Re: [M100] Dungeon Master's Personnel Service

[John R. Hogerhuis]

On Thu, Jan 9, 2020, 10:10 PM Peter Vollan  wrote:

> But then he would have eventually have encountered them, when he tried
> to load a test file as a basic files into a model T
>

Maybe, maybe not.

Only if he uses a tpdd client and a tpdd service that doesn't guard against
mismatched file extensions.

The combination of Tsdos and laddiealpha would never exhibit the
dysfunctional behavior.

If for example he transfers it as an ASCII file with BASIC, TEXT or TELCOM,
the extension creates no issue.

-- John.

>

[M100] Fw: Dungeon Master's Personnel Service

[Mike Stein]

Resending because original post was rejected for some reason; sorry if it's a 
dupe:


 Original Message - 
From: Mike Stein 
To: m...@bitchin100.com 
Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2020 7:51 PM
Subject: Re: [M100] Dungeon Master's Personnel Service


And of course there's the shorter and location-independent
1300 x$=input$(1)
if you don't mind a cursor and especially if you need the input value anyway.

  - Original Message - 
  From: Dan Higdon 
  To: m...@bitchin100.com 
  Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2020 6:35 PM
  Subject: Re: [M100] Dungeon Master's Personnel Service


  That's the worst way possible to do "press any key to continue". 
  In my own "walk through", I'm replacing those with


  1300 if inkey$="" then 1300
  1320 cls


  On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 5:16 PM Peter Vollan  wrote:

BTW, what the hell is this:

1300 INPUT C
1310 ON  C GOTO  1320
1320 PRINT  CHR$(12)

On Thu, 9 Jan 2020 at 14:09, Jason Benson  wrote:
>
> Good to know. Here's the same file renamed to DMPS.DO
> As for the error you ran into, I'm not at all surprised, there are 
probably a few of bugs in there I missed and didn't trigger when I did some 
brief testing on it.
>
> On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 5:03 PM John R. Hogerhuis  wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 1:58 PM Jason Benson  
wrote:
>>>
>>> I was loading the file through Virtual T. and running it just fine. Is 
it VT automatically converting it to a tokenized basic file?


>>
>> Yes.

Re: [M100] Dungeon Master's Personnel Service

[Mike Stein]

- Original Message - 
From: "Ken Pettit" 
To: 
Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2020 8:43 PM
Subject: Re: [M100] Dungeon Master's Personnel Service


> On 1/9/20 5:40 PM, Brian K. White wrote:
>> On 1/9/20 8:38 PM, Ken Pettit wrote:
>>> And here we go again.  :)  LOL
>>
>> I had to respond to "what you wanted to do anyway"
>> That is just a completely flagrant violation.
>>
> 
> I bow out graciously as I don't usually get into these type of online 
> discussions that inevetibly end up in flame wars.
> 
> But I did have to look up the definition of "Serendipitous" and "flagrant".
> 
> Ken
-
I'm sorely tempted to pick up the baton but that would only confirm the 
'personal bias' ;-)

[M100] test

[Mike Stein]

test

Re: [M100] Dungeon Master's Personnel Service

[Ken Pettit]

On 1/9/20 5:40 PM, Brian K. White wrote:

On 1/9/20 8:38 PM, Ken Pettit wrote:

And here we go again.  :)  LOL


I had to respond to "what you wanted to do anyway"
That is just a completely flagrant violation.



I bow out graciously as I don't usually get into these type of online 
discussions that inevetibly end up in flame wars.


But I did have to look up the definition of "Serendipitous" and "flagrant".

Ken

Re: [M100] Dungeon Master's Personnel Service

[Brian K. White]

On 1/9/20 8:38 PM, Ken Pettit wrote:

And here we go again.  :)  LOL


I had to respond to "what you wanted to do anyway"
That is just a completely flagrant violation.

--
bkw



On 1/9/20 5:37 PM, Brian K. White wrote:

On 1/9/20 6:48 PM, Ken Pettit wrote:

On 1/9/20 3:34 PM, John R. Hogerhuis wrote:


Yeah. That's one point of view.

What if we could have remove a lot of those obstacles for him ahead 
of time so he never even encountered them?


IMO, there's a lot to be said for things that "just work".



Not only that, but it creates a lot less "Call center" calls trying 
to debug why loading this program or that program always crashs my 
machine (or my VirtualT).  While I understand the purist's point of 
view of "don't touch my data and let me decide", I side with John in 
just making sure it works because that is really what you wanted to 
do anyway. 



It's not your place to tell me what I wanted to do.

It's not being a purist to hold this tenet, or, if it is, then it's 
no criticism to be a purist about it. Pick any other bad thing and 
say "those silly anti-malaria purists...". Or less dramatic "purists 
who say that 1+2=4 is *always* wrong..." The implied charge has no bite.



 I
can't think of any situation where someone was trying to load an 
ASCII .BA file just so they could crash their machine.


Serendipitous! As it's not your job to try to think of any situation 
like that. How lucky is that?


