Date   : Sun, 13 Mar 1988 11:20:26 GMT
From   : marque!gryphon!pnet02!howie@csd1.milw.wisc.edu (Howard Herman)
Subject: terminal modes on C-128/CPM

In article,<3610@killer.UUCP>, bobc@killer.UUCP (Bob Calbridge) writes:
>.........
>I'm also interested in being able to change key definitions
>from within a C program.  Any help there?

Well,  not from within the program, but before with KEYFIG.  What you ought to

do  is  set-up  different  CP/M sys's for each of your different applications,

using  KEYFIG  to  define the keys as you would like them to be for each.  So,

you would have one CP/M boot disk for C programs, another for dBASE, etc.  Now

when  you  change  from  running one to the other it is not necessary to close

down and re-boot CP/M.  Merely run KEYFIG, have it get the new key definitions

you  want  from  the  new  CP/M  disk, have it define these new definitions as

current,  exit  KEYFIG, and as many keys, up to every key on the keyboard will

have been re-defined according to how you set it up with KEYFIG.  Changing key

definitions  with  KEYFIG  in  this  manner  should  take about 15-20 seconds,

allowing  for  load  time of the program, and then you are set to run your new

application,  with a newly re-defined keyboard. You could even have the second

CP/M  sys  on  another drive, from which you run KEYFIG, and avoid the need to

swap  disks.   For  additional  CP/M  sys's,  you may try using different user

areas, again avoiding any need for a swap of disks.

>While I have you all here let me throw out another problem that I would like
>to nail down.  I use two 1571 drives.  I usually have all the system and
>utility files on drive A: and do my work on drive B:, having done a
>"setdef a:,b:" to arrange my search path.  This is all taken care of by
>my profile.sub file.  However, no matter which disk, brand or density, I
>use eventually one or two files get corrupted on the A:drive.  I can copy
>a new file over the bad one and it will run for a few sessions and then
>the corruption occurs again.  Often the same files get corrupted but
>just as often different files get hit.  Too often the file is "submit.com".
>Has anyone else experienced problems like this with their drives?
>Thanks in advance.
>Best,
>Bob

From  your  description  you give a pretty good hint as to where your prob is.

Whenever  you  use  the  profile.sub,  or  for  that matter any submit file, a

temporary  file  is  written to disk to perform that task, and then is erased.

My  quess  is  that you are not leaving enough disk space on your drive A disk

for this temporary file to be written, causing it to overwrite other things on

the  disk.   Submit  files  usually  do  not take up that much space, but as a

precaution,  I'll  always leave about 10-15k of empty disk space to accomodate

them.  (As  a  matter of interest, with DRI's new CP/M sys, for the #1581, any

submit file is easily identified, if you see: SYSIN57.$$$.  If the submit file

completed its task, this will have been erased,however.)

BTW,  if  you  are doing any serious CP/M tasks, you ought to consider getting

the  #1750  RAM,  and running from it. It speeds up run time multi-fold. (And,

then  you could add to your profile: setdef [temporary=m:], and your temporary

submit files will be written in RAM, speeding up their application, and saving

your disks.)

Howie



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