On-Line #38 26 мая 1996

ZX vs PC

B.B.S. News - Why is IBM all the beam, or that we lack?

(C) Pavel Fedin

 - The story of why all of a pencil on an IBM, or that we lack.


   Hi everyone! Recently I wanted to write something, but 
something is know where to start. And now I know. Well, I see 
that was a lot of talk about the further development of SPECCY, 
and I also decided to express their thoughts on this topic. 
Just want to say that I do not zhelezyachnik, and shall speak 
from the perspective of a programmer who wants to expand the 
capabilities of their machines, but is forced to do strongly 
distorted. So, I'll start. 


   For convenience, the expansion devices are compulsory 
machine should have a system connector. It is already 
understood everything. But from him very little use if the 
machine housing is almost no place. This I and write in the 
first place. 


   In our time, in the case for SPECCY very little room for 
additional equipment. I had also been in such a position. I'm 
sick of it, and when I had money, I went on the market in 
search of decent housing. I expected to buy MINITOWER such as 
those in which the firm "SOLON" released its pentagons. But I 
still wanted to replace its Pentagon PROFI. When I asked what 
specifically climbs in this case, it turned out, that it will 
be small. I have nothing left but to buy the building from the 
IBM PC. By sheer luck I came across such a 30000. True, it took 
another 50 to replace the indicator clock chasototy and install 
the plug instead of the third drive. I installed it: charge the 
Pentagon, 2 drive, power supply and a modem. Later, however I 
had to buy power supply unit from IBM for $ 150,000 to replace 
its old, from agate. But when I got PROFI, then I have not had 
any problems. Now in my case: 3 drive, the computer itself (2 
boards), power supply, modem, and power for the AY. It would 
seem that all is well, but only if you knew how much work and 
time spent on the adaptation of the body under boards and other 
components! 


   So, the conclusion: we need a new case and motherboard 
should be developed under the shell. I think it is best to take 
IBM'ovsky corpus. Expensive? Meanwhile, everyone who wants to 
make a normal car, have a case. In addition, he has one more 
advantage - in front of the place where the board uses slots in 
the casing is rectangular holes. All expansion cards are 
designed so that if the charge inserted into the slot, then all 
connectors on it will be sticking out of these holes. Do not 
need to drill, refine. Here we would like that! 


   With the chassis and cards sorted out, go further. The next 
step - hardware gadgets. People, what is it?? Here in Scorpio 
already Winchester has, HAYES-modem even connect a CD-ROM. And 
on the other machines? You would not find fault them, but take 
an example! Unfortunately, more I have nothing to say, because 
in iron I - # 00. 


   Well, that's the last item - the software, especially 
embedded. Then all the gloom. So why should you stick to the 
BASIC-48, TR-DOS? They have long exhausted their resources. Why 
not 're doing with the hard drive? Yes, because it does not 
work in TR-DOS. But what you actually want from it? After all, 
the underlying ideology to keep the OS in ROM does not allow 
EXPANSION machine configuration. For this system must be 
flexible. And indeed OS should not be in ROM, because that is 
what prevents improvements and tuning for the specific user. 
Here we have would follow the example of IS-DOS. There I can 
customize myself absolutely everything, down to the flowers. 
There's no need to worry about how a you have a printer 
attached, as floppy drives, hard drive and there is ramdisk ... 
You just need to get your driver - that's all. And we need good 
ROM BIOS. To perform the work with pages of memory, screen, 
disk drives, hard disk ... So we finally be able to standardize 
everything. No one has will not care for what I have port mouse 
is connected printer-suffering "screw" and everything else. 
These questions will deal with BIOS, privyazyannaya to the type 
of machine. Some of those same program will work even on PROFI, 
at least for a scorpion, at least for ATM ... Is not that what 
we want? Of course, I understand that we can not discard the 
old ROM for compatibility with programs flocks, but that's 
BASIC-128 can be removed completely. Instead of him, and you 
can put BIOS. To access it You can allocate a special area of 
​​addresses, and everything else - changed arbitrarily. The 
system will have the opportunity to develop. Say, when you buy 
the device you give BIOS version to work with him in exchange 
for the old. And no problem! 


   On this topic is open teleconference, it is located on two
BBS (Rainbow Warrior, Ditronik 2). The Conference opened with a 
24 May. Standard names for the conference "ZxRom: ZR", ie 
filename - Five characters, then a colon, followed by two 
letters "ZR". This is done to distinguish from other files, 
teleconferences, ie forming their conference, you too can 
create your own group conference of the two letters (such as 
ours "ZR"). The Conference is a system of "FAQ", 
"Offer-answer". Then there is no need to shake every time that 
you've already read. The first information about the conference 
can be found in the file: "ZxRom: ZR" Contact BBS:


        Scorpion Club On-Line Bulletin Board
       -------------------------------------------- Rainbow 
Warrior (095) 248 -7061 Shuvikov Efim              Fri; Sat; 
00-00/02-00 Only! At BBS Rainbow Warrior is better to upload 
zhelezyachnye questions proposals.



             API Software On-Line Service
        ------------------------------------------ Ditronik 2 
(095) 329-4385 Fedin Pavel               Fri; Sat; 23-00/04-00 
Only! On this BBS is better to upload questions and suggestions 
regarding the program material. 


        Pavel Fedin, DITRONIK BBS 2, ZX-NET: 
095:4907044.3294385.