Re: [M100] Mcomm

[Daryn Hanright]

Yeah am pretty sure it works only on Android 8 (ish).

It does the same thing on my Android 11 phone as you Peter.

On Fri, Oct 22, 2021, 11:29 AM Peter Vollan  wrote:

> Android 11, ELITE T8 Tablet.
>
> On Thu, 21 Oct 2021 at 15:09, Gregory McGill 
> wrote:
>
>> what version of android?  I had trouble earlier with a tv android box and
>> one of the newer versions as well
>> > Trying to push ts-dos from mcomm android 181 on a android 9 tv box i
>> just got. whenever i hit ok to send the file it just seems to crash mcomm and
>> jumps out of it..
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 21, 2021 at 1:04 PM Peter Vollan 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Trying to run Mcomm on my Android tablet, it just keeps saying the app
>>> has stopped.
>>>
>>

Re: [M100] Recompile multiple BA files

[John R. Hogerhuis]

On Thu, Oct 21, 2021 at 3:49 PM Jeffrey Birt  wrote:

> Say you are a new owner of an M100 and you try to load ‘file.ba’ which
> shows up in the menu as ‘file.do’, what will you guess the problem is. You
> might try it again and get the same result and get pretty frustrated.
>
>
Generally, these are newb problems. And it's frustrating but the whole
thing is a learning process.

I'll say max frustration is when TS-DOS loads FILE.BA anyway and then
silently crashes your filesystem resulting in eventual crash/hang/data-loss.

If newb sees FILE.BA presented as FILE.DO it at least poses the question to
the newb's mind as to what is happening. And gives them a giant clue that
the extension on the original file was wrong. Leading to more research.

What do they do next? Probably inload FILE.DO and they will see that it has
the proper content. Then they can just load FILE.DO they will see that it
has the proper content. They can then load it from DO file into BASIC. If
it's too big to load with the DO file in RAM, maybe they will research how
to inload a DO file directly into BASIC using either the DOS LOAD"0:FILE.DO
or LOAD"COM: command.

Eventually in this learning process newb will learn the difference between
BA and DO files and the darkness is lifted.


> If I copy ‘file.ba’ to my SD card and then it does not show up as being
> on the card I will again be frustrated as I won’t know why this is
> happening.
>
>
Yes. I think that would be frustrating. But less frustrating than
crash/hang/data loss. The only real value to this option is avoiding
crash/hang/data loss and raising a question in the newb's mind for further
research (ask on list, or read the documentation).


> I have been chatting with the developer about an error message. The
> concern there is that there are a limited number of error messages that
> TS-DOS supports, and the user would need to be able to associate the error
> to what the problem was. We all know how frustrating a seemly meaningless
> error message is.
>
>
>

Yes. But fundamentally it's the user's fault. All we can do is try to give
them a route to figure out what they are doing wrong. All these proposed
ideas (including what I actually did in LaddieAlpha) have that in mind. To
help the user to figure out their mistake without actually getting the
crash/hang/data-loss.

If you go the error route, I'm not sure what error you choose matters too
much. What's important is that the user can discern the error and look it
up in the documentation for the disk service or disk client.

 Of course the other thing is what is causing this trouble... club100's
file archive. The problem is so many files have the wrong extension there.
If those were fixed, the incidents would go way down.

-- John.

Re: [M100] Recompile multiple BA files

[Jeffrey Birt]

Say you are a new owner of an M100 and you try to load ‘file.ba’ which shows up 
in the menu as ‘file.do’, what will you guess the problem is. You might try it 
again and get the same result and get pretty frustrated.

If I copy ‘file.ba’ to my SD card and then it does not show up as being on the 
card I will again be frustrated as I won’t know why this is happening. 

I have been chatting with the developer about an error message. The concern 
there is that there are a limited number of error messages that TS-DOS 
supports, and the user would need to be able to associate the error to what the 
problem was. We all know how frustrating a seemly meaningless error message is.

 

I do appreciate the idea.

 

Jeff Birt

 

From: M100  On Behalf Of John R. Hogerhuis
Sent: Thursday, October 21, 2021 3:02 PM
To: m...@bitchin100.com
Subject: Re: [M100] Recompile multiple BA files

 

The closest thing to a perfect solution... that just works... is for the disk 
service to present the proper extension instead of the incorrect one. That's 
what Laddiealpha does. It peeks at beginning of the file to see if it's a 
binary file and automatically presents a correct extension to TSDOS. Whether 
the user knows how to load that file is a separate concern. But I figure people 
will simply ask on list.

