[comp.sys.misc] NEC-PC8801 N88-BASIC question

agv@j.cc.purdue.edu (Dave Murrell) (11/12/87)

I recently obtained an *old* NEC-PC8801A from a friend
who wants me to do some custom work on it. As inherited,
it had only the assembler -- and now, after some deliberation
and a lot of downloading traffic from simtel20, the beast
is being tamed. 

I obtained a version of N88-Disk BASIC from NEC (thanks,
Richard Johnson) with the following BASIC files:

	setinf.n88	phyfrm.n88	...

My question is: What are these for? The documentation is
a bit sparse -- "setinf" is supposed to write an information
track to disk (for what purpose, I don't know) and "phyfrm"
"physically" formats a DMA disk (presumably the 8881 drives
I have), whatever "physical" formatting involves (as opposed
to "normal" formatting).

Also, if anyone can offer some information on either purchasing
or obtaining a public domain version of "ZASM", I'd be grateful.
(I believe ZASM is needed to assemble the ZCPR3 sources from
simtel20????).

Any responses are probably best handled via e-mail. UUCP is
ok, ARPA preferred (agv@s.cc.purdue.edu). Much thanks in advance.