C70:info-cpm (07/15/82)
>From Bomberger@Office-2 Wed Jul 14 20:06:30 1982
A recent experience left me feeling once again that technology is far
ahead of the human ability to cope. I ordered a Morrow 2D controller from
a local store after discussing with a salesperson that I wanted to use
it on my NorthStar Horizon without displacing the NorthStar disks. I had
written my own BIOS and added phantom signals for the NorthStar controller
so I was using the top 8 k of memory. No sweat ..We ordered a ROM at F000
and I was assured that several people at the store had done the same thing..
It finally arrived and I studied the literatur, configured the board, plugged
it in... of course it did not work. Hours later I determined that
Phantom did not work properly. I called the store... Oh yes, phantom
doesn't work! Since I had discussed this with the salesperson and the board
came configured with phantom enabled, I was disgusted. I modified my
external phantom generator to include the morrow range and got the controller
to boot.
I noticed that if I did not boot the Morrow at least once, I was not able
to use it. NOWHERE in the manual, that seems incredibly detailed, was
it mentioned that certain areas of morrow RAM must be initialized and that
the controller chip is not reset at RESET. I copied some code from the
Boot portion of the ROM and am on the air.
I wish that computer stores would charge up front for "aid" instead
of chargin everybody a premium to pay salespeople to teach BASIC
to potential customers. The people at the store were not able to
help and even supplied misleading information. End of Flame.
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