 

Other ways to go:

 

Do not present the file at all in the directory if a mismatch is detected. The 
user will see it as a mystery but they can read their documentation or ask on 
list and the mystery will be resolved. Another idea would be to rename it in 
some way to be clearly bad like "FILE.><" So it's not just missing. 

 

Present the filename as is. But when at the protocol level the file is opened 
or on the first read then an error is returned based on inspection of the file. 
TSDOS or whatever will report the error and the user may figure it out or they 
will ask on list. I haven't explored this but theoretically it should be 
feasible.

 

Embed a tokenizer in the file server to automatically make the content match 
the extension. This won't always work. And it would have to be laptop model 
aware since 100 vs NEC tokens. 

 

-- John. 

 

Re: [M100] Recompile multiple BA files

[Jeffrey Birt]

You could use DOSBOX or some other virtual machine. They all take time to 
figure out, but it is an option.

 

Jeff Birt

 

From: M100  On Behalf Of AvantGuard Systems
Sent: Thursday, October 21, 2021 4:11 PM
To: m...@bitchin100.com
Subject: Re: [M100] Recompile multiple BA files

 

In response to Mike. 

I got your entoke.exe file, but it on a Win10 computer and it only works on 
32-bit computers. Have a Win95 computer here, so maybe I'll give it a go on it. 
If Win95 isn't 16-bit

Looking forward to Bob's version!

Re: [M100] Mcomm

[Gregory McGill]

what version of android?  I had trouble earlier with a tv android box and
one of the newer versions as well
> Trying to push ts-dos from mcomm android 181 on a android 9 tv box i just
got. whenever i hit ok to send the file it just seems to crash mcomm and
jumps out of it..

On Thu, Oct 21, 2021 at 1:04 PM Peter Vollan  wrote:

> Trying to run Mcomm on my Android tablet, it just keeps saying the app has
> stopped.
>

Re: [M100] Recompile multiple BA files

[Greg Swallow]

Yet another option?

In efforts to get an M1 using TS-DOS over an RS-232 to bluetooth dongle. The 
problem was the need of a delayed version of TSDOS.DO. mCom's injection in a 
non-delay version. So, found an ASCII terminal for my Macbook (Cool Term) and 
verified the connect in TERM. Opened up basic and LOAD"COM:98E1N" and just sent 
the DOS.DO via the terminal app. SAVE"TSDOS.BA" and there you go. Seens the 
same steps should work with any non-tokenized file. It might work w/ a 
tokenized file too, but I have some doubt there.

God Bless,
GreoS <><

Re: [M100] Recompile multiple BA files

[AvantGuard Systems]

In response to Mike.
I got your entoke.exe file, but it on a Win10 computer and it only works on
32-bit computers. Have a Win95 computer here, so maybe I'll give it a go on
it. If Win95 isn't 16-bit
Looking forward to Bob's version!

 Curtis

On Thu, Oct 21, 2021 at 1:18 PM John R. Hogerhuis  wrote:

> The closest thing to a perfect solution... that just works... is for the
> disk service to present the proper extension instead of the incorrect one.
> That's what Laddiealpha does. It peeks at beginning of the file to see if
> it's a binary file and automatically presents a correct extension to TSDOS.
> Whether the user knows how to load that file is a separate concern. But I
> figure people will simply ask on list.
>
> Other ways to go:
>
> Do not present the file at all in the directory if a mismatch is detected.
> The user will see it as a mystery but they can read their documentation or
> ask on list and the mystery will be resolved. Another idea would be to
> rename it in some way to be clearly bad like "FILE.><" So it's not just
> missing.
>
> Present the filename as is. But when at the protocol level the file is
> opened or on the first read then an error is returned based on inspection
> of the file. TSDOS or whatever will report the error and the user may
> figure it out or they will ask on list. I haven't explored this but
> theoretically it should be feasible.
>
> Embed a tokenizer in the file server to automatically make the content
> match the extension. This won't always work. And it would have to be laptop
> model aware since 100 vs NEC tokens.
>
> -- John.
>
>

Re: [M100] Recompile multiple BA files

[John R. Hogerhuis]

The closest thing to a perfect solution... that just works... is for the
disk service to present the proper extension instead of the incorrect one.
That's what Laddiealpha does. It peeks at beginning of the file to see if
it's a binary file and automatically presents a correct extension to TSDOS.
Whether the user knows how to load that file is a separate concern. But I
figure people will simply ask on list.

