Update on HHC Basics

[Roger Merchberger]

Rumor has it that David Betz may have mentioned these words:
>I finally received my HHC Basic ROMs yesterday and they seem to work.
>(Thanks Roger!)

I *think* (and with the minimal remaining number of functional neutrons in 
my head, that's a toughie! :-O ) I have everyone caught up on the HHC 
Basics. To those people who were severely delayed on receiving their chips, 
I publicly apologize -- It was never my intention to let this project go 
"lax" like it did.

If I did forget you, please raise your hands! Then lower them again, and 
type out an email to me, and I'll get you taken care of. I currently have a 
couple of days of "minimal insanity" with which I can clean up any last 
loose ends.

>I do have a problem where it claims I have insufficient memory to
>save even the smallest program. I seem to remember hearing someone
>else complain of that problem as well but I never saw anyone post a
>solution.

That would've been me; I may have an idea to the cause, but I've not had a 
chance to try it. See below.

>  Has anyone been able to save programs? Is there some trick
>involved? This is the first time I've used the machine and I suppose
>there could be left over stuff in RAM that needs to be deleted.

I found that I could get 1 program entered and running, by manually 
deleting everything I could find in the 'filesystem' and immediately going 
to the Basic and setting it to program input mode.  [[ This is the first 
time I'd used the machine as well... ]]

However, there was other 'flakeyness' with my HHC as well, and so I don't 
think it's a 'Basic-only' problem.

>  I would think it would have disappeared long ago though since the
>batteries were dead when I bought the machine and I am only able to
>run it off of the power supply. Has anyone had success saving programs?

I *think* (and knowing near nothing about this machine, I really, really 
stress *think*) that the batteries _need_ to be functional. A lot of 
portable machines of this era used the batteries as an oversized 'smoothing 
capacitor' for lack of a better term and would not operate correctly 
without a working battery pack.  (I have a Tandy 600 which exhibited 
similar memory wackyness when running it from AC only with no battery pack 
installed.)

I have not had time to test this theory, however, so I might be 'full of 
condensed milk' as my father-in-law used to say.

>Also, my machine has a menu entry offering to run SNAP programs but I
>have been unable to find a description of the SNAP language. I
>believe it is a Forth derivative. Can someone point me to a
>description of the SNAP language?

Wish I could; SNAP sounded kewl. What I can tell you is the machine uses a 
CMOS 6502, so if anyone can find a way to read the internal ROMS or figure 
out the BASIC enough to program a ROM dump utility, should be pretty easy 
for one who's good with 6502 disassemblers to maybe glean some knowledge 
about it. (M'self, I'm more a 6809 kinda guy...)

As I have some really good soldering/desoldering tools now, I could take a 
stab at desoldering the ROM chip[s] and reading 'em directly... tho:

1) I wouldn't know where in memory it resides without manually tracing 
address lines & whatnot (which I don't have time for) ... or ...

2) I wouldn't have time to do this for at least a couple of months. But 
hey, we've been waiting almost 10 years now for Basic, right???
;^P

HTH,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger

--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger   | "Profile, don't speculate."
SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers |     Daniel J. Bernstein
zmerch at 30below.com          |