SEPT. 8, 1989
SUBJECT: FORTH-83 STANDARD


		DIARY OF A FORTH STUDENT - PART 6
	------------------------------------------------

	For those of you who have machines with only 128k of
Ram memory and also those who only have text editors or word
processing programs limited to editing files which are 50kb
or smaller, including those who only have text editors which
are part of their terminal software programs, DON'T WORRY !,
BE HAPPY ! Because I have taken the liberty of CHOPPING UP
the FORTH-83 STANDARD DOCUMENT (which is 200kb large) INTO
TEN (count 'em), FILES of about 20kb EACH ! Now you can load
any of the ten files with any text editor and mark blocks
for writing to disk as subset files . I use MIRROR II to 
mark blocks of such documents for later patching into another
document or letter. This allows you to export any part of the
FORTH-83 STANDARD DOCUMENT to letters or messages you send
to others in which you include the relevant part of the 
STANDARD as a reference to what you are discussing with your
friend (or debating with another programmer). I was UNABLE
to load the entire 200kb FORTH-83.PRN file with ANY of my
text editors or word processing programs for my IBMPC . The
funny thing is , I could easily port the entire 200k file
over a 75 foot RS-232 cable to my CP/M computer (circa 1980)
and load the document with a VERY OLD version of WORDSTAR
and use the block read and write commands to accomplish the
same thing since my CP/M machine only has 64k of Ram but the
Wordstar program only loads as much as it can handle at a 
time and just shifts the document back and forth in ram ,
reading only a section at a time. Granted, it is SLOW, but 
hey, slow is better than not at all right ? However, I found
it much simpler to simply print the whole thing to my MEGALINK
external PRINTER BUFFER which has ONE MEGABYTE OF RAM ! I
just put the PAUSE button ON to suspend output while I print
it INTO the parallel port of the megalink, and then reach
over and switch the rotary serial port switch to select the
printer buffer as the input source to my serial port on my
computer, then load MIRROR II with a file that configures it
for 2400 baud , then go into TERMINAL MODE and turn CAPTURE
ON, and THEN reach over and release the PAUSE button after
pressing the SERIAL PORT OUTPUT select button [C] which 
commences empting the data OUT of the serial port on the
printer buffer and INTO the serial port on the computer, where
it is CAPTURED to disk. When the capture size status line
says it has 20k of data I press the PAUSE button and stop
the input long enough to write the contents of the capture
buffer to disk. I then turn capture on again and let it take
in another 20k before stopping it for another disk write. The
process takes 1 minute to setup and after that it is just a 
matter of toggling the PAUSE button in between disk writes. I
have used this technique to chop up text files as large as
500k ! How many editors can load a 500k file ? More
realistically, how many people HAVE such an editor ? Do you ?
Well if you would like to be able to do this and you can't
afford the cost of the ONE-MEGABYTE printer buffer with both
serial and parallel INPUTS and both serial and parallel OUTPUTS,
you can emulate the same thing using a program called DMP131.ARC
as described in the file LPT1SAV.ARC. 

			Have Fun, 
				Until The Next Time,
	
	This is Bob Schemmel saying ...
 

	       DON'T WORRY, BE HAPPY !