Other ways to go:

Do not present the file at all in the directory if a mismatch is detected.
The user will see it as a mystery but they can read their documentation or
ask on list and the mystery will be resolved. Another idea would be to
rename it in some way to be clearly bad like "FILE.><" So it's not just
missing.

Present the filename as is. But when at the protocol level the file is
opened or on the first read then an error is returned based on inspection
of the file. TSDOS or whatever will report the error and the user may
figure it out or they will ask on list. I haven't explored this but
theoretically it should be feasible.

Embed a tokenizer in the file server to automatically make the content
match the extension. This won't always work. And it would have to be laptop
model aware since 100 vs NEC tokens.

-- John.

[M100] Mcomm

[Peter Vollan]

Trying to run Mcomm on my Android tablet, it just keeps saying the app has
stopped.

Re: [M100] Recompile multiple BA files

[bob]

Thanks for the note, Mike.  I did write a tokenizer program for Windows boxes 
(TOKENIZE.EXE).  It presents a simple window with a list box showing all .DO 
files which, when selected, will be tokenized, change the extension to .BA, and 
save them to the same directory.  Or you can create a new name for them prior 
to tokenization.  If you inadvertently select a real text .DO file, and IIRC, 
the program will create an error message.

I will try to get it up on the Member Pages on Club100 soon (will try for next 
week).

Bob

From: M100  On Behalf Of Mike Stein
Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2021 6:17 PM
To: m...@bitchin100.com
Subject: Re: [M100] Recompile multiple BA files

 

Bob Pigford and I both wrote DOS/Win tokenizer programs some years ago. My 
version (entoke.exe) is in my personal folder on the Club100 site; someone 
(Jake?) had volunteered to convert all the mislabelled .BA files on Club100 but 
when he lost interest so did I, so  there may still be one or two very rare 
conditions where it gets confused.

 

It does one program at a time; use one of the various batch methods in DOS or 
Windows to run it across an entire folder.

 

There is a complementary de-tokenizer in the Club100 programs section 
somewhere; I recall many happy hours batch converting folders of .DO type files 
to .BA and back again for batch comparison with the original.

 

On Wed, Oct 20, 2021 at 3:20 PM AvantGuard Systems 
mailto:cavaug...@avantguardsystems.com> > 
wrote:

Has anyone figured a good way to recompile multiple BA files into their proper 
format. What I mean is, we can take the BA files, rename them DO files, load 
them into M100 and save them as BA files and then run them. Pain in the .

I would think using VirtualT someone has figured out a sure fire way to just 
recompile all BA files to their proper format, so we can then just load them 
into the M100.

 

This would be ideal with Birt's Backpack. Then I can just put all the proper BA 
files on it, load them and run them.

 

Thanks!




 Curtis

Re: [M100] Recompile multiple BA files

[Jeffrey Birt]

These are all interesting ideas but still require the user to know ahead of 
time that the problem of mismatched extensions exists and how to work around 
it. The LOAD"0:PROG.DO” might be the easiest thing to recommend once someone 
realizes they have this problem, but then that also requires they know a bit 
more about TS-DOS.

 

Thanks for the ideas,

Jeff Birt

 

 

 

First of all there's 

 

Load"COM:98N1E

Or

 

Run"COM:98N1E

 

Even better if you are using TSDOS  I believe you just need to use it in DOS-ON 
mode.

 

LOAD"0:PROG.DO

 

should load a text encoded BASIC program in one step IIRC.

 

-- John.  

 

 

 

Re: [M100] Recompile multiple BA files

[Jeffrey Birt]

It might be possible to have the Backpack  return a TS-DOS error message if you 
try to load a .BA file is really a .DO. The choice of messages is limited 
though. If this error message were shown when you tried to load a .BA file what 
would be your first thought?

 

"Bad File Name"

 

We would mention this in the manual of course but is it more confusing, less 
confusing or the same for newbies?

