On 19/09/2021 17:39, Martin wrote:
> ...
> Nice litte thing, so I disassembled it ... :-)
>
> It uses SEQIO.LIB, needs MAC.COM to assemble.

I also had a quick look but no idea it used (and consisted
mostly of) SEQIO.LIB.

Makes me wonder just how popular - or unpopular- was this lib?
I'm not aware anyone converting it to Z80 and AFAIK it received
only one third-party update (SEQIO22.LIB). Perhaps it required
too much effort to learn? The docs (hard to get) don't appear
to have been summarized anywhere as occurred for MAC and M80.
All very strange considering much of drudgery in a CP/M program
is file-io and where libraries shine.

Am 09/20/2021 02:51 AM, dxforth schrieb:
> On 19/09/2021 17:39, Martin wrote:
>> ... Nice litte thing, so I disassembled it ... :-)
>>
>> It uses SEQIO.LIB, needs MAC.COM to assemble.
>
> I also had a quick look but no idea it used (and consisted
> mostly of) SEQIO.LIB.
>
> Makes me wonder just how popular - or unpopular- was this lib?
> I'm not aware anyone converting it to Z80 and AFAIK it received
> only one third-party update (SEQIO22.LIB). Perhaps it required
> too much effort to learn? The docs (hard to get) don't appear
> to have been summarized anywhere as occurred for MAC and M80.
> All very strange considering much of drudgery in a CP/M program
> is file-io and where libraries shine.

You better only used these LIBs in distributed programs,
if you really owned a copy of MAC or RMAC.

This probably limited the wide use.

Martin

On 20/09/2021 13:41, Martin wrote:
> Am 09/20/2021 02:51 AM, dxforth schrieb:
>> On 19/09/2021 17:39, Martin wrote:
>>> ... Nice litte thing, so I disassembled it ... :-)
>>>
>>> It uses SEQIO.LIB, needs MAC.COM to assemble.
>>
>> I also had a quick look but no idea it used (and consisted
>> mostly of) SEQIO.LIB.
>>
>> Makes me wonder just how popular - or unpopular- was this lib?
>> I'm not aware anyone converting it to Z80 and AFAIK it received
>> only one third-party update (SEQIO22.LIB). Perhaps it required
>> too much effort to learn? The docs (hard to get) don't appear
>> to have been summarized anywhere as occurred for MAC and M80.
>> All very strange considering much of drudgery in a CP/M program
>> is file-io and where libraries shine.
>
> You better only used these LIBs in distributed programs,
> if you really owned a copy of MAC or RMAC.
>
> This probably limited the wide use.

Possibly. But then SEQIO.LIB was widely distributed (e.g. CPMUG)
and no copyright notice or even author name.

Normally, I write privately to the original poster when I have something to say. However, in this particular case, I think that what I have to say is worth being shared with all the others readers of the comp.os.cpm Newsgroup..

Ed wrote:

> I also had a quick look but no idea it used (and consisted
> mostly of) SEQIO.LIB.
>
> Makes me wonder just how popular - or unpopular- was this lib?
> I'm not aware anyone converting it to Z80 and AFAIK it received
> only one third-party update (SEQIO22.LIB). Perhaps it required
> too much effort to learn? The docs (hard to get) don't appear
> to have been summarized anywhere as occurred for MAC and M80.
> All very strange considering much of drudgery in a CP/M program
> is file-io and where libraries shine.

As I have explained several times, for historical reasons, depending on the country, some versions of CP/M are more "standards" in a place than others.. So, in the USA, most "Old Timers" of this group think that CP/M is 2.2, and the standard tools are ASM and DDT. In Europe, which got CP/M later (because of the need to translate all the doc), CP/M Plus is clearly the standard (Amstrad has sold 8 Millions PCW during 10 years), with RMAC and LINK-80 (needed to reassemble a BIOS for CP/M Plus). (However, Amstrad was not providing GENCPM. This generated lots of talks, since Amstrad did not use a SYS file, but a custom file.)

Now, if we just re-read those old Digital Research advertisements, we see that they were selling *SEPARATELY* MAC and SID as improvements to serious programmers. And Digital Research was thinking that they were tools so good that it was selling each of them for the price of CP/M itself! And MAC was sold with a manual containing several examples of creation of libraries of macros, one of them being the full source code of... SEQIO.LIB !

