80 Column OS/9 Software for the DragonPlus ...

A place to discuss everything Dragon related that doesn't fall into the other categories.
tjewell
Posts: 346
Joined: Mon Oct 19, 2009 4:58 pm
Location: Cambridge, England

80 Column OS/9 Software for the DragonPlus ...

Post by tjewell »

Hi all, still playing with my DragonPlus here. I'd love to see some software that takes real advantage of it. Reading this thread viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4782, there's some discussion about porting OS/9s Dynacalc and Stylograph to the Wordpak/CRT9128 80 column card. Can anyone give me pointers where to start for the DragonPlus? 80 column versions of either would be great!

I presume there must have been some software, beyond Edit+, that took advantage of this card back in the day - either for Flex or OS/9? Anyone know of any?

Cheers, Tony
pser1
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Joined: Sun Mar 25, 2012 7:32 pm
Location: Barcelona (SPAIN)

Re: 80 Column OS/9 Software for the DragonPlus ...

Post by pser1 »

Hi Tony,
I dont know if this could be of help ..
Back in the 80's I bought this module and used it with the std OS-9 applications
once you switched to "go80", all of them worked fine.
The only 'need' was to have an old style TV to be able to see the 80 columns on screen

If I remember correct, the WordPack works fine but most probably you will 'lose' one
or more chars on each end (left and right). This is what happenend to me using the workPad
and telling OS-9 to go80 columns (without the Dragon+ module)

Good luck!
pere
tjewell
Posts: 346
Joined: Mon Oct 19, 2009 4:58 pm
Location: Cambridge, England

Re: 80 Column OS/9 Software for the DragonPlus ...

Post by tjewell »

Hi Pere,

I did a GO80, and it's driving my little green screen monitor just perfectly! Dynacalc and Stylograph both run, but both seem to think I have a 51 column monitor ... I'm a little out of my depth here, wondering how to tell them it's 80 columns!

Any thoughts?
Cheers,
Tony
pser1
Posts: 1655
Joined: Sun Mar 25, 2012 7:32 pm
Location: Barcelona (SPAIN)

Re: 80 Column OS/9 Software for the DragonPlus ...

Post by pser1 »

Hi Tony,
thinking about that, Clearly there are two kind of 'width' implementations,
- One related to the graphic PMODE4, so being able to cope with go40, go51
and not sure if (for OS-9) anybody did a go64 which would be the maximum.
- The other is pure text related as the go32 but this will imply modifying
descriptors on OS-9 to keep it using text (not graph) and then, probably,
modifying the applications to make use of the new width.

For the 64 columns mode with CoCo-VGA, we need to patch the basic so that
PRINT, PRINT@, Scroll and Tab functions ... and other commands that show data
on screen change their controls on the width and height of the useable screen.

Have you had a peek at the Compusense disk that they used to sell/send to
Dragon+ buyers? I think that there were some customized drivers ...
Not sure if they worked for all of the OS-9 applications.

I will have a look at the disks we have for maybe I could find something about that ...

cheers
pere
pser1
Posts: 1655
Joined: Sun Mar 25, 2012 7:32 pm
Location: Barcelona (SPAIN)

Re: 80 Column OS/9 Software for the DragonPlus ...

Post by pser1 »

Hi,
these are the two discs I have found
One of them contains the Compusense go80 and the other seems a normal OS-9 boot disk
Cannot verify anything ... waiting for John Whitworth's work to end and have the good
chance to buy one of these items to remember those times :-)

good luck with your tests!
cheers
pere
OS9_V20.VDK
(180.02 KiB) Downloaded 374 times
tjewell
Posts: 346
Joined: Mon Oct 19, 2009 4:58 pm
Location: Cambridge, England

Re: 80 Column OS/9 Software for the DragonPlus ...

Post by tjewell »

Hi Pere,

That second disk is intriguing - when I first got the DragonPlus, I couldn't make that disk work, so I ended up, successfully, building my own boot disk. You can see my adventures here: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5670&start=10#p16402

What I've learned is this. First off, we have to run GO51, which loads most of the display stuff we need. Then GO80 switches over to the Compusense card. If you look at the STARTUP file on the second disk you posted ('OS-9 Level 1 V1.2 for DragonPlus (1983)(Dragon Data Ltd - Compusense)[OS-9][!].vdk') you'll see it does just that. However, if you load that VDK on Xroar, and run G051, it fails with 'error 221, module not found' - and hence that disk doesn't work.

However, that doesn't matter, because the disk you build if you follow my instructions does work. And even better news is that the copy of Stylo on your disk works at 80 columns too! So I now have a copy of DragonPlus Stylo. But Dynacalc is still only 51 columns - see the attached picture. Off to rummage through the archive, see if we might have one!
IMG_20180515_153958.jpg
IMG_20180515_153958.jpg (160.25 KiB) Viewed 8738 times
pser1
Posts: 1655
Joined: Sun Mar 25, 2012 7:32 pm
Location: Barcelona (SPAIN)

Re: 80 Column OS/9 Software for the DragonPlus ...

Post by pser1 »

Hi Tony,
I have found a doc where one can read:
80 columns Patch for Stylo: at offset $14E3 change $31 for $4E

So, you were right, the std applications are tailored to run on go51
Another important point is that first you have to start OS-9 in mode go51
before you issue go80 because the prior one loads modules that are not in the go80.
Original docs from Compusense are really needed!
I attach here a scanned copy of mine (the only part that survived the 80's at home :-()

cheers
pere
DragonPLus.zip
(8.76 MiB) Downloaded 367 times
TechnicalInfoDragonPlus.zip
(8.57 MiB) Downloaded 387 times
Edit+forDragonPlus.zip
(7.11 MiB) Downloaded 378 times
OS9Drivers.zip
(6.36 MiB) Downloaded 377 times
tjewell
Posts: 346
Joined: Mon Oct 19, 2009 4:58 pm
Location: Cambridge, England

Re: 80 Column OS/9 Software for the DragonPlus ...

Post by tjewell »

Thanks Pere, that's all really useful!
pser1
Posts: 1655
Joined: Sun Mar 25, 2012 7:32 pm
Location: Barcelona (SPAIN)

Re: 80 Column OS/9 Software for the DragonPlus ...

Post by pser1 »

tjewell wrote: So I now have a copy of DragonPlus Stylo. But Dynacalc is still only 51 columns - see the attached picture. Off to rummage through the archive, see if we might have one!
I had not seen that Stylo had been already patched, just saw the patch to be applied reading the documents.
Now we need to know if there is a similar pacth for Dynacalc ... despite Compusense did not talk about it.
regards
pere
KenH
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Joined: Fri Oct 12, 2012 9:50 am

Re: 80 Column OS/9 Software for the DragonPlus ...

Post by KenH »

Use Tandy Dynacalc rather than Dragon Data's.
You can use the Tandy Dynacalc version which is included in my nos9 images posted here for 80 columns:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4782

It's based on the Tandy release of Dynacalc.
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