 

Another option is to add to the existing file check CLI commands so it can 
identify incorrect BA/DO extensions. This would require using the CLI though.

 

The goal is to make it a better user experience. Your thoughts?

Jeff Birt

 

From: Jeffrey Birt  
Sent: Thursday, October 21, 2021 7:58 AM
To: 'm...@bitchin100.com' 
Subject: RE: [M100] Recompile multiple BA files

 

Re: [M100] Bleaching of yellowed plastic

[Jeffrey Birt]

Hi,

While 'Retr0Brite', i.e. using hydrogen peroxide to whiten plastic is a 
bleaching process other types of bleach do not work the same. Bleaching agents, 
hydrogen peroxide, chlorine bleach, etc. do not work exactly the same so can't 
be interchanged for this use case.

If you want to learn all about the process from where the color comes from to 
why the bleaching process works I did a video about that: 
https://youtu.be/YPl356YKcVs . In the video description is a link to a folder 
which has a paper that goes along with the video and other resources.

Someone has already mentioned obtaining hydrogen peroxide in the form of hair 
developer. Indeed, this is usually the least expensive source. You can also use 
sodium percarbonate which comes as a powder (it is hydrogen peroxide and soda 
ash). Mix the sodium percarbonate with hot water to dissolve it. The drawback 
is the soda ash is alkaline and may corrode any bits of metal given enough time.

You can also use 'SunBriting' which is plain old fashioned sun bleaching. 

Lots of details in the video and paper.

Jeff Birt



-Original Message-
From: M100  On Behalf Of Jamil Alioui
Sent: Thursday, October 21, 2021 2:37 AM
To: m...@bitchin100.com
Subject: [M100] Bleaching of yellowed plastic

Hello to all of you,

I have a small practical question, which will be my first on this list. 
I quickly looked in the archives but found nothing about this. I hope to knock 
on the right door.

What is the best method to whiten the yellowed plastic of a Model 100 without 
damaging the screen or sanding (=smoothing) the relief or erasing the 
inscriptions? I found several possibilities on the internet. 
One of them is to rub the material with a baking soda paste. But the one time I 
tried this, the matte plastic turned shiny. I considered dipping the case and 
keyboard keys in household vinegar, but wanted to make sure it wouldn't affect 
anything else. I also imagined bathing the yellowed parts in hydrogen peroxide, 
but this product is very expensive in Switzerland.

Thanks in advance; kind regards,

Jamil Alioui
(Lausanne, Switzerland)

Re: [M100] Recompile multiple BA files

[Jeffrey Birt]

This would not solve the underlying problem(s).

 

A.  New users of the M100 always get bitten in the butt by this BA/DO file 
issue. 
B.  Once you learn it is a problem you still have the manual process of 
making sure the sure the extension of the file is correct. Loading a .DO as a 
.DO into RAM. Opening this .DO into BASIC and saving it as a .BA to tokenize 
it. 
C.  If it is a large program, you may not have enough RAM to hold the .DO 
and .BA versions at once. Someone on the Discord server wrote a program that 
will pull a .DO from the Backpack one line at a time, tokenize it and save it 
to RAM. This is still a manual process.
D.  If you have a number of programs you want to tokenize this manual 
process takes a lot of time.

 

The offline tokenizing programs would make short work of it though IIF one 
knows about the DO/BA issue and knows that these programs exist.

 

Jeff Birt

 

From: M100  On Behalf Of Francois Gurin
Sent: Thursday, October 21, 2021 6:50 AM
To: m...@bitchin100.com
Subject: Re: [M100] Recompile multiple BA files

 

 

On Wed, Oct 20, 2021, 7:20 PM John R. Hogerhuis mailto:jho...@pobox.com> > wrote:

 

For example, what LaddieAlpha does is it looks at the file and determines if it 
is formatted as plain text or tokenized basic, and when, say TS-DOS requests 
the directory it presents the filename with corrected extension on the fly. 
That's one way to handle it.

