INMC News

NON-Nascom Software

Dear Sir,

I’ve just received INMC News issue 3 and enjoyed every letter of the script. I hope that it continues (through its members submitting things).

However, I feel that your reply to Mr Griffith left out much information, e.g. you claim that no information on the compat-ability of the CCSOFT Level B Basic was available. Rubbish you just have to ask them. Here are a few items which may be of interest to Mr Griffith and perhaps others.

Level B Basic – a 2K Tiny Basic complete with an Edit command as in Super Tiny Basic (Nascom). It also has PEEK, POKE, IN, OUT, USR commands, Level B Basic can record in DUMP or WRITE format, depending on which monitor is present – it tests it itself. Level B Basic will also work with T1, T2, B-BUG, T4 and probably NAS-SYS?? ( It won’t- Ed. ) It is available on cassette or on 2x2708 EPROM’s.

There is also an 8K Basic for Nascom from XTAL Electronics, this runs with T1, T2, B-BUG, T4 (one modification needed) and perhaps NAS-SYS?? ( It won’t- Ed. ) This is really only a 7½K interpreter. Available on cassette only. It has an Edit command. It has all the Nascom 8K commands except NULL, SCREEN, LINES, WIDTH, DEEK, DOKE, SET, RESET or CLS, these commands are extremely useful, but it’s not all that bad if they’re not available.

There are also 2 more Basic interpreters available, a 4K floating point version of Level B Basic from CCSOFT and a 4K integer Basic from Mushroom – contains most of the commands in Nascom and XTAL 8K Basics.

There also is another version of a Z80 assembler available from V & T Electronics, it is similar to the ZEAP.

There are some software packages which I’ve not included viz CCSOFTS Super Debug, Octal Loader, Relocator. There are probably more which I’ve not heard of or I’ve forgotten about.

On the subject of Z80 software from magazines there’s a lot about. In Dr Dobbs there’s a few Z80 programmes but there’s masses of 8080 stuff including a TINY PLOT interpreter etc. Incidentally, there’s lots of CP/M type programmes coming up in Dr Dobbs at present.

The same can be said about your list of hardware, at present there has been masses of Nascom compatible hardware put on the market viz joysticks, graphics, calculator chips, music boxes, CUTS tape interfaces etc. etc.

I myself have built a light pen (circuit from BYTE) which plugs in to one of the available PIO parts. In short Mr Griffith there’s lots of hardware and software around and some which are easily modified to work on the Nascom,

Yours sincerely

Peter Crilly
Glasgow