After almost 5 (!) months, I have completed preparing a relevant (or as relevant as it can be) screenshot for every single entry in the Model 1/3/4 archive. That is over 17,000 screenshots. This entailed running every single program to make sure it worked; a task made difficult by the fact that different programs run on different models, and different DOS’s, and may even be a different version of BASIC (ZBASIC, NewBASIC, GBASIC, BASICG, SuperBasic, etc). It was a project long in the coming.
I would like to give a special shout-out to George Philips for tweaking his TRS80GP emulator to assist in this effort.
Along the way I have found out things like:
• | Some Model I DOS’s toss the last line when reading a file saved in ASCII |
• | TRSDOS and LDOS for the Model 4 are not simply the same OS |
• | Model I TRSDOS does not support batch files |
• | Model I LDOS requires a trailing slash when there’s no extension, making it largely incompatible with all multi-part programs |
• | MultiDOS for the Model 4 has a special BASIC which can properly de-tokenize Model I/III BASIC |
• | LDOS for the Model 4 has a special USR(11) function |
• | There’s a whole class of software written for the Model III that can only run on a Model 4 |
• | Statements like INPUT@ and CMD"O" means its probably DOSPlus |
• | Statements like #GSUB or LINE a,b,c,d,SET or SOUND 4 or PGET or GPOINT x,y or INV a,b,c,d means its probably NEWBASIC |
• | Statements like BREAK or x=SYS(12) means its probably BEYOND BASIC |
• | Statements like EDIT(10,20,30) means its probably ZBASIC |
• | Statements like @CLS means its MODEL 4 Micro Labs GBASIC |
• | Statements like &CLS means its MODEL III Micro Labs GBASIC |
• | Statements OUT 129 through OUT 131 means its Micro Labs GBASIC |
• | Statements like CLR , GLOCATE , w{P , W&C 0 , N/UM (x,y) , LINE (x,y)-(a,z),0 , PRINT#-3 , PAINT , or VIEW means its probably BASICG |
• | Statements like INC ALLOCATE BRKON EXIST$() and PLOT x, x,y to x,y and S,0,0 TO 127,Y means its Enhanced BASIC by Misosys/Philip Oliver |
• | Statements like CMDClear and CMDGet means its Graphics-90 by Software Affair |
• | Statements like BLINK , HIMEM , DPOKE , GLOAD , GSUB , GTO , PON , REPEAT , or SOUND a,b,c,d,e means its NEWBASIC by Modular Software Associates |
• | Someone a lot smarter than I needs to figure out how the programs which POKE USR routines can possibly work in DOS |
• | Model 4 Communication Programs usually need SET *CL COM/DVR run from the TRSDOS command line first |
• | The LDOS command to set up a ramdrive in DCT format is SET (DRIVE=4,DRIVER="MEMDISK/DCT") . |
• | /APP files are for PRO-WAM |
• | Misosys catalog program names are not the same names used in the program (i.e, “Pro-Duce” is really “Misosys Disassembler”) |
• | People LOVED to put their names on other people’s software (or remove the attribution lines) |
• | TRS80GP can do everything that Dave Keil’s DOS emulator’s could, but without needing to run DOSBOX! |