Thinking of everything in infinity that might be possible, is 
impossible, which is why it's never valid to take that approach in 
the first place. That's why we have scopes and separations of concern 
etc.


Let a dedicated separate cleaner-upper utility attempt to do things 
like that, when a user specifically asks for it, by actively using 
the tool. Then you can never be guilty of breaking anything or 
injecting your own infuriating unwelcome problems. You don't have to 
worry about doing the impossible (getting it right 100% of the time 
forever in all future situations in decades to come), nor have to 
settle for having it on your name that you did something while 
knowingly not bothering to get it right 100% of the time.


The separate util doesn't have to worry about being so impossibly 
perfect. It doesn't make the implied promise that a storage device 
does. Whatever a generic processing util promises to do, it doesn't 
run itself without being asked on every transaction. It only runs 
when asked, and the user can tolerate imperfection in it, because 
they can choose not to run it.

Re: [M100] Dungeon Master's Personnel Service

[Ken Pettit]

And here we go again.  :)  LOL

On 1/9/20 5:37 PM, Brian K. White wrote:

On 1/9/20 6:48 PM, Ken Pettit wrote:

On 1/9/20 3:34 PM, John R. Hogerhuis wrote:


Yeah. That's one point of view.

What if we could have remove a lot of those obstacles for him ahead 
of time so he never even encountered them?


IMO, there's a lot to be said for things that "just work".



Not only that, but it creates a lot less "Call center" calls trying 
to debug why loading this program or that program always crashs my 
machine (or my VirtualT).  While I understand the purist's point of 
view of "don't touch my data and let me decide", I side with John in 
just making sure it works because that is really what you wanted to 
do anyway. 



It's not your place to tell me what I wanted to do.

It's not being a purist to hold this tenet, or, if it is, then it's no 
criticism to be a purist about it. Pick any other bad thing and say 
"those silly anti-malaria purists...". Or less dramatic "purists who 
say that 1+2=4 is *always* wrong..." The implied charge has no bite.



 I
can't think of any situation where someone was trying to load an 
ASCII .BA file just so they could crash their machine.


Serendipitous! As it's not your job to try to think of any situation 
like that. How lucky is that?


Thinking of everything in infinity that might be possible, is 
impossible, which is why it's never valid to take that approach in the 
first place. That's why we have scopes and separations of concern etc.


Let a dedicated separate cleaner-upper utility attempt to do things 
like that, when a user specifically asks for it, by actively using the 
tool. Then you can never be guilty of breaking anything or injecting 
your own infuriating unwelcome problems. You don't have to worry about 
doing the impossible (getting it right 100% of the time forever in all 
future situations in decades to come), nor have to settle for having 
it on your name that you did something while knowingly not bothering 
to get it right 100% of the time.


The separate util doesn't have to worry about being so impossibly 
perfect. It doesn't make the implied promise that a storage device 
does. Whatever a generic processing util promises to do, it doesn't 
run itself without being asked on every transaction. It only runs when 
asked, and the user can tolerate imperfection in it, because they can 
choose not to run it.

Re: [M100] Dungeon Master's Personnel Service

[Brian K. White]

On 1/9/20 6:48 PM, Ken Pettit wrote:

On 1/9/20 3:34 PM, John R. Hogerhuis wrote:


Yeah. That's one point of view.

What if we could have remove a lot of those obstacles for him ahead of 
time so he never even encountered them?


IMO, there's a lot to be said for things that "just work".



Not only that, but it creates a lot less "Call center" calls trying to 
debug why loading this program or that program always crashs my machine 
(or my VirtualT).  While I understand the purist's point of view of 
"don't touch my data and let me decide", I side with John in just making 
sure it works because that is really what you wanted to do anyway. 



It's not your place to tell me what I wanted to do.

It's not being a purist to hold this tenet, or, if it is, then it's no 
criticism to be a purist about it. Pick any other bad thing and say 
"those silly anti-malaria purists...". Or less dramatic "purists who say 
that 1+2=4 is *always* wrong..." The implied charge has no bite.



 I
can't think of any situation where someone was trying to load an ASCII 
.BA file just so they could crash their machine.


Serendipitous! As it's not your job to try to think of any situation 
like that. How lucky is that?


Thinking of everything in infinity that might be possible, is 
impossible, which is why it's never valid to take that approach in the 
first place. That's why we have scopes and separations of concern etc.


Let a dedicated separate cleaner-upper utility attempt to do things like 
that, when a user specifically asks for it, by actively using the tool. 
Then you can never be guilty of breaking anything or injecting your own 
infuriating unwelcome problems. You don't have to worry about doing the 
impossible (getting it right 100% of the time forever in all future 
situations in decades to come), nor have to settle for having it on your 
name that you did something while knowingly not bothering to get it 
right 100% of the time.


The separate util doesn't have to worry about being so impossibly 
perfect. It doesn't make the implied promise that a storage device does. 
Whatever a generic processing util promises to do, it doesn't run itself 
without being asked on every transaction. It only runs when asked, and 
the user can tolerate imperfection in it, because they can choose not to 
run it.


