ROOL Forum: Recent Posts

Sat, 27 Feb 2021 17:50:12 -0000

That is interesting, as the Daisy Wheel came later

Yes, that surprises me. You’d have thought the mechanism for the daisy wheel would be a heck of a lot simpler than the tilt and rotate of the ball.

I can only assume that the original ball printers were actually mechanical devices, which would explain why they came first.

Sat, 27 Feb 2021 17:42:23 -0000

Clive, I think you got your photos mixed up. The picture of the Varityper appears to be some sort of medieval torture device.

The strangest typewriter I ever used? A Brother EP-20. From the early ‘80s, it was actually quite advanced, being able to buffer a line of text (and had cursor correction), it supported loads of accents and weird characters, and it would run happily off a handful of batteries (D cells, if I remember correctly).
Now the downsides. It was a thermal dot matrix printer, so it either used little cartridges of thermal ink that were hideously expensive given that 90% of it was unused, or it printed on to thermal paper (it was quite happy with fax roll). Also, the matrix resolution was insanely low, something like 5×7. It actually managed to look worse than a bog standard fx80. That’s saying something.

Still, it was an interesting machine, and mom appreciated writing to her Spanish pen friends using the correct accents. Something that was harder than it ought to have been…

Sat, 27 Feb 2021 15:54:12 -0000

Or when you have to boot without a boot sequence yet installed, as you are installing a new HDD.

Then you really do need to at least have Edit in ROM, as what fits on a floppy is a bit limited, and on the first floppy will be your sector editor, which ever formating tool you use for the drive (usually a version of HForm), and a few diagnostic tools. Chances are that floppy is full. The second floppy having a minimal Boot Sequence (setup for running from HDD, with enough to do the basics and access your CD drive), so that floppy will be full. Then is the CD which is finally big enough to have something on it of use.

So for real ROMs it is definitely needed to have some applications in ROM. For Softload it makes little difference.

Though having looked at some of the specs recently: I thought it was possible to use 8MB for ROMs on both the RiscPC and A7000. Is there another IOMD machine that does not support an 8MB ROM space?

Sat, 27 Feb 2021 15:20:53 -0000

Well, no. Draw, Paint and Edit are pretty important. If you have an error during your boot sequence, anything further on is not done. Not sure how that would feel with nothing in Resources.Apps.

Well if you have Harinezumi running that boot sequence in a more robust fashion than the default, most stuff still works.

Sat, 27 Feb 2021 15:02:08 -0000

The above is actually a modification of a childish “Who is the best persong” type of BASIC toy program, in the version I worote when learning to program in BASIC as a child. There is first a loop allowing entry of up to 64 names, that also keeps count of the number of names entered, the above is in a FOR loop using person% as the count variable, and bound to the number of names actually entered.

This is the third version, as entered when learning BBC BASIC on the Archimedes. It is modified only in having a use for the name Steve. Both forms were made, the IF THEN multi line as well as the CASE WHEN form.

Sat, 27 Feb 2021 14:53:43 -0000

The missing part of the listing is what makes it interesting:

Add to the end (of bottom version in my above):

IF NOT TrueName% THEN PRINT "You are an intelegent being as well; "; GivenName$(person%); " Though of a Sapiens Sapiens kind."
IF TrueName% THEN PRINT "You are repetitive herein."

Though looks more fun without the ending.

Sat, 27 Feb 2021 14:39:04 -0000

Now if only we could sort out the StubsG nonsense… ;-)

That is easy:
DO NOT EVER USE IT.

Sat, 27 Feb 2021 14:35:54 -0000

the ROM apps should be dropped completely,

Well, no. Draw, Paint and Edit are pretty important. If you have an error during your boot sequence, anything further on is not done. Not sure how that would feel with nothing in Resources.Apps.

Sat, 27 Feb 2021 14:35:32 -0000

Edit: when I lived in Somerset in the early 90s, I had an even older weirder typewriter. There was no 0 or 1 (use l and O), and I think ! was a mixture of l and . or something. Some other oddities, but thankfully exorcised from my memory.

Now that sounds like the really old one I have. Also no carriage return and line feed, you had the manual carriage return at the end of the platen, and have to turn the knob at the end to do a line feed, two drastically separate operations. Yet some people can type at a decent enough clip on it to cause it to jam.

I don’t think golfball typewriters were that common over here. In the offices I’ve been in (pre computer), daisy wheels were popular. I think in the spare room there’s an old Brother daisy wheel typewriter… or maybe it got thrown out?

That is interesting, as the Daisy Wheel came later, and largely replaced the Ball in typwriters.

Sat, 27 Feb 2021 13:27:30 -0000

Echoing what other people have said, the ROM apps should be dropped completely, and work just like any other app. They were useful if you had an A3010, but nowadays it’s pointless to give certain apps exalted status, particularly in light of the fact that most have superior third-party alternatives.

Sat, 27 Feb 2021 12:07:18 -0000

Damn – I keep forgetting to alter the module’s date, so it still says 18 Feb 2021.

Comment out the date-string: line in cmhg.AcornSSLHdr and ether clean before compiling for distribution or add

standalone: setdate

setdate:
        ${TOUCH} cmhg.${CMHGFILE}

to the makefile after ‘include CModule’. That will force the cmhg file to be compiled when MkRam is run. add ‘debug: setdate’ if you want to change the debug version.