 

 

Firmware update for the Backpack to do the same? ;)

 

--fg

Re: [M100] Recompile multiple BA files

[Francois Gurin]

On Wed, Oct 20, 2021, 7:20 PM John R. Hogerhuis  wrote:

>
> For example, what LaddieAlpha does is it looks at the file and determines
> if it is formatted as plain text or tokenized basic, and when, say TS-DOS
> requests the directory it presents the filename with corrected extension on
> the fly. That's one way to handle it.
>


Firmware update for the Backpack to do the same? ;)

--fg

>

Re: [M100] Bleaching of yellowed plastic

[Justin Poirier]

Hydrogen peroxide gave me wonderful results. But like you said, it's 
expensive. So I don't buy hydrogen peroxide. I buy hair bleaching gel. 
Buy it at "40 Volume" or (even better) "50 Volume" concentration. That 
means it's 15% hydrogen peroxide, plus some other chemicals to make it a 
gel that stays in place when you apply it. I was able to get a liter of 
that stuff for about $15US, and since it's not made for use in a 
laboratory or anything, it's not too hard to find, and it's cheap. Smear 
that on the yellowed plastic, put the parts in a clear plastic bag to 
prevent evaporation, and put it outside on a sunny day. The ultraviolet 
light from the sun reacts with the peroxide and pulls the yellow out of 
the plastic with no damage to the original color, texture, or integrity 
of the part. A full day in the sun cleans up most parts.


Hope this helps!

--Justin

On 10/21/21 3:36 AM, Jamil Alioui wrote:

Hello to all of you,

I have a small practical question, which will be my first on this 
list. I quickly looked in the archives but found nothing about this. I 
hope to knock on the right door.


What is the best method to whiten the yellowed plastic of a Model 100 
without damaging the screen or sanding (=smoothing) the relief or 
erasing the inscriptions? I found several possibilities on the 
internet. One of them is to rub the material with a baking soda paste. 
But the one time I tried this, the matte plastic turned shiny. I 
considered dipping the case and keyboard keys in household vinegar, 
but wanted to make sure it wouldn't affect anything else. I also 
imagined bathing the yellowed parts in hydrogen peroxide, but this 
product is very expensive in Switzerland.


Thanks in advance; kind regards,

Jamil Alioui
(Lausanne, Switzerland)

Re: [M100] Recompile multiple BA files

[John R. Hogerhuis]

>
>
> That avoids an error, but doesn't improve convenience much. I don't
> think the load time matters much at all, but more the need to manually
> do the loading and re-saving and maybe killing the .do if you captured
> from telcom vs directly into basic.

And requires more free ram on the
> 100 along the way.
>

Yeah. But with TSDOS you can load directly from DO file on disk to current
BASIC program area. You need to turn DOS-ON mode.

-- John.

Re: [M100] Recompile multiple BA files

[Brian K. White]

On 10/20/21 8:20 PM, John R. Hogerhuis wrote:



On Wed, Oct 20, 2021, 4:39 PM Brian K. White > wrote:


On 10/20/21 7:21 PM, John R. Hogerhuis wrote:

> If the goal is simply to make files load faster,

My reading of the OP was more about the inconvenience of loading
onto a
100, tokenizing, then saving back to the host.


Yes. I read it the same way... and inferred the reason to do that is 
to have them not crash the T and to load faster. But if the load time 
isn't a big deal you can avoid the whole process by just naming the 
files appropriately. No need to pretokenize files when the laptop will 
happily do it on the fly.


-- John.


That avoids an error, but doesn't improve convenience much. I don't 
think the load time matters much at all, but more the need to manually 
do the loading and re-saving and maybe killing the .do if you captured 
from telcom vs directly into basic. And requires more free ram on the 
100 along the way.


--
bkw

[M100] Bleaching of yellowed plastic

[Jamil Alioui]

Hello to all of you,

I have a small practical question, which will be my first on this list. 
I quickly looked in the archives but found nothing about this. I hope to 
knock on the right door.


What is the best method to whiten the yellowed plastic of a Model 100 
without damaging the screen or sanding (=smoothing) the relief or 
erasing the inscriptions? I found several possibilities on the internet. 
One of them is to rub the material with a baking soda paste. But the one 
time I tried this, the matte plastic turned shiny. I considered dipping 
the case and keyboard keys in household vinegar, but wanted to make sure 
it wouldn't affect anything else. I also imagined bathing the yellowed 
parts in hydrogen peroxide, but this product is very expensive in 
Switzerland.


Thanks in advance; kind regards,

Jamil Alioui
(Lausanne, Switzerland)