--
bkw

Re: [M100] Dungeon Master's Personnel Service

[Ken Pettit]

On 1/9/20 3:34 PM, John R. Hogerhuis wrote:


Yeah. That's one point of view.

What if we could have remove a lot of those obstacles for him ahead of 
time so he never even encountered them?


IMO, there's a lot to be said for things that "just work".



Not only that, but it creates a lot less "Call center" calls trying to 
debug why loading this program or that program always crashs my machine 
(or my VirtualT).  While I understand the purist's point of view of 
"don't touch my data and let me decide", I side with John in just making 
sure it works because that is really what you wanted to do anyway.  I 
can't think of any situation where someone was trying to load an ASCII 
.BA file just so they could crash their machine.


Ken

Re: [M100] Dungeon Master's Personnel Service

[Dan Higdon]

That's the worst way possible to do "press any key to continue".
In my own "walk through", I'm replacing those with

1300 if inkey$="" then 1300
1320 cls

On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 5:16 PM Peter Vollan  wrote:

> BTW, what the hell is this:
>
> 1300 INPUT C
> 1310 ON  C GOTO  1320
> 1320 PRINT  CHR$(12)
>
> On Thu, 9 Jan 2020 at 14:09, Jason Benson 
> wrote:
> >
> > Good to know. Here's the same file renamed to DMPS.DO
> > As for the error you ran into, I'm not at all surprised, there are
> probably a few of bugs in there I missed and didn't trigger when I did some
> brief testing on it.
> >
> > On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 5:03 PM John R. Hogerhuis 
> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 1:58 PM Jason Benson 
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> I was loading the file through Virtual T. and running it just fine. Is
> it VT automatically converting it to a tokenized basic file?
> 
> 
> >>
> >> Yes.
>

Re: [M100] Dungeon Master's Personnel Service

[John R. Hogerhuis]

On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 3:26 PM Peter Vollan  wrote:

> We have enough trouble already with that whole text/basic, .DO .BA
> thing without hiding it from people.
>
>
Yeah. That's one point of view.

The other point of view is that trouble is unavoidable. But code that fixes
it and makes things work the way the user expects them to is always
welcomed by the users.

Remember the parable of "Dune Buggy." He was a user that showed up on the
list and we were trying to help get RS232 and file transfers and what not
going. He just ran into problem after problem, challenge after challenge,
and in the end informed the list that he'd pulled all of the wires out of
his Model T and thrown it into the trash.

And Dune Buggy was never heard from again.

What if we could have remove a lot of those obstacles for him ahead of time
so he never even encountered them?

IMO, there's a lot to be said for things that "just work".

-- John.

Re: [M100] Dungeon Master's Personnel Service

[Peter Vollan]

We have enough trouble already with that whole text/basic, .DO .BA
thing without hiding it from people.

On Thu, 9 Jan 2020 at 15:06, John R. Hogerhuis  wrote:
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 2:55 PM Ken Pettit  wrote:
>>
>> On 1/9/20 2:35 PM, Peter Vollan wrote:
>> > I just noticed that VT has an option to "Save basic as ASCII", so not
>> > only with it load a .BA files that is really a text file, but it will
>> > save it back to text so that you can read and edit it. Virtual T is
>> > teaching us bad habits!
>>
>>
>> Hmm, what's that saying?  Oh yeah, "Guns don't kill people, PEOPLE kill
>> people".  Don't go blaming the tool!!!  :) LOL
>>
>> Ken
>
>
> Yep.
>
> TIMTOWTDI
>
> The problem is there a lot of files misnamed .BA even on Club100.
>
> You could do what you did and fix the tokenization and "just work".
> You could just give the user an error and refuse to load the file
> You could prompt the user "This looks like a text file not a tokenized BA 
> file. Would you like me to fix it for you? Yes/Cancel"
> You could just mention to the user "This is a text file. Automatically 
> tokenizing to BA format."
> You could change the extension to DO and create it in the file system that 
> way.
>
> All have arguments in their favor.
>
> I probably would have just fixed the extension and any characters that might 
> corrupt the RAM file system.
>
> -- John.

Re: [M100] Dungeon Master's Personnel Service

[John Gardner]

... more proof...

BASIC deemed harmful..."8)

  ...

[M100] Email max size now 500K

[John R. Hogerhuis]

I have made a decision to up the email size to 500K to accommodate the
occasional picture that members wish to post.

Please continue to respect others bandwidth limits and keep photos and
other attachments to a reasonable size.

Also trim quoted portions of email that you reply to to include only useful
content.

For attachments that are still too big contact me and we'll figure out a
way link to it.

-- John.

Re: [M100] Dungeon Master's Personnel Service

[John R. Hogerhuis]

On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 3:16 PM Peter Vollan  wrote:

> BTW, what the hell is this:
>
> 1300 INPUT C
> 1310 ON  C GOTO  1320
> 1320 PRINT  CHR$(12)
>
>
More proof that TIMTOWTDI, lol.

-- John.

