Clever. Thanks for the specifics. I'm gonna give it a go. Minicom
receive text and then just save whenever I like, it concatenates, and
provides a nice history. Sweet.
Will
On 10/29/22 12:24 PM, MikeS wrote:
Hi Will,
Too many times I've made some changes and either accidentally deleted
the file or messed it up so badly that I want to revert to the
previous version, so I've learned the hard way that it's a good idea
to save the work before making major changes.
One way is to SAVE it locally on the M100 as a .DO file ("Foo.do" or
"Foo",A) , changing the name as appropriate; note that BASIC will save
a file as .BA by default but will LOAD a .DO file without specifying
the '.DO' or ',A' if no .BA file with the same file exists. Of course
if it's a very large file you may not have room for both the .BA and
.DO files in RAM at the same time.
What I do if I'm close enough to a PC to easily connect or stay
connected is to open a file (e.g. "backup.txt") on the PC for ASCII
text download with a terminal program and just leave it open.
On the M100 I've programmed F7 to 'Key 7, "COM:88N1E"', so when I want
to save the file I'm working on I press F3 to save, F7 in response to
'Save "' and Return. It's a good idea to embed a version no. in the
program and update it every time.
This concatenates all the saved files in one file; if you actually
need to go back then you'd have to stop the transfer, edit the file on
the PC and send it back to the M100. Of course you can open a new file
on the PC every time if you don't mind typing on the PC every time.
To Load a .DO file from the PC, open TEXT, enter the File name, LOAD
(F2) and enter 'COM:88N1E' in response to 'Load from:'; on the PC
terminal program select Upload ASCII or whatever it's called and the
file name (which does not have to be the same as on the M100). You may
not see anything happening but the terminal program should indicate
somehow when the transfer is finished. Type a CTL-Z on the PC and the
file should appear on the M100; switch to BASIC and Load it, and Bob's
your mother's brother.
This is mainly meant for folks who want to or have to just use the
M100's built-in functions, and to show how to avoid overruns when
Loading BASIC .DO programs as in a previous post here a few days ago.
Teeny, TS-DOS etc. certainly are very useful and in fact necessary if
you're working with .BA tokenized files or Machine language code.
Other than my phone I'm not an Apple kind of guy, so I can't give any
Mac-specific hints.
One other hint: to simplify switching from RUN to EDIT mode I've
programmed 'F6,"Edit"+chr$(13)'
Not too verbose, I hope...
m
----- Original Message -----
*From:* Will Senn <mailto:[email protected]>
*To:* [email protected]
*Sent:* Saturday, October 29, 2022 10:16 AM
*Subject:* Re: [M100] Notoriously S.L.O.W BASIC posted - help
speeding it up appreciated
Hi Mike,
I'm curious about the COM stuff. In a later note you said:
It's actually sorta been fun programming on the 'real' M100; I
left a download running on the PC and every time I wanted to
backup an interim version just in case, I just pressed F3 and F7
(which I'd programmed with the COM stats).
and here, you say stuff about programming the function keys with
"COM:88N1E"...
It would be nice to be able to transfer / save from BASIC and/or
my terminal on the Mac without the overhead of dl/TEENY.CO. I know
enough to be dangerous and that the keys can easily be programmed
to effectively type stuff. I'm just not clear on is how this works
mechanically. Are you in BASIC, typing away, having just fixed
some bit and are ready to SAVE it remotely, so you press F3 and
voila, it just does it, or do you press F3 and then do something
to get it transferring, or what?
I have the cables hooked up and usually, I:
1. SAVE from BASIC to .DO or .BA
2. Start up DL on the Mac side, if it isn't already running in my
~/m100 directory
3. Press F8 to get menu
4. Select TEENY.CO
5. Type S HEXIT .DO
6. Watch it complete without error (so long as HEXIT.DO doesn't
already exist, I think)
What I'm imagining happen is:
1. SAVE from BASIC to .DO or .BA
2. Press F3
3. Magically a file is sent and received on the Mac (where does
it's name come from?)
4. Celebration
or
1. F2 from BASIC
2. Start sending a file (how?) from the Mac
3. Celebration
Just curious!
Will
On 10/28/22 12:30 PM, MikeS wrote:
Yeah, that's a setup I used for a while, sort of a poor man's
tablet/clamshell 'convertible. ;-) No problem extending the cable
to around 2 feet.
Never did use the disk drives very much although I did install a
second one; even today while playing with Will's dump
program it's so simple to plug in the cable to the PC, select
download or upload on the PC and either BASIC F3 (SAVE) to com:
or TEXT F2 (LOAD) from com:, not to mention being able to
print on the PC and send/receive over the Internet.
Question for the experts: I have "COM:88N1E" stored in one of the
BASIC function keys; I don't suppose there's a way to do that for
TEXT?
Back in the day IIRC the DVI and the M100 were both around $800;
probably still have the receipts somewhere; don't know what
that'd be today..
And yes, the Model T and NEC BASICs are remarkably versatile,
especially considering the size constraints.
Definitely unique and, I don't know, friendly in a way...
m
----- Original Message -----
*From:* B 9 <mailto:[email protected]>
*To:* [email protected]
*Sent:* Friday, October 28, 2022 12:39 AM
*Subject:* Re: [M100] Notoriously S.L.O.W BASIC posted - help
speeding it up appreciated
On Thu, Oct 27, 2022 at 8:51 AM MikeS <[email protected]> wrote:
It might not be so bad on a 200 but my main annoyance
is having to scroll up and down on the M100's 8 line
screen; as a matter of fact the larger screen was the
main reason I bought a DVI when they came out.
When they came out? I wonder if they were more expensive when
they were new or now that they are rare and "vintage". Is
that a picture of your Disk/Video Interface setup? Looks nifty!
For a lot of stuff in the old days I actually used
GWBASIC or TBASIC to program on a PC; except for screen
printing and graphics they're almost completely
compatible and with a few conditional lines many programs
could be run and tested on both the PC and the M100.
There's something I didn't know! I've been surprised at how
capable the Model T's 8-bit BASIC is. Was it the last one
Microsoft made? Given what I had expected after seeing the
Apple ][ and C64, it's quite a bit more advanced. (For
example, ON COM GOSUB). And I read that the NEC 8201A version
of the DVI allowed not only color graphics, but extended the
BASIC language with graphics commands that I think may be
from GW-BASIC.
I can understand that some folks want to relive the total
experience of doing everything on the old hardware [...]
Sure, and there's nothing wrong with reliving the past. But,
that's not me. I didn't get to experience the M100 when it
was current. This is my first time around with this
technology, so part of the fun is trying to see what it was
like back then. I know, it's sort of like people who go
camping for a week to get in touch with their primitive
hunter-gatherer ancestors. Not likely to be terribly
accurate, but still, it's fun.
Nevertheless, for just noodling around while relaxing on
the couch not much can beat the M100.
I'm beginning to learn that! I still haven't got a true Model
100. I only have a Tandy 200 because my neighbor was throwing
it away and wondered if I could use "an old laptop". I had
no idea what it was. But, given my experiences so far, maybe
I should look into getting the real thing some day.
—b9
