gchow@ipsa.reuter.com (george chow) (07/30/90)
I have some questions about the Portfolio which my local dealer can't seem to
answer adequately:
o what languages are available for developing applications for the Portfolio?
My dealer mentioned Pascal and C but he couldn't name a compiler. I want
to hear from someone who's actually done some development work.
o To communicate with a desktop requires a parallel or serial port. Is there
any cheaper means? And what protocol does the Portfolio use?
o how's the compatibility of the Portfolio? Have anyone tried anything
like the Norton Utilities or 4DOS on it?
Thanks.
George Chowheath@ncrcae.Columbia.NCR.COM (Robert Heath) (08/03/90)
To: gchow@itcyyz.UUCP Subject: Re: Developing and Communicating with a Portfolio Newsgroups: comp.sys.handhelds In-Reply-To: <1990Jul30.161330.19070@ipsa.reuter.com> Organization: NCR Corp., Engineering & Manufacturing - Columbia, SC Cc: Bcc: In article <1990Jul30.161330.19070@ipsa.reuter.com> you write: >I have some questions about the Portfolio which my local dealer can't seem to >answer adequately: > o what languages are available for developing applications for the Portfolio? > My dealer mentioned Pascal and C but he couldn't name a compiler. I want George, you can cross-develop programs for the Portfolio and download them to your Portfolio. I have developed Turbo C programs for the Port on my AT clone then downloaded them successfully. There's not enough disk space for a fully C development environment on the Port. Alternately you can get a tiny BASIC which I believe runs *ON* the Port. I've seen it under the APORTFOLIO discussion group on CompuServe. The programs will have to be well-behaved -- text mode only. > to hear from someone who's actually done some development work. I've done it. > o To communicate with a desktop requires a parallel or serial port. Is there > any cheaper means? And what protocol does the Portfolio use? I've used both. You will need either a parallel or a serial adapter in addition to your basic Port. Sticky point: there's no native terminal emulator on the Port. Best bet: get XTERM2 from CompuServe. It uses Xmodem. Plan #3: buy a credit card memory drive for your standard PC from Atari. > o how's the compatibility of the Portfolio? Have anyone tried anything > like the Norton Utilities or 4DOS on it? The DOS-like OS on the Port is like MS-DOS 2.X. As I mentioned above, you'll be limited to very well-behaved programs. Keep in mind your basic Port has only 128K of memory, out of which comes your C: drive. You may not have room for all of Norton. Heck, there's no hard disk anyway -- they're all RAM disks. We're talking tiny computer. Best, Robert Heath
jccw@poobah.mitre.org (John C. C. White) (08/03/90)
One other thing to keep in mind about developing for the Portfolio is that crashes may often clobber drive c:, since it's ramdisk and will be wiped out when you do a cold reboot (and if you program the way I do, you will). You must have a card disk to keep anything worth saving on, and you will find it easier to debug on a normal PC rather than the Portfolio. Also, for $60, Atari will sell you a Technical Reference Guide and some Emulator software, so you can do your testing on the PC in an environment which looks just like the Portfolio. John White (jccw@mitre.org)
SLSW2@cc.usu.edu (Roger Ivie) (08/07/90)
In article <1990Jul30.161330.19070@ipsa.reuter.com>, gchow@ipsa.reuter.com (george chow) writes: > I have some questions about the Portfolio which my local dealer can't seem to > answer adequately: > o what languages are available for developing applications for the Portfolio? > My dealer mentioned Pascal and C but he couldn't name a compiler. I want > to hear from someone who's actually done some development work. I've been using an antique Turbo Pascal (3.01A) on mine. You have to set the screen to 80x24 External Tracked Refresh Both Fast for it or any programs you make with it to run, though. Also, it doesn't seem to be able to create program files; you have to make them first before loading them into the editor. I have run some stuff that I did in Turbo C on the Portfolio, but had some trouble reading the keyboard; in response to a scanf I could only enter as many characters as fit into the typeahead buffer. After that, the machine would just beep. I suspect that Turbo C is not reading its characters in an entirely kosher fashion and the Portfolio therefore gets confused about how many characters are in the buffer. I also downloaded a nifty assembler from Simtel20 called A86. It runs just fine on the Portfolio; it's shareware, though, so you should register and pay your money. I've also obtained from someone on the net a tiny basic and tiny forth that run on the Portfolio. The basic is along the lines of TRS-80 Model I basic, except that it gets confused very easily; but then what do you expect for a 3K executable? > o To communicate with a desktop requires a parallel or serial port. Is there > any cheaper means? And what protocol does the Portfolio use? The parallel port protocol is apparently very wierd; they seem to serialize the data and send it over one of the status lines or something so that you don't have to have a bidirectional parallel port in your host. The serial port is only compatible at the BIOS level; given how little software actually uses this level, it's tough to find something that works on it. KERMIT might, but the executable is huge and the equates that turn off features seem to just make certain they never get executed rather than actually trimming the code down (are you listening, Mr. Doupnik?). > o how's the compatibility of the Portfolio? Have anyone tried anything > like the Norton Utilities or 4DOS on it? It's not. It's BIOS compatible, which is better than my other DOS machine (a DEC Rainbow), but very little software actually uses the BIOS. The joys of the DOS world. =============================================================================== Roger Ivie 35 S 300 W Logan, Ut. 84321 (801) 752-8633 ===============================================================================