives have been necessary, in the short run at least. It is interesting to note that in order to exit the system in a hurry, | merely hang up the receiver at my office. Subsequently, when re-enter- ing the system, because of the auto- answer mode, the system will answer at the same point as when exited. (The auto-answer program is furnished in hard copy by D. C. Hayes as part of its manual.) There is one difficulty, that of be- ing without a printer at home. |