Date   : Wed, 30 Nov 1983 03:20:00 cst
From   : Eaton.HFED@hi-multics
Subject: zcpr2 bugs

I was unable to get ZCPR2 to respond quickly enough to xoff even after
installing mod 3.  I eventually patched my bios to intercept xon, xoff
and ^P.  This feature can be turned on and off with a com file and works
great now.  I would recommend this to anyone whether or not they are
using ZCPR2. ^P can be used "anytime" you so desire to turn on the printer
or conversely turn it off.

The xon/xoff patch also allowed me to synchronize my "no scroll" key
on my Visual 55. (after an xoff my bios ignores anything but xon) The
"no scroll" key sends xon and xoff alternately.  Smooth scroll mode
is very xon/xoff intensive and now works like a charm with ZCPR2 also.

I had several other problems with ZCPR2 which were corrected by mod 3.
However one of them persisted.  DU2 would go into a loop sending spaces
to the screen when I typed DU2 //.  The problem was discovered to be
garbage in the B reg after a  call to CONOUT.  The author
of DU2 expects that reg to contain the same info that was in it before the
call was made.  Guess what.  My bios had little or no concern for
the contents of the B reg upon exiting CONOUT.

Again the fix was to modify my bios.  However in this case I feel that
it is up to the programmer to save any pertinent registers before making
a call to BDOS or BIOS.  You be the judge...


DU2 is considerably more versatile than DUU but also runs considerably
slower than DUU.  I suspect it may be connected with the increased number of
options in DU2.  I use them both depending on my needs at that time. (I
use DUU to tune my phase lock loop read clock by margining.)

The copy program MCOPY is a bit to verbose for my taste and I don't use it
for that reason.  It should also have the option of informing you of a
possible file overwrite on the target disk.

Due to the amount of documentation supplied (excellent I might add) there
should be a quick and dirty installation cookbook to get a minumum
configuration up and going FAST.

A note should be added to warn users that the documentation should be
concantenated before printing it with WORDSTAR.  Otherwise the page
numbers don't match the table of contents. (I didn't find that out
until I had printed ALL the documentation.)

I hope this wasn't too nitpicky.  It is not meant to be an indictment
of ZCPR2.  Quite the contrary.  Only an effort to help make an EXCELLENT
product better.

Thanks much Rick and the rest of you dedicated ZCPR2 contributers
Keep up the good work

Jesse (Eaton.HFED -at HI-MULTICS)

p.s. I can't use the "at" sign (it means kill line here)