mrr@rayssd.UUCP (04/09/85)
This is a real quickie hint for users of the Oxford Pascal Compiler. One of the more annoying features of this system is the inability to specify that you have 2 disk drives. When compiling/executing/linking in disk-based mode, the disk swapping required is enough to drive you nuts! I discovered that the "executive" program (that's stretching it a bit) actually defaults to the last device accessed when loading in the compiler, linker, interpreter, etc. Therefore, once your system is booted, put your system disk in the second disk drive. Whenever you want to perform one of the disk based operations, simply poke location 186 with the value 9. As an example, to do a compile: poke186,9 comp <progname>,<options> The program loaded from disk will always revert to device 8 for source and object files. By the way - does anyone know what happened to Limbic Systems USA? I sent them a package of goodies (wish list, bug report, help request) that came back to me (after 3 weeks) marked "return to sender - no forwarding address". I also noticed that their ad is missing from COMPUTE!'s GAZZETTE. I have a couple of utilities (source printer - collects candidate filenames from disk directory, source formatter - disk to disk) which compile and execute under the Oxford Pascal system. If there is any interest, I'll post them to the net. -- Mark R. RInfret, SofTech Inc. Raytheon Co.; Portsmouth RI; (401)-847-8000 x4938 ...!decvax!brunix!rayssd!mrr ...!allegra!rayssd!mrr ...!linus!rayssd!mrr