Re: [M100] Dungeon Master's Personnel Service

[Peter Vollan]

BTW, what the hell is this:

1300 INPUT C
1310 ON  C GOTO  1320
1320 PRINT  CHR$(12)

On Thu, 9 Jan 2020 at 14:09, Jason Benson  wrote:
>
> Good to know. Here's the same file renamed to DMPS.DO
> As for the error you ran into, I'm not at all surprised, there are probably a 
> few of bugs in there I missed and didn't trigger when I did some brief 
> testing on it.
>
> On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 5:03 PM John R. Hogerhuis  wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 1:58 PM Jason Benson  
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> I was loading the file through Virtual T. and running it just fine. Is it 
>>> VT automatically converting it to a tokenized basic file?


>>
>> Yes.

Re: [M100] Dungeon Master's Personnel Service

[John R. Hogerhuis]

On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 2:55 PM Ken Pettit  wrote:

> On 1/9/20 2:35 PM, Peter Vollan wrote:
> > I just noticed that VT has an option to "Save basic as ASCII", so not
> > only with it load a .BA files that is really a text file, but it will
> > save it back to text so that you can read and edit it. Virtual T is
> > teaching us bad habits!
>
>
> Hmm, what's that saying?  Oh yeah, "Guns don't kill people, PEOPLE kill
> people".  Don't go blaming the tool!!!  :) LOL
>
> Ken
>

Yep.

TIMTOWTDI

The problem is there a lot of files misnamed .BA even on Club100.

You could do what you did and fix the tokenization and "just work".
You could just give the user an error and refuse to load the file
You could prompt the user "This looks like a text file not a tokenized BA
file. Would you like me to fix it for you? Yes/Cancel"
You could just mention to the user "This is a text file. Automatically
tokenizing to BA format."
You could change the extension to DO and create it in the file system that
way.

All have arguments in their favor.

I probably would have just fixed the extension and any characters that
might corrupt the RAM file system.

-- John.

Re: [M100] Dungeon Master's Personnel Service

[Ken Pettit]

On 1/9/20 2:35 PM, Peter Vollan wrote:

I just noticed that VT has an option to "Save basic as ASCII", so not
only with it load a .BA files that is really a text file, but it will
save it back to text so that you can read and edit it. Virtual T is
teaching us bad habits!



Hmm, what's that saying?  Oh yeah, "Guns don't kill people, PEOPLE kill 
people".  Don't go blaming the tool!!!  :) LOL


Ken

Re: [M100] Dungeon Master's Personnel Service

[Peter Vollan]

I just noticed that VT has an option to "Save basic as ASCII", so not
only with it load a .BA files that is really a text file, but it will
save it back to text so that you can read and edit it. Virtual T is
teaching us bad habits!

On Thu, 9 Jan 2020 at 14:09, Jason Benson  wrote:
>
> Good to know. Here's the same file renamed to DMPS.DO
> As for the error you ran into, I'm not at all surprised, there are probably a 
> few of bugs in there I missed and didn't trigger when I did some brief 
> testing on it.
>
> On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 5:03 PM John R. Hogerhuis  wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 1:58 PM Jason Benson  
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> I was loading the file through Virtual T. and running it just fine. Is it 
>>> VT automatically converting it to a tokenized basic file?


>>
>> Yes.

Re: [M100] Books on programming

[Peter Vollan]

I know that there is a program called D20 for dice rolling. Does
anyone out there know where it is???

