On 3/4/21 5:00 PM, AvantGuard Systems wrote:
Starting a new thread to my mcomm on linux thread.
I figured out a way to get programs from computer to M100. However,
nothing works. I'm wondering if this has to do with what other people
were talking about when transferring .DO vs .BA files.
First how do I get files over to the M100.
On linux I've found the program dl to be the only effective program. I
can inject TS-DOS or TEENY to the M100 easily. After that I launch dl
from the directory with the files I want to share.
So far I've only figured out how to use TS-DOS and it works fine. I can
access the DRIVE and LOAD the files.
A .DO file works great. A .BA file will transfer but never run.
I understood from previous conversations that what I should do is rename
the .BA files to .DO files. But that doesn't work. I can't rename the
files to .BA.
I believe someone explained about the .BA vs .DO files, so this is just
repetition, but I'll repeat in maybe a slightly different wording:
You have to look at any .BA files on your modern machine to see if they
are text or binary.
Most, maybe all, of the .BA files on Club100 are text, and thus,
incorrectly named. They did this probably to make the files more
portable and viewable without needing an actual 100 or emulator just to
read them.
Start with these 2 facts:
On the 100, a .BA file is a binary tokenized BASIC file, NOT a plain
text file.
On the 100, all plain text files must be named something.DO
There are a bunch of odd limitations and hard-coded things in the rom on
the 100, because it was 1983 and the thing had to do a lot of different
things within only a few K of rom and ram. It's not a full featured
generic OS, it's a firmware almost like an extra fancy calculator.
So, one of the quirks is that you can't just name a file anything you
want. Another one is as you noticed, and as someone else also already
said, you can't change the extension when you rename a file. Don't ask
me why, I have no idea.
When you are in BASIC and you write a program and save it,
SAVE "FOO"
by default it will save in a binary tokenized format and get a .BA
filename (FOO.BA)
Alternatively you can make BASIC save the file in ascii format,
SAVE "FOO",A
and it will save in a plain text format and get a .DO filenale (FOO.DO)
When you copy BASIC files onto 100 from elsewhere, they MUST conform to
one of those formats. If it's a tokenized file, it must have a .BA
filename, *before* trying to transfer it. If it's a plain text file,
whether it's a novel or a BASIC file saved in ascii format, it must have
a .DO filename, *before* trying to transfer it.
Next, for reasons which don't matter now, most or all of the .BA files
on Club100 and some from other places too, are ascii format BASIC
programs with .BA filenames.
Any files like that must be renamed to something.DO after you download
them, before trying to load them onto the 100. As you have discovered,
once you load such a file, it doesn't work, it can even lock up or crash
the 100 sometimes depending on the file, and you can't (easily) fix the
bad filename once it's on the machine.
So, with all of that now understood, you have 2 things you need to know
or do:
1: To clean up the bad files currently on your 100, you must delete
them. You can use TS-DOS to do it if KILL "FOO.BA" doesn't work. You can
also just hard-reset the machine to wipe everything and start over clean.
2: Going forward, any time you download a .BA file from the internet, or
get one from anywhere really, you need to look at the file and see if
it's legible plain text, or binary. If it's readable text, then you have
to rename it to something .DO instead of .BA, ON THE MODERN MACHINE
BEFORE TRANSFERRING TO THE 100. You pretty much have to just look at
every file you ever download, because some files will be mis-named and
some will not. Don't just automatically rename every .BA file to .DO
becase not every .BA file is mis-named like most of the ones on club100.
To run an ascii format BASIC program "FOO.DO", you have to LOAD it
first. You go into BASIC and type:
LOAD "FOO.DO"
Then you can type "RUN" but probably what you want to do is:
SAVE "FOO"
KILL "FOO.DO"
And then you will have a FOO.BA which you can run normally by selecting
it from the main menu.
You can save that FOO.BA back to your pc with TEENY or TS-DOS just fine
too, and you don't need to rename that file any more. You can copy it
back and forth and it will just remain as a valid .BA file. The club100
files are a special case where they were artificially given "wrong"
names for reasons of portability, long term archiving, viewability
without an actual 100 etc.
--
bkw
Next, for whatever reason (probably portability and readability without
needing a 100 or emulator just to read the files)
You can save and load BASIC programs in ascii format (plain text vs
tokenized binary) on the 100, but they must be named *.DO
--
bkw
