Date   : Wed, 02 May 1990 18:58:16 GMT
From   : mcdchg!laidbak!luke@rutgers.edu (Luke Weerts)
Subject: Dbase II on a Model IV

In article <A8AE650AB7BF804CA0@uwplatt.edu> UCSLCT@UWPLATT.EDU (LANCE TAGLIAPIETRA)
writes:
>Has anyone gotten Dbase II to work properly on a TRS-80 Model IV
>using Montezuma Micro CP/M.  I have a working copy for my Osborne
>1, and the DBINST.COM installation program.  The osborne version
>loads in and runs, but gives a very strange cursor
>(inverse video m)@(block cursor) and prints this sequence between
>every character entered.  I also have the demonstration program
>for Dbase II which runs fine (no strange characters). It signs
>on as version 2.3B DEMONSTRATOR.  Also, what is the difference
>between this version, and the non-demonstrator version, besides
>that the installation program does not seem to work with it.
> 
>If you need more info to help me, just ask, any hints would be
>appreciated.
> 
>Lance

These characters are probably part of an unrecognized escape sequence which
the osborne uses to do special stuff like cursor positioning or bold print
or some such thing.  When running on the osborne, is the field being typed
in highlighted or underlined or some special video effect? That's a clue that
this is an escape sequence.  The demonstration probably does all its screen
updating as if the video display is a dumb terminal ie. without cursor
positioning, repainting the whole video screen on update, etc. Generally,
demonstration programs disable the save/write functions which would allow
someone to keep their changes, making it useless for real work.
  To change the program, try to figure out the hex equivalents of the unwanted
characters and place an escape character in front of it.  Then go to your
osborne users manual and see if this matches some escape sequence to do
fancy stuff.  Find out if the TRS-80 has a similar function. Generally a 
program which runs on many different terminal types has this string of
characters defined in a single spot in the install program either as a
length prefixed string or a string with a zero byte at the end.  Use a
debugger (DDT, Z8E) and find this set of characters in the DBINST.COM file
and place a length of zero in the byte before the string if it appears to
be the length of the string or zero out the bytes if that first byte doesnt
seem to be the length of the string. Save this modified version of DBINST.COM
(to another name of course) and try to install Dbase again.  This should 
clear up the problem.
  How do I know this you ask.  Once I had a comm program that used Kaypro 4
video highliting for some messages but on my old Kaypro II it came out as
weird characters like you described because the II (pre-84) did not
support video highliting.

Good luck.  Let me know if this helps.
Luke
--
Luke Weerts, Software Technologies Group        | luke@i88.isc.com
INTERACTIVE Systems Corporation, Naperville, IL | ...!{sun,ico}!laidbak!luke