On Thu, 9 Jan 2020 at 14:19, James  wrote:
>
> Peter sorry it took me a while to answer this, but here goes
>
> At present we are playing a 5th edition game, have been for about a
> year. I keep having to replace my character sheet and did wonder if I
> couldn't program something on my M100. Like an electronic 5e character
> sheet. Presently I don't have a clue how such a thing could be achieved,
> but I do have an idea of how it might work.
>
> A primary screen showing character stats and a second page for
> inventory. Perhaps toggling between the two using the tab key.
>
> I myself have been reading up on D Basic, as found in the Cyclopedia
> TSR 1071. I own the 1070 boxset which as i understand it was when TSR
> combined Basic, Expert, Companion and Master all in to one.
>
> If I can make a set of DnD tools would i use my M100 to manage my DnD
> games? You're damn right I would!
>
>
> On 08/01/2020 1:56, Peter Vollan wrote:
> > What edition do you use?
> >
> > On Tue, 7 Jan 2020 at 17:06, James Zeun  wrote:
> >> Great, I'll have to check that out!
> >>
> >> I'm currently checking out all the books that have been suggested to me.
> >>
> >> Really difficult to find physically books.
> >>
> >>
> >> On Wed, 8 Jan 2020, 1:03 am C. Magaret,  wrote:
> >>> "Dragon" was about role-playing games, primarily D
> >>>
> >>> /CAM
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
>  On Jan 7, 2020, at 16:48, James Zeun  wrote:
> 
>  Was the Dragon Magazine a computer mag or a magazine about roleplaying?
> 
>  On Wed, 8 Jan 2020, 12:30 am Peter Vollan,  wrote:
>  Dragon.
> 
>  On Tue, 7 Jan 2020 at 15:52, James Zeun  wrote:
> > Is that the one from the dungeon magazine?
> >
> > On Tue, 7 Jan 2020, 11:34 pm Peter Vollan,  wrote:
> >> I have just about got the Dungeon Master's Personnel Service debugged
> >> and working on Virtual T.
> >>
> >> On Tue, 7 Jan 2020 at 14:14, Britt Dodd  wrote:
> >>> I’ve read the M100 manual and it did have some examples on there, but 
> >>> the majority of it was more a glossary of statements.
> >>>
> >>> Sent from my iPhone
> >>>
> >>> On Jan 7, 2020, at 5:10 PM, Dan Higdon  wrote:
> >>>
> >>> 
> >>> The treasure horde program isn't posted anywhere. It's not long, but 
> >>> I don't have a copy on this machine. When I get home, I can send it 
> >>> to the list.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Tue, Jan 7, 2020 at 4:00 PM Peter Vollan  
> >>> wrote:
>  You may be interested in knowing that I have already cut that text 
>  out
>  of the pdf of Dragon #74 and then pasted it back together in a text
>  file. Better than typing it all in like the old days, yes? I just ran
>  it in Virtual T (Model 100) and it barfs at the command "randomize".
> 
>  I did the same thing with a program to generated character for TSR's
>  Top Secret RPG, and then adapted it for the Model 100. It looks at 
>  the
>  tail end of TIME$ to randomise from 1 to 10 and then goes through 
>  that
>  many random numbers. It is on my Club 100 member page, but the member
>  pages are unfortunately down just now.
> 
>  I know that there is a program that does exactly what you describe
>  called D20.BA. I don't know how it randomises.
> 
>  I am interested in that program to generate treasure. BTW it is 
>  called
>  a treasure "hoard".
> 
>  On Tue, 7 Jan 2020 at 13:15, Jason Paul  wrote:
> > In most cases the syntax could change but the command should mostly 
> > be the same. Depending on what machine you're using that particular 
> > book was published with versions for specific Basics Commodore 
> > Atari Apple TRS-80 etc.
> >
> > Do a Google search for Dragon magazine 74 PDF and there should be a 
> > program listing that is a dungeon Master's kind of utility program. 
> > It's not the only one. Don't be confused by the battle computer 
> > that is really just a slotted wheel for determining combat to hit 
> > percentages.
> >
> > On Tue, Jan 7, 2020, 4:10 PM James Zeun  
> > wrote:
> >> It says for the TRS80 Model 3... I'm assuming that would still be 
> >> alright?
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Tue, 7 Jan 2020, 8:55 pm Ken Pettit,  wrote:
> >>> Hi James,
> >>>
> >>> I just remembered the title.  It is "Golden Flutes and Great 
> >>> Escapes":
> >>>
> >>> http://www.apple-iigs.info/doc/fichiers/goldenflutesandgreatescapes.pdf
> >>>
> >>> Ken
> >>>
> >>> On 1/7/20 12:48 PM, James Zeun wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Yes please! 

Re: [M100] Books on programming

[James]

Peter sorry it took me a while to answer this, but here goes

At present we are playing a 5th edition game, have been for about a 
year. I keep having to replace my character sheet and did wonder if I 
couldn't program something on my M100. Like an electronic 5e character 
sheet. Presently I don't have a clue how such a thing could be achieved, 
but I do have an idea of how it might work.


A primary screen showing character stats and a second page for 
inventory. Perhaps toggling between the two using the tab key.


I myself have been reading up on D Basic, as found in the Cyclopedia 
TSR 1071. I own the 1070 boxset which as i understand it was when TSR 
combined Basic, Expert, Companion and Master all in to one.


If I can make a set of DnD tools would i use my M100 to manage my DnD 
games? You're damn right I would!



On 08/01/2020 1:56, Peter Vollan wrote:

What edition do you use?

On Tue, 7 Jan 2020 at 17:06, James Zeun  wrote:

Great, I'll have to check that out!

I'm currently checking out all the books that have been suggested to me.

Really difficult to find physically books.


On Wed, 8 Jan 2020, 1:03 am C. Magaret,  wrote:

"Dragon" was about role-playing games, primarily D

/CAM




On Jan 7, 2020, at 16:48, James Zeun  wrote:

Was the Dragon Magazine a computer mag or a magazine about roleplaying?

On Wed, 8 Jan 2020, 12:30 am Peter Vollan,  wrote:
Dragon.

On Tue, 7 Jan 2020 at 15:52, James Zeun  wrote:

Is that the one from the dungeon magazine?

On Tue, 7 Jan 2020, 11:34 pm Peter Vollan,  wrote:

I have just about got the Dungeon Master's Personnel Service debugged
and working on Virtual T.

On Tue, 7 Jan 2020 at 14:14, Britt Dodd  wrote:

I’ve read the M100 manual and it did have some examples on there, but the 
majority of it was more a glossary of statements.

Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 7, 2020, at 5:10 PM, Dan Higdon  wrote:


The treasure horde program isn't posted anywhere. It's not long, but I don't 
have a copy on this machine. When I get home, I can send it to the list.




On Tue, Jan 7, 2020 at 4:00 PM Peter Vollan  wrote:

You may be interested in knowing that I have already cut that text out
of the pdf of Dragon #74 and then pasted it back together in a text
file. Better than typing it all in like the old days, yes? I just ran
it in Virtual T (Model 100) and it barfs at the command "randomize".

I did the same thing with a program to generated character for TSR's
Top Secret RPG, and then adapted it for the Model 100. It looks at the
tail end of TIME$ to randomise from 1 to 10 and then goes through that
many random numbers. It is on my Club 100 member page, but the member
pages are unfortunately down just now.

I know that there is a program that does exactly what you describe
called D20.BA. I don't know how it randomises.

I am interested in that program to generate treasure. BTW it is called
a treasure "hoard".

On Tue, 7 Jan 2020 at 13:15, Jason Paul  wrote:

In most cases the syntax could change but the command should mostly be the 
same. Depending on what machine you're using that particular book was published 
with versions for specific Basics Commodore Atari Apple TRS-80 etc.

Do a Google search for Dragon magazine 74 PDF and there should be a program 
listing that is a dungeon Master's kind of utility program. It's not the only 
one. Don't be confused by the battle computer that is really just a slotted 
wheel for determining combat to hit percentages.

On Tue, Jan 7, 2020, 4:10 PM James Zeun  wrote:

It says for the TRS80 Model 3... I'm assuming that would still be alright?



On Tue, 7 Jan 2020, 8:55 pm Ken Pettit,  wrote:

Hi James,

I just remembered the title.  It is "Golden Flutes and Great Escapes":

http://www.apple-iigs.info/doc/fichiers/goldenflutesandgreatescapes.pdf

Ken

On 1/7/20 12:48 PM, James Zeun wrote:

Yes please! That would be great!

On Tue, 7 Jan 2020, 8:36 pm Ken Pettit,  wrote:


On 1/7/20 11:12 AM, Jerry Stratton wrote:

I don't know if anyone has any books they'd be willing to part with or just 
recommend one.

If your D includes wanting to write text adventures in BASIC, Tim 
Hartnell’s Creating Adventure Games On Your Computer was very nice.

Come to think of it, I still own a book on writing text adventures in
BASIC ... probably sitting on the top shelf of my bookshelf at home.  I
could look up the title later tonight when I get home if it is of any
interest.

Ken

Re: [M100] Dungeon Master's Personnel Service

[Jason Benson]

Good to know. Here's the same file renamed to DMPS.DO
As for the error you ran into, I'm not at all surprised, there are
probably a few of bugs in there I missed and didn't trigger when I did some
brief testing on it.

On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 5:03 PM John R. Hogerhuis  wrote:

>
>
> On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 1:58 PM Jason Benson 
> wrote:
>
>> I was loading the file through Virtual T. and running it just fine. Is it
>> VT automatically converting it to a tokenized basic file?
>>
>>>
>>>
> Yes.
>


DMPS.DO
Description: Binary data

Re: [M100] Dungeon Master's Personnel Service

[John R. Hogerhuis]

On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 1:58 PM Jason Benson 
wrote:

> I was loading the file through Virtual T. and running it just fine. Is it
> VT automatically converting it to a tokenized basic file?
>
>>
>>
Yes.

Re: [M100] Dungeon Master's Personnel Service

[Jason Benson]

I was loading the file through Virtual T. and running it just fine. Is it
VT automatically converting it to a tokenized basic file?

On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 4:53 PM John R. Hogerhuis  wrote:

> Jason, the proper extension for your file is .DO, not .BA. So, DMPS.DO
>
> BA is for tokenized files only, and inloading a file with a .BA extension
> into TS-DOS will corrupt your RAM.
>
> Well, unless you're using LaddieAlpha.EXE as the TPDD service since it
> detects that the file content is plain text and corrects the extension.
>
> -- John.
>

Re: [M100] Dungeon Master's Personnel Service

[John R. Hogerhuis]

Also crashes at 3390

3390 Z2$ " T7911   --   --   --   --"

I guess should be

3390 Z2$=" T7911   --   --   --   --"

-- John.

Re: [M100] Dungeon Master's Personnel Service

[John R. Hogerhuis]

Jason, the proper extension for your file is .DO, not .BA. So, DMPS.DO

BA is for tokenized files only, and inloading a file with a .BA extension
into TS-DOS will corrupt your RAM.

Well, unless you're using LaddieAlpha.EXE as the TPDD service since it
detects that the file content is plain text and corrects the extension.

-- John.

Re: [M100] Dungeon Master's Personnel Service

[Jason Benson]

There were a few transcription errors in this, but I was able to debug it
and get it running. I've attached my revised version of the code.

