Martin Banks, Personal Computer World 12/81 - checked

November 1981

This month's missive is being prepared for your delectation on boring old technology. It is being prepared in this manner for one simple reason - it actually works and has few quirks and eccentricities that I fail to understand. The technology being employed? Ah yes; it is a small, battered but excruciatingly reliable portable typewriter of the manually driven variety.

Now, I can hear a million voices being raised with the cry, 'so what?'. Never having been one to keep my opinions to myself, I will tell you. The following saga is true, for it happened to me. It is heavily biased because at the time of writing I have just about filled up my quota of dis for my gruntle, but despite that it's worth recounting, for it is an object lesson in how the industry shouldn't (but does seem to) deal with the user. It is also an object lesson for that large army of potential users who are still to join the microcomputing fraternity and who perhaps wonder whether they should actually take the plunge.

This then is the story. The name of the specific manufacturer has, after some reflection, been expurgated. This is not from any sense of doubt over naming it, it is rather that I feel sure the following events are somewhat less than rare for all manufacturers and distributors and that naming just one is unfair relative to what is probably a general level of competence within the industry.

Right, here we go. I was asked by this esteemed magazine to try my hand at Benchtesting a microcomputer-based word processor. At first I was reluctant for, to be honest, I never have been (and probably never will be) either a technologist or a programmer. How, I wondered, could I do a thorough evaluation of a system when my professional duties have involved delving into the industry, its machinations and markets and never the nitty-gritty detail of PEEKing, POKing and GOing SUB.

After consultation with Editor Rodwell, however, it was decided that this was probably a positive advantage, for I would be able to approach the Benchtest in the same way the vast majority of genuine first-time users actually start with their new systems - totally dumb.

In fact, I started at a disadvantage over most first-time users. The system, precisely because it was for a Benchtest, was not of my own choosing. It arrived by taxi and without any prior demonstration of even its most simple requirements, capabilities or operations, so there had to be heavy dependence on the manuals to find out what the hell to do. In practice, of course, it wasn't too difficult to work out which cable plugged in where to get the processor connected to the video monitor, and the whole lot connected to the mains. It was interesting to note, however, that the hardware manual paid little attention to the requirements of a dumb klutz - full circuit diagrams and detailed explanations of the functions of all the devices were there, but I wasn't about to set to with a soldering iron. I was more interested in ensuring that 'el stupido' had stuck the right plug in the right socket.

Interestingly, the hardware in question had recently been enhanced by the addition of a 5.25in winchester drive - but no word of this appeared in the manuals.

At this point I must admit to the considerable possibility that I am being grossly unfair, precisely because the system was so new. The opportunity of a 'road-test' in PCW, even under the guise of a word processor Benchtest, is a chance most manufacturers and distributors jump at. It is, however, possible to surmise that some companies might well be tempted to grasp that opportunity for their latest system before it has been fully deduced whether all the machinery is in full working trim.

This certainly seemed to be the case with the system I had. The 'road-test' I had been commissioned to perform was on an 'old and established' word processing package (certainly in microcomputer terms). It has been around for some time, and many CP/M-based computers have an implementation of it available. In the case of the system I had, the implementation seemed to leave a little to be desired, particularly by a dumb klutz.

The manual for the WP software was quite sound, except for one failing - that it showed that it had been written by someone who understood the software very well, rather than for someone who didn't. A noticeably high degree of reader knowledge was implied, and it had the standard I'll-show-you-how-clever-I-am-at-writing-long-words type of introduction. I found myself starting in the middle of the manual and working outwards to find the bits that I needed.

Having at last established the order in which I should set about things, I set about them. The system happily booted itself into existence and told me to load a disk into drive A and key 5 or 8. Like a mug I keyed 8 and got a bootstrap error (`8' for 8 inch drives, `5' for 5.25s - clever that). On keying 5 we were away, and CP/M was automatically loaded. Goodie-good so far, thought I. Next, call up the WP package, a simple task to perform and, sure enough, up it came. So now I was away, or at least I thought so. Start the procedure to create a new file, name the file, watch the system sort itself out and get ready for the work to come and away we go.

