> -----Original Message-----
> So far I've only figured out how to use TS-DOS and it works fine. I can
> access the DRIVE and LOAD the files.
> A .DO file works great. A .BA file will transfer but never run.
> I understood from previous conversations that what I should do is rename
> the .BA files to .DO files. But that doesn't work. I can't rename the
> files to .BA.
So, there are a couple of things here. Transferring a .BA file that is a plain
ASCII (ie. readable text) BASIC program will not work, and will end up causing
you filesystem corruption in your Model T. So, the first thing you need to do
is determine whether the .BA file you want to transfer is in fact plain ASCII
text or is a tokenized basic program.
Have a look at the .BA file on your computer. I think you mentioned you were
running Linux, so try looking at it in a text editor, or with 'more' or 'cat'
or whatever utility you want. If you see a plain text BASIC program with line
numbers and intelligible statements, it's plain ASCII text. If you see a bunch
of 'garbage' with some text mixed in, but no line numbers or PRINT statements
etc, the file is what is called 'tokenized BASIC' and should be transferrable
as-is.
If the file is plain readable ASCII, then you need to rename it. I think from
what you described in a previous message that you are trying to rename it to a
.DO file by hitting F1 in TS-DOS and then typing FILE.DO as the local name. As
I mentioned in a previous message, THIS WILL NOT WORK. You can only rename the
first part of a filename when using Load or Save in TS-DOS. It will always
preserve the two-character extension and will flag the file as that type in the
filesystem.
What you need to do is to rename the file in the folder on your computer, ie
'mv PROG.BA PROG.DO', and then launch your TPDD emulator and use TS-DOS to load
the PROG.DO into your Model T. Once you see the .DO file on your Model T, you
can go into BASIC and type LOAD "PROG.DO" and it will load and tokenize it for
you. (If the program is long, it might take a minute or so.) Once it's done
loading you can type SAVE "PROG.BA" and it will save the tokenized version into
the RAM filesystem. You can then remove PROG.DO since you don't need it
anymore.
If you want to save this hassle in the future, you can then fire up TS-DOS
again and use F1 to save the tokenized PROG.BA back to your TPDD emulator in
your computer.
You can also convert plain-text BASIC program listings into tokenized .BA files
using either the Virtual T or Cloud T emulators, which I've done and is a bit
faster than loading them in and out of your real machine, but that is probably
a topic for a later time. :) Play around with this and get more comfortable
with it first.
jim