On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 9:15 AM Howard Pepper  wrote:

> Wow! imagine me waking up to this email thread in my inbox today! When I
> first moved down to Florida (Dec. 1996), I found the paper copy of this
> Dragon magazine, and was intrigued by the Dungeon Master's Personnel
> Service program, so I pain stakingly typed it in and debugged my mistakes
> (always mistakes!), until I got it to run.  This is so cool, because I
> haven't thought of this program in a long time.  This was on my trusty
> TRS-80 Model IV.  I still have it on a virtual disk (for XTRS) somewhere
> around here.  Thanks for the good memories!
>
> Howard
>
> On 1/8/20 2:17 PM, John R. Hogerhuis wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 7, 2020 at 11:29 PM Mike Stein  wrote:
>
>> Truly BITCHIIN !!!
>>
>> Great job, John! Might as well get rid of all my 'real' M100s ;-)
>>
>> m
>>
>
> I'll PM you offline with my address :-)
>
> -- John.
>
>
>


DMPS.BA
Description: Binary data

Re: [M100] TPPD/TPPD2

[Howard Pepper]

My apologies everybody, I never stated I wouldn't be using a TPPD/TPPD2 
to do this.  I just wanted to get the information off of TPPD formatted 
disks without having to read them into my Model 100 and transfer the 
data over a serial cable to the Windows computer.


Thanks for your brilliant answer Ron.  For the rest of you, thank you 
for your time.


Howard

On 1/9/20 1:21 PM, Brian K. White wrote:

On 1/9/20 12:44 PM, Howard Pepper wrote:
Does anybody know of a way to read TPPD/TPPD2 formatted diskettes on 
MS-DOS/Windows?


Howard


The only way to read a tpdd disk, discounting KryoFlux and the like, 
is with a tpdd drive.


There is software to use a tpdd drive from dos/windows/linux though.

The latest example is TpddTool.py
https://trs80stuff.net/tpdd/

It needs a real tpdd drive, the special serial-to-ttl level-shifting 
cable that comes with it, a serial port or usb-serial adapter, a 
9f-25m serial adapter or cable, possibly a separate null-modem 
adapter, and python.


An older example is lapdos. But I don't know where to find a copy now.
http://www.club100.org/library/doc/lapdos.html

Re: [M100] TPPD/TPPD2

[Brian K. White]

On 1/9/20 12:44 PM, Howard Pepper wrote:
Does anybody know of a way to read TPPD/TPPD2 formatted diskettes on 
MS-DOS/Windows?


Howard


The only way to read a tpdd disk, discounting KryoFlux and the like, is 
with a tpdd drive.


There is software to use a tpdd drive from dos/windows/linux though.

The latest example is TpddTool.py
https://trs80stuff.net/tpdd/

It needs a real tpdd drive, the special serial-to-ttl level-shifting 
cable that comes with it, a serial port or usb-serial adapter, a 9f-25m 
serial adapter or cable, possibly a separate null-modem adapter, and python.


An older example is lapdos. But I don't know where to find a copy now.
http://www.club100.org/library/doc/lapdos.html

--
bkw

Re: [M100] TPPD/TPPD2

[Brian K. White]

On 1/9/20 12:44 PM, Howard Pepper wrote:
Does anybody know of a way to read TPPD/TPPD2 formatted diskettes on 
MS-DOS/Windows?


Howard


The only way to read a tpdd disk, discounting KryoFlux and the like, is 
with a tpdd drive.


There is software to use a tpdd drive from dos/windows/linux though.

The latest example is TpddTool.py
https://trs80stuff.net/tpdd/

It needs a real tpdd drive, the special serial-to-ttl level-shifting 
cable that comes with it, a serial port or usb-serial adapter, a 9f-25m 
serial adapter or cable, possibly a separate null-modem adapter, and python.


An older example is lapdos. But I don't know where to find a copy now.
http://www.club100.org/library/doc/lapdos.html

--
bkw

Re: [M100] TPPD/TPPD2

[Kurt McCullum]

There is no way to do it. The TPDD and TPDD2 disk drive use FM encoding vs MFM 
encoding. So even if you were able to write the low level code to work with the 
Wondows floppy drive, the data is laid down in an incompatible format. I have a 
working TPDD2 and would be happy to pull any data off a floppy and email it 
back to you.

Kurt

On Thu, Jan 9, 2020, at 9:44 AM, Howard Pepper wrote:
> Does anybody know of a way to read TPPD/TPPD2 formatted diskettes on 
> MS-DOS/Windows?
> 
> Howard
> 

Re: [M100] TPPD/TPPD2

[Ron Lauzon]

Oops.  That assumes you have a TPDD to read the diskettes.

Jan 9, 2020, 13:04 by rlau...@tutanota.com:

> TPDD tool should work on Windows without any problem.
> https://trs80stuff.net/tpdd/tools.html
>
> Just install Python first - which should be very easy if Windows hasn't 
> already installed it for you.
>
>
> Jan 9, 2020, 12:44 by ac...@brighthouse.com:
>
>> Does anybody know of a way to read TPPD/TPPD2 formatted diskettes on 
>> MS-DOS/Windows?
>>
>> Howard
>>
>
>

Re: [M100] TPPD/TPPD2

[Ron Lauzon]

TPDD tool should work on Windows without any problem.
https://trs80stuff.net/tpdd/tools.html

Just install Python first - which should be very easy if Windows hasn't already 
installed it for you.