Oh no, we didn't, did we? I started tickling the ivories with the opening sentence of some stunning prose, looked up at the screen and saw. . . garbage. Without wishing to duck any attacks about the words I normally write, and admitting that I am not the best typist in the world, even I would find it difficult to make 'This is the opening sentence of some words to test this package' come out on the screen as 'Tss h ongseef oe rsc. . . ' etc. On observation, I found that each time a key was pressed the cursor would rocket up the screen from its position on the line. Then it would shoot across the top of the screen, updating page number, line number and column number on the way, then drop back down to the line and back across the screen to the location of the next character. In all, this circuit took about half a second and any key strokes made while it was on its travels were simply ignored.

The answer was, as such, simple. The version of CP/M delivered with the machine was wrong, requiring a replacement disk, and two ROMs had to be changed to give the system the necessary keyboard look-ahead capability. This a man from the supplier kindly did for me that evening (he lives locally).

All this time I had noticed that the winchester drive was conspicuous by its inactivity. It took a friend to notice that the instructions for booting it up were written on the label of the CP/M floppy. It was writ large for all to see; it just wasn't where I had expected to see it. Oddly, I thought it would be in a manual somewhere.

Anyway, it was now down to work with the start of the Benchtest, a central part of which is keying in a standard 3000-word article. This I did in two chunks and all seemed well, so it was save the file, switch off the system and off down the pub for the evening. Next day would be for editing the screed.

The day arrived, and off I went editing. Power up the system, boot all necessary bits, into the WP software, find the file and with great dexterity start to edit. But no, but no. Press CTRL and the relevant key to scroll the page and the letter appears on the screen at the start of file data. Oops thought I, finger not on CTRL properly. I repeated the exercise and got the same result. Some quirk of the implementation (I assume) meant that I had to type an average of eight characters before the edit control keys would operate. When they would, I had to then go back and delete the 'addition'.

The next quirk to show up was that it (either and/or the software or hardware) had duplicated some paragraphs. Now I accept that this might have been some fault of mine in incorrectly saving the file, for I broke off a couple of times when entering the 3000 words but, as far as I was concerned, I had followed the manual's instructions. What I am not sure about accepting is that this would cause the system to duplicate paragraphs up to six times.

The next event was that the system had to go back to the supplier during the middle of my tenure as it was needed elsewhere. I decided to make a copy of the test file, only to find the system continually threw up BDOS errors and declined the request. The answer to this, I discovered, was an incorrectly formatted CP/M disk (the new one). Ho hum.

Eventually the machine came back from its travels with, I was informed, all relevant software, etc, etc. Nope: the WP software wasn't there (ie, the floppy) and without it I couldn't get onto the hard disk, where there was a copy. Further enquiries showed that a disk would be available the next day at the supplier's offices, plus two ROMs that were needed to go with it. Just for luck, there were some instructions on where the ROMs should go on the board.

As I've already said, I have never been one for soldering away the dark hours, so I approached this task with some trepidation. The great-CPU in-the-Sky was on my side, however, and I won (at least, I think I did). Once again the system and I were up and away. Into edit mode we went, found the file (still there on the hard disk, fortunately) and found the same '8-character-addition' problem. By now I was well used to that and it was overcome with no difficulty. A-scrolling we both went until. . . oh, well, duplicated paragraphs are no problem, just delete the buggers.

Flashing fingers hit the keys to delete the first line and I waited for it to disappear from the screen. Did it? Did it be damned. The screen started scrolling at a million miles an hour with the same paragraph.

This was the time for decisive action - in the event, something not unakin to panic. I may have been wrong, but I pressed Escape. Nothing happened, so I pressed Return. Suddenly on the screen appeared the instruction 'Press Escape' so I did and the system returned to sanity. I scrolled back to the paragraph before the repeated one (not very far) and then scrolled forward to see the damage. . . and I scrolled forward and I scrolled forward. There were hundreds of them, the same paragraph, going over the hills and far away. ...

end