davison@bnl.UUCP (Dan Davison) (03/03/85)
I'm confused. I have only a limited amount of time to get files from SIMTEL20 (I'll be off the net i 3 months) and have yet to figure out how to unsqueeze files onces they're FTP'd here. ZCPR3 looks like a good software package to spend my time on getting to my micro, but it appears to be way too large to run usefully on my Z80: 2 ss/dd disks, 188Kb each. Has anyone usefully and efficently used these programs with limited disk space? I FTP'd the ZCPR newsletters and they only confused me further since it looks like a hard disk is needed for the most effective use of ZCPR. Should I spend my time trying to get Small C running instead? Any opinions would be appreciated dan davison ...decvax!philabs!sbcs!bnl!davison davison@bnl.arpa, .bitnet
RCONN@SIMTEL20.ARPA (Rick Conn) (03/06/85)
You are right that ZCPR3 thrives best in a hard disk environment, but it also is useful in small floppy disk environments. One of the newsletters addressed this question, and a tradeoff table was presented which discussed the tradeoffs. I personally use ZCPR3 on a hard disk most of the time, but I also have several applications disks which have around 60K of disk overhead devoted to ZCPR3 itself (MENU, VMENU, and VFILER systems). You have many options other than SIMTEL20 thru which ZCPR3 can be acquired. SIG/M is one, Echelon is another, and RBBS systems is a third. Some computer clubs are giving seminars on ZCPR3 installation also. Re Small C, I believe that similar options (SIG/M, RBBS, computer clubs) exist also. How to best use your time? I would recommend that you first acquire all of the pointers info you can (RBBS list, address of SIG/M, address of Echelon, ZCPR3 Helper list, etc) so that you can continue accessing the software after your net access goes away. Once you have this, can the CPM directories on SIMTEL20 and explore whatever tickles your fancy. Lots of good stuff all thru the directories. Rick -------