Jan 9, 2020, 12:44 by ac...@brighthouse.com:

> Does anybody know of a way to read TPPD/TPPD2 formatted diskettes on 
> MS-DOS/Windows?
>
> Howard
>

[M100] TPPD/TPPD2

[Howard Pepper]

Does anybody know of a way to read TPPD/TPPD2 formatted diskettes on 
MS-DOS/Windows?


Howard

Re: [M100] Dungeon Master's Personnel Service

[Howard Pepper]

Wow! imagine me waking up to this email thread in my inbox today! When I 
first moved down to Florida (Dec. 1996), I found the paper copy of this 
Dragon magazine, and was intrigued by the Dungeon Master's Personnel 
Service program, so I pain stakingly typed it in and debugged my 
mistakes (always mistakes!), until I got it to run. This is so cool, 
because I haven't thought of this program in a long time.  This was on 
my trusty TRS-80 Model IV.  I still have it on a virtual disk (for XTRS) 
somewhere around here.  Thanks for the good memories!


Howard

On 1/8/20 2:17 PM, John R. Hogerhuis wrote:



On Tue, Jan 7, 2020 at 11:29 PM Mike Stein > wrote:


Truly BITCHIIN !!!
Great job, John! Might as well get rid of all my 'real' M100s ;-)
m


I'll PM you offline with my address :-)

-- John.

[M100] M100 Telecom

[Charles Hudson]

Thank you, Greg, for the offer.  I will try that today using dial-up.

-CH-

"you can log into my bbs at thekeep.net or (503) 852-3170 say no to ansi and
select 40 column mode.."

Re: [M100] M100 Telecom

[Brian K. White]

AH! Sorry, thank you.

--
bkw

On 1/8/20 10:00 PM, Kurt McCullum wrote:

No, that's not what I was saying.

Page 72 of the TELCOM manual for the T200 (Same as M100 but double the 
lines)

"TELCOM uses the same codes as a 'vt52'."
Then right after that it explains that a normal vt52 would have 24 lines 
and so a new termcap entry would have to be made with only 16 lines and 
called td200. The M100 would be the same with only 8 lines.


mComm doesn't do any screen emulation. The only thing that mComm does is 
handle buffering so the serial port on the Model-T doesn't get overloaded.


Kurt

On Wed, Jan 8, 2020, at 4:17 PM, Brian K. White wrote:

On 1/8/20 6:10 PM, Charles Hudson wrote:
> Thank you Kurt for your reply.  I'll start looking for C64 BBSs to
> contact; makes sense now I think of it.  Never would have guessed 
VT-52,

> either.
>
> -CH-

I think Kurt was saying that if you used mComm's virtual modem, mComm
emulates vt-52. In that scenario, mComm is the terminal as far as the
BBS is concerned. The M100 is only connected to mComm, not the bbs, and
mComm knows how to talk to a M100. So mComm ends up being a proxy or
translator between the M100 and the BBS.

The M100 itself doesn't emulate anything else, unless you run a terminal
emulator app on it. Otherwise, it just IS a Model 100 terminal. It would
be up to any host to know how to talk to a M100 terminsl.

Few/No BBS's will have a m100 terminal option. If you were connecting to
a linux of unix box of your own, the way you would get proper terminal
behavior is you would install an m100 termcap or terminfo entry onto the
linux box, which teaches all apps on that box how to talk to an M100.

BBS's generally only offer a very few, or even just one terminal option,
generally just "ansi". So instead of the server having a dictionary of
definitions for all kinds of different terminals, a BBS just has one
very common terminal definition, and all clients have to emulate that
standard.

You have about 5 options:
* convince a bbs sysop to add M100 terminal support to their bbs
* find a terminal emulator app that runs on an m100 and emulates a
common terminal like vt-100 or pc-ansi
* live with the terminal not being perfectly matched to the host. Just
try to get the main things like the break key and the lines & columns if
they are configurable per-user or per-session, and call yourself lucky
* go through an intermediary like mComm or a raspberry pi, where you can
configure the Pi with a proper M100 termcap, and run gnu screen or
minicom or telnet or something on the pi, and IT does vt100 or ansi
emulation to the bbs. m100 logs in to the Pi, then you run something on
the pi to log in to the remote bbs.
* see if the bbs offers a plain text or "ascii" or "glass tty" or "dumb"
option. You could use that.

There's a few different m100 termcap definitions floating around.
I haven't gone through them to figure out which is best, if they are not
all identical.

http://www.club100.org/library/libref.html
http://m100.bbsdev.net/
http://www.ordersomewherechaos.com/rosso/fetish/m102/web100/docs/termcap.html

--
bkw







--
bkw