From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!duke!mcnc!idis!tom Newsgroups: net.micro.pc Title: PC info digest (PC C users please read) Article-I.D.: idis.186 Posted: Mon Jan 17 11:25:10 1983 Received: Wed Jan 19 07:52:46 1983 Following is a digest of the information I received from my request. Apparently not many people have opinions on the subjects involved. Most unusual was the fact that of seven or so companys producing C compilers for the PC, only two people responded that they were using any of them. There must be more PC C users out there, so please drop me a line and let me know what you are compiling with. Thanks in advance. ______________________________________________________________________________ To answer a couple of your questions: 1. I posted a comm program in basic, and will give it to you for free if you'll send me a blank diskette. All donations accepted. 2. Interpreted Basic can access all memory, but only by using the "DEF SEG" feature. Compiled Basic can access all memory by using long procedure call & return, but I have not written programs big enough to tell how well the linker handles this to tell for sure. Charles Perkins decvax!teklabs!charliep Tektronix M.S. 50-383 Beaverton, Oregon 97077 ph# (503) 644-0835 ______________________________________________________________________________ I own an IBM PC, and recently purchased a Princeton Color Graphics monitor. It's very good. (excellent resolution, crisp color transitions, good brightness, etc.) There are two C compilers that I have used on the PC: The C86 C Compiler from Computer Innovations, Inc. (Lincroft, NJ). A full implementation of the white C book by Kernighan + Ritchie. Includes overlay support and a math library that uses the 8087 co-processor (if you have one). The Lattice C Compiler from Lifeboat Associates (NY, NY) includes the portable i/o library (fopen, fclose, etc. instead of the open, close stuff that comes with C86. Both compilers are good. Jim McParland ABI - Holmdel hou5e!jjm ______________________________________________________________________________ >From mcnc!duke!harpo!decvax!utzoo!utcsrgv!peterr Sat Jan 8 13:16:31 1983 Make sure that you can actually get a bare-bone machine before you go out and buy the other stuff. It has been hard to get 16K no-disk machines. Interpreted BASIC can only access 64K code+BASIC data, but you can PEEK/POKE and CALL machine code subr's in the entire address space. There's a section in the BASIC reference manual that discussess writing software so that it runs on both the B/W and colour boards; read that and you should be ok. [ NOTE: In Pittsburgh, finding a bare-bones machine was no problem. The local IBM "New Products center" had them in stock. - Tom ] ______________________________________________________________________________ I don't have too many things to say about your configuration; mine is vir- tually 'straight' IBM. I can tell you that the upper 48K on the main board is socketed in my machine, and at 4116 prices nowadays, a 16K basic machine is the way to go. Tandon DS 320K drives can be had for less than half the IBM asking price from various suppliers. I don't the the SS drives at 160K per drive are worth the trouble. You might make sure about wanting a "standard" hardcopy device, though. The most common "standard" IBM output device is an EPSON MX-80 driven by a paral- lel port. An oddball configuration, if your contract software needs hard- el port myself to drive a Durango 820 business machine which has a 160 cpm printer integral with it. It works. By all means, buy the Technical Reference Manual. It's a goldmine of infor- mation. And yes, you can address more than 64K in uSoft BASIC. Actually you do any- way, the uSoft manual states that the basic program's \workspace\ is limited to 64K; add the compiler code space and you've got more. But seriously, the only way to do what you want with uSoft BASIC is with the DEF SEG statement and PEEK and POKE and CALL. DEFSEG defines a 64K segment base for the PEEK, POKE and CALL (assembly subroutine). ... - Chuck Guzis fortune!guzis ______________________________________________________________________________ Yes - the best bang for the buck is a bare bones machine. If it for work then include security furniture from the beginning. ... The best terminal simulator that I know of comes from Jim Holtman (harpo!whuxlb!jph), is written in Pascal and uses the assembler interface supplied with the IBM Comm. Pakage. I've used the Lattice C compiler a modest amount and it seems to work fine. Right now I'm having a problem getting assembly subroutines to work but that could be problems with my understanding of the assembly language or problems with the IBM linker command. Joe T. Hall IW 1F-249 ihuxb!pax ______________________________________________________________________________ [ END OF DIGEST ] I might comment here that I am going for the system and suppliers that I mentioned in my original posting. My system will have 320K RAM, 2 320K drives,a 16 color-80 char/line monitor(690 dots horz),RS232 and parallel ports, and a 120 cps printer all for about $4K (including everything). If one tried to get this system as a whole from IBM, one would end up with a 40 char/line color monitor, an 80 cps printer, and a bill for around $6K. The choice was obvious. Thanks to all who responded, Tom Neuendorffer decvax or mcnc or floyd !idis!tom