I don't have an original 8" IBM-3740 "Distribution Disk" of MAC, but I am ready to bet that it was provided with several examples of its use. (Remember: Gary Kildall was a teacher of Computer Science at the Naval Postgraduate School of Monterey, California.) VIEW is so small and elementary that it would be a very nice example of the use of SEQIO.

If you are interested, UNLOAD (there are 2 versions of this program) also uses SEQIO.

RTFM!

Yours Sincerely,
Mr. Emmanuel Roche, France

On 20/09/2021 21:48, Mr. Emmanuel Roche, France wrote:
> ...
> And MAC was sold with a manual containing several examples of creation of libraries of
> macros, one of them being the full source code of... SEQIO.LIB !
>
> I don't have an original 8" IBM-3740 "Distribution Disk" of MAC, but I am ready to bet
> that it was provided with several examples of its use.

CP/M 3 distribution disks I've seen contain MAC and RMAC but no SEQIO.LIB.
Reading 'CP/M Programmers Utility Guide' 1982 I get the impression SEQIO.LIB
was never supplied as a file - rather a book example of an extensive macro
library which users were encouraged to extend:

"The SEQIO library is typical of the interface you can construct to provide
a higher level interface between assembly language programs and their
operating environment. Although the library shown here performs only
simple sequential file input/output, you can construct more comprehensive
libraries for random access based on this library."

There's a curious comment in SEQIO22.LIB which states:

"This is a highly modified version of the original by unknown author
believed to be Ward Christensen."

Wishful thinking?

On Monday, September 20, 2021 at 10:51:26 AM UTC+10, dxforth wrote:
> On 19/09/2021 17:39, Martin wrote:
> > ...
> > Nice litte thing, so I disassembled it ... :-)
> >
> > It uses SEQIO.LIB, needs MAC.COM to assemble.
>
> I also had a quick look but no idea it used (and consisted
> mostly of) SEQIO.LIB.
>
> Makes me wonder just how popular - or unpopular- was this lib?
> I'm not aware anyone converting it to Z80 and AFAIK it received
> only one third-party update (SEQIO22.LIB). Perhaps it required
> too much effort to learn? The docs (hard to get) don't appear
> to have been summarized anywhere as occurred for MAC and M80.
> All very strange considering much of drudgery in a CP/M program
> is file-io and where libraries shine.

The Digital Research "CP/M MAC Macro Assembler: Language
Manual and Applications Guide" (c)1977 contains examples using
the SEQIO.LIB library. Get it as a PDF from

http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/digitalResearch/cpm/CPM_Mac_Macro_Assembler_1977.pdf

The ZIP file for MAC from the Unofficial CP/M Web Site at

http://cpm.z80.de/binary.html#utilities

contains a collection of the macro libraries -

BUTTONS.LIB DSTACK.LIB NCOMPARE.LIB SAMPLE.ASM STACK.LIB Z80.LIB
COMPARE.LIB I8085.LIB NSWP.COM SELECT.LIB TREADLES.LIB
DISK.DOC INTER.LIB PIP.COM SEQIO.LIB WHEN.LIB
DOWHILE.LIB MAC.COM READ.ME SIMPIO.LIB Z80.DOC

Tony

On 21/09/2021 20:09, Tony Nicholson wrote:
>
> The Digital Research "CP/M MAC Macro Assembler: Language
> Manual and Applications Guide" (c)1977 contains examples using
> the SEQIO.LIB library. Get it as a PDF from
>
> http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/digitalResearch/cpm/CPM_Mac_Macro_Assembler_1977.pdf
>
> The ZIP file for MAC from the Unofficial CP/M Web Site at
>
> http://cpm.z80.de/binary.html#utilities
>
> contains a collection of the macro libraries -
>
> BUTTONS.LIB DSTACK.LIB NCOMPARE.LIB SAMPLE.ASM STACK.LIB Z80.LIB
> COMPARE.LIB I8085.LIB NSWP.COM SELECT.LIB TREADLES.LIB
> DISK.DOC INTER.LIB PIP.COM SEQIO.LIB WHEN.LIB
> DOWHILE.LIB MAC.COM READ.ME SIMPIO.LIB Z80.DOC

Thanks. The files are laid out a little differently than what appears
in the DRI manuals - revisions perhaps.

On Wednesday, September 22, 2021 at 2:19:05 AM UTC+10, dxforth wrote:

> Thanks. The files are laid out a little differently than what appears
> in the DRI manuals - revisions perhaps.

