Download Micro Cornucopia

BB I Dual Density: New Version
Jan Korrubel
"ORYX"
Welbeloond Rd.
Constantia 7800 South Africa.
In the October issue of Micro C my
attention was drawn to the advertisement of SWP microcomputer products,
offering their new version of the Big
Board Dual Density.
The price, $150, was the same as for
the previous version which already had
had a good write-up in Micro C of June,
1982.
I ordered the hardware and software
early in December, 1983, and to my surprise, the parcel was delivered in the second week of January. Previous orders I
had placed in the U.S.A. (at different
firms), usually took much longer for delivery.
Damage
The big disappointment was that the
parcel was extensively damaged, sort of
folded double, and pins of the enclosed
daughter board had pierced the 8 inch
disk containing the necessary software.
In trying to straighten the folded pins,
two pins broke off!
The excellent 27 page instruction manual accompanying the daughter board
gave me the idea that it was possible to
stack the board with a 40 pin socket, in
order to raise it high enough above the
Big-Board to clear the crystal and condensors.
I now used this marvelous idea to solder bridges between the broken pins and
the corresponding pins of the stacked
socket.
One obstacle had been overcome, and
on reading the damaged disk, it became
clear that all damage had occurred in the
unused part near the center. All files
could be transferred to a back-up disk.
Removing the floppy disk con troller
I.e. and installing the daughter board in
its place was no problem at all and my
Big Board booted normally as always on
single density. By following the clear
and precise instructions of the manual I .
had in no time a double density disk that
contained various enhancements to the
BIOS.
New BIOS
First, it has a printer driver that I can
change from serial (either port) to parallel and can modify as well. This was
something I had wanted for a long time.
Secondly, four special function keys
Micro Cornucopia, Number 17, April 1984
appeared on my keyboard (apart from a
host of others): the screen dump to my
printer, the clock toggle, displaying the
time of day in the top righ thand corner of
the screen, the abort key that displays
the value of the program counter in the
lower righthand corner, and the scroll
key that automatically scrolls through 24
linefeeds when in TYPE mode and then
generates a pause.
Six escape sequences, identical to the
newer terminals, not only make your
Wordstar and Supercalc react faster to
your commands, but allow you to set bit
7 of the screen memory. Now it becomes
possible to add the hardware to do video
highlighting, like reverse video or half
intensity.
My 8 inch flippy disks, formatted with
double density, have more than one
Mbyte of user storage and are almost impossible to fill. That is, until I get used to
it having so much space.
There are problems, however. The
new BIOS generates an audible key-click
which I find very annoying. Unfortunately, there is no mention of a key-click
toggle in the manual.
The Set Clock program that I obtained
from users disk one will not set the clock
properly. The program translates the
time to a hexadecimal clock display
which I find very difficult to read. Hopefully, someone will publish an update to
SETCLK.COM so my clock will tell normal time again.
Conclusion
Overall, this is an excellent product
which does all (and more) that is promised in the advertisement.
. I only wish for better packaging as my
nerves fray easily at the sight of folded
and pierced disks. Broken pins I do
know how to repair now.
This method of stacking the board on a
socket may work equally well for that expensive I.e. with the broken pin(s). If
the remaining material is enough to solder to and you are quick in soldering, it is
worth a try.
Do not forget to glue the socket to the
I. e. as otherwise the two will part next
time you extract the I. e. from its socket
on the printed circuit board.
• ••
Integrated BIOS
for BB II
This BIOS adds special
features for floppy and
winchester users.
Floppies
Read and write almost any 8"
and/ or 5" disk format.
20 formats included
(KayPro, Osborne, IBM ... )
Use any type of
5" and/or 8" drive
(SS, DS, 40 tracks, 77 tracks,
80 tracks).
Boot from any format of disk.
Winchester
Winchester formatter with
check for bad sectors automatically assigns alternate
track(s) for track(s)
with bad sectors.
Winchester sysgen (can make
the winchester drive A:)
Also includes codes
for
New BB II monitor
(with all known bugs fixed).
Note:
You must already be
running the Bakker's 8" and
5" interface (available from
Micro C) before installing the
integrated BIOS.
Price $129.95
SASI Interface for
BB I and Xerox 820 I
Includes Card, BIOS,
Formatter, and Sysgen
Price $99.95
ANDYBAKKERS
De Gervelink 12
7591 DT Denekamp
The Netherlands
37