On Aug 18, 2016 12:08 AM, "Brent Hilpert" <hilpert at cs.ubc.ca> wrote:
On 2016-Aug-17, at 8:26 PM, william degnan wrote:
>>> No doubt you can get it to work, and it can be a useful ability in
some
>>> situations.
>>> But monitors and loaders tended to be written with different
objectives.
>>>
>>> Monitors targetted interactive use, not receipt of back-to-back
> characters,
>>> which would be why you have to add per-char delays.
>>> The monitor is likely dropping a character or starting a read in the
> middle
>>> of one and getting garbage because it went away for too long while
> looking
>>> up the command.
>>> It only has the stop bit period, or even less time, to do processing
> after
>>> receipt of a character.
>>>
>>> Loaders expect back-to-back characters and are written or optimised
>>> accordingly, not that one can't still run into problems, which is why
> the
>>> checksums can be good.
>
> It would be a lot easier if everyone picked top or bottom posting when
they
reply but I
digress....
Yes, we've had that debate a few times.
AIR, it was decided that bottom-posting was the 'list practice'.
> My suggestion to use the "monitor method" is a stop-gap just to get to
the
> point of loading in something useful when no
other means was workinhg.
I
agree any
process that has no checksum will be unreliable. Whatever.. .
Let's say for now you have at least the monitor method until something
better comes along.
But as far as MIKBUG/SWTBUG goes, you also always have the "L" command
with S-record method.
If the data in your TSC BASIC "M" text were
converted to S-record format
- a trivial programming exercise -
it would be easier (no delays required) (and more
reliable) to load into
the SWTP.
They're both ASCII text input, just different
formats.
I'm not clear why you resorted to the M-command method, was the TSC BASIC
data
not originally
in S-records? - that would be the standard format for
loading such
software into an SWTP.
The regular S1 tape exists in a few places, yes use L to load tape. This
is the best practice.
Purely as an experiment I made a monitor script so I could run at a slow
speed so I could watch the screen as commands were entered. I can't
remember if it was because the load (L) was not working or if there was a
cpu card issue.
I thought as a first step, given at the time in the flow of the thread the
OP was having issues, my monitor script would be worth trying.
Bill