I don't have a REX in my M102, but I have been using the BCR to do "pantry"
and "wine cellar" inventory. Both are in the basement, so are not readily
accessible when one wants to know what is down there. I am not using the
Radio Shack wand, but instead am using a UniTech
MS120-NTCB00-SG "industrial strength" wand. It is "plug-in" compatible with
the RS wand, and has a sapphire tip that doesn't abrade the barcode labels
and keeps dust out of the wand. It also has better "dynamic range" so has
no problems reading low contrast barcodes or ines in color. I am using the
sample "Simple Inventory" program (with some modifications) that came with
the RS Barcode Reader package. I read the "database" file into Excel
and keep a printout in the kitchen. The program works well, and barcode
reads are quite reliable once you get used to the swiping speed needed.
As to your program conflicts, problem with many of the early computers with
"operating systems" supplied by Microsoft, is the RAM driver concept is
limited in practical use. Microsoft intended the RAM driver facility to
patch a ROM driver that may have bugs or add additional planned system
expansion (like the DVI, Bar Code Reader, TDD, Option ROM, etc.). Later
third party developers who had a product that used their own RAM driver all
seemed to locate them in the same address in memory (top of available RAM,
the logical place to put it). This creates memory conflicts. Especially in
computers using the Intel 8080/8085 processors that do not support
"relative" addressing. Without relative addressing, the user cannot move a
driver to a different starting address in memory without recompiling it
first, and since the user does not get a copy of the source code, he is
usually out of luck.
There were a few attempts using programs that would read the code of the
driver and attempt to find all of the JMP and CALL instructions and patch
them directly to a new base starting address, but it was not always
successful, as often times the driver would contain inline data bytes that
would confuse the conversion program. These programs usually worked on
computers using the Z80 processors, since it did support relative
addressing.
Regards,
Peter
------------------------
<snip>
Message: 14
Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2018 00:57:07 -0500
From: Anthony Coghlan <coghl...@gmail.com>
To: "m...@bitchin100.com" <m...@bitchin100.com>
Subject: Re: [M100] Bar code reader with REX
Message-ID:
<canesrqv93k+ksufjam+a-lgikozpwwdubcgget4u-uk2ogz...@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Yes, that was the drive belt I used also if I recall, made by Russell
Industries. I can?t find my old purchase info from eBay, but it was about
$9 at the time. (I think Brian mentioned that price as well.) It was so
nice to see the drive come to life!
Best wishes,
Anthony
All on the list: any tips on reliably using the bar code reader? Thanks.
I?m threatening to inventory our pantry if I can get it working, though my
wife doesn?t think that?s such a practical application... :)
<snip>