I see there's a 1980 revision of the manual too on Bitsavers (but I haven't checked it for what's changed).

http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/digitalResearch/cpm/CPM_MAC_Macro_Assembler_Nov80.pdf

Also, the origin of the mac-b.zip file from Gaby Chaudry's site (the site with official sanctioned distribution software for Digital Research CP/M software) isn't clear on its origins.

I assume it is the MAC 2.0 distribution files - plus PIP and NSWP.

Tony

I've got hard copies of The DRI CPM Plus Programmer's Guide which doesn't reference the MAC assembler in it's index.
My hard copy book that came with my Sperry UTS-30 contains The Programmer's Utilities Guide for the CP/M Family of Operating Systems 1st edition 1982
which is 294 pages which covers MAC, RMAC, LINK80 and LIB80 Here's a quote from p218
"The SEQIO library is typical of the interface you can construct to provide a higher level interface between assembly language programs and their operating environment.
Although the library shown here performs only simple sequential file input/output, you can construct more comprehensive libraries for random access based on this library."
There's also a 10 page assembly listing of the sequential file i/o library. I'll have to study this. I didn't realize this wasn't a part of cpm plus itself until Mr Roche mentioned it in here.

Larry G

Larry G, Can you scan those 10 pages at 400 to 600 DPI?

Thanks.

Larry

On Monday, September 27, 2021 at 7:26:35 AM UTC-5, ldkr...@gmail.com wrote:
> Larry G, Can you scan those 10 pages at 400 to 600 DPI?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Larry
Looks like it's on bitsavers p188 in here
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/digitalResearch/cpm_plus/CPM_Programmers_Utilities_Guide_Sep82.pdf

Folks,
I've OCR'd pages 204 thru 214 of the "CPM_Programmers_Utilities_Guide_Sep82.pdf "
and posted the seqio.asm file on:
https://github.com/ldkraemer/seqio-for-CPM

There are likely still some typo's that need to be corrected. Please update the github site
with any corrections you find, so they are captured.

Thanks.

Larry

Am 09/29/2021 12:12 PM, ldkr...@gmail.com schrieb:
> Folks,
> I've OCR'd pages 204 thru 214 of the "CPM_Programmers_Utilities_Guide_Sep82.pdf "
> and posted the seqio.asm file on:
> https://github.com/ldkraemer/seqio-for-CPM
>
> There are likely still some typo's that need to be corrected. Please update the github site
> with any corrections you find, so they are captured.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Larry
>

Larry, please look into the following archive
<http://www.retroarchive.org/cpm/archive/unofficial/download/mac-b.zip>

Martin

On Tuesday, September 21, 2021 at 12:19:05 PM UTC-4, dxforth wrote:
> On 21/09/2021 20:09, Tony Nicholson wrote:
> >
> > The Digital Research "CP/M MAC Macro Assembler: Language
> > Manual and Applications Guide" (c)1977 contains examples using
> > the SEQIO.LIB library. Get it as a PDF from
> >
> > http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/digitalResearch/cpm/CPM_Mac_Macro_Assembler_1977.pdf
> >
> > The ZIP file for MAC from the Unofficial CP/M Web Site at
> >
> > http://cpm.z80.de/binary.html#utilities
> >
> > contains a collection of the macro libraries -
> >
> > BUTTONS.LIB DSTACK.LIB NCOMPARE.LIB SAMPLE.ASM STACK.LIB Z80.LIB
> > COMPARE.LIB I8085.LIB NSWP.COM SELECT.LIB TREADLES.LIB
> > DISK.DOC INTER.LIB PIP.COM SEQIO.LIB WHEN.LIB
> > DOWHILE.LIB MAC.COM READ.ME SIMPIO.LIB Z80.DOC
> Thanks. The files are laid out a little differently than what appears
> in the DRI manuals - revisions perhaps.

Hi, this is probably the worst possible place I could ask this (I couldn't find you anywhere else on the Internet), but do you have the Forth code to the KCS utility (v0.8 or whatever's latest)? A number of people (including myself) have been trying to get ahold of it for a project.

On 30/09/2021 07:38, Jason wrote:
>
> Hi, this is probably the worst possible place I could ask this (I couldn't
> find you anywhere else on the Internet), but do you have the Forth code to
> the KCS utility (v0.8 or whatever's latest)? A number of people (including
> myself) have been trying to get ahold of it for a project.

It's available here:

http://dxforth.mirrors.minimaltype.com/

It's not been updated in years, though I did juggle the source so it fits
my current setup. Should you want that gmail.com me at dxforth.