Date   : Tue, 19 May 1987 15:57:11 GMT
From   : phoenix!pguhatha@princeton.edu (Puragra Guhathakurta)
Subject: Kaypro - ZCPR3 - TurboROM - BGii

Recently I installed Plu*Perfect's backgrounder on my Kaypro 4/84, 
it runs with a 1Mb Advent RAM disk with Turbo ROM.
A few nasty ZCPR problems suddenly disappeared while doing this:
- the search path has a ROOT on the ramdisk (C0:), but on C1: and
  up, I never was able to make ZCPR find the extended command
  processor (the path was $0 A0 C0, using minimal search).
  I think it was able to do so, using A0 C0, i.e. disabling the
  B: drive when logged in there. 

  Anyone having an explanation?

- I think programs like VFILER let me log into various named directories
  without password questioning, in BGii this suddenly worked.
  (I did have the wheel byte set of course)

I think most of my problems arose after installing the Turbo ROM
(I used a ZCPR installation on the Advent Turbo BIOS from SIMTEL20,
it uses a un-familiar assembler for me, so no easy hacking).
A problem I haven't solved yet is DUMP (obtained through ZRDOS 1.x)
which set the computer to a halt after the file has been dumped.
This was OK before the Turbo ROM.

Apart from some of these minor problems, I am very pleased with the 
RAM disk, the new ROm, and especially the Backgrounder. 

Does anyone have a similar computer system, or had similar problems
and was able to solve them.

Now that ZCPR3.3 is shipping (Z-NEWS 707) some of these problems
may be over?
I heard that ZCPR3.3 supports a new kind of .COM executables, which
can run anywhere in memory. Nice for error handlerrs, history shells
and the like!

Peter Teuben
Institute for Advanced Study
School of Natural Sciences
Princeton, NJ 08540
E-mail: TEUBEN@IASSNS.BITNET