Dawnstar - forwarded posts from the author

[Blacklord]

The author of Dawnstar (Dara Korra'ti) contacted me this morning & ok'd me to repeat her post :

"Hi! Back in Ye Daye, I wrote a terminal emulator for the C128 that I released as shareware and was also published in a C64/C128 magazine called Uptime! The Disk Monthly. It was called Dawnstar for reasons too strongly related to being an 80s kid to mention. ^_^;; They only had one-time publishing rights (for each of the versions they published) so all rights currently rest with me.

I still have the floppies in storage somewhere. And my Commodore 128, for that matter, tho' I haven't booted it in some time. Do you have any interest in this software for your library? I would be happy to release it under GPL, assuming I can manage to scrape it off a floppy somewhere. ^_^

It required a Hayes-compatible modem such as the 1670 and had a small number of key interesting features, including 1) access to the character translation map, so you could emulate any character set, and load/save custom sets of your own. I included, I think, five sets. They were also autoloaded upon successful connection to a system via the phonebook. This let you see Atari 8-bit BBSes correctly, IBM PC graphics BBSes correctly, and so on. You could also use this to remap the keyboard to DVORAK if you really wanted, but I didn't. 2) The first magazine version was written _entirely_ in uncompiled BASIC 7, to prove that you could maintain 1200 baud in FAST mode without assembler. This was because I got cranky at crappy assembler terminal emulators that couldn't. (The second included an assembler wedge in the cassette buffer to calculate XMODEM checksums so that file transfer wouldn't be so horrifically slow. Both versions supported XMODEM, but the first version's was just proof-of-concept, and as such, a dog.)

It has what may be the tightest translating terminal emulation loop in BASIC ever written. 37 bytes in a single line. No lie. (FAST mode required, 80 column only.) Exit from the loop (to the menu system, and also to these little add-in utilities I called "Sidekicks" after the PC toys) involved triggering an error trap by hitting RUN/STOP.

Anyway, I don't know if anyone cares about this sort of programme anymore - how long has it been since anyone used a 1200 baud modem, anyway? 15 years? ^_^ - but if you want it, let me know, and I will see if I can get it to you."

I responded back & she replied :

On Dec 7, 2007, at 2:22 PM, Lance Lyon wrote:
> Definitely interested in this - can you make D64's of the files &  
> send them to me ?
Yay! I will try. I know where the C128 is (upstairs, in the spare  
bedroom) and hopefully it won't be too crazy to dig out. I have a  
busy weekend ahead but I'll see what I can do. (I have this piece I  
have to have arranged by Sunday, I have a Saturday committee meeting,  
blah, then rehearsal...)
Oh! Important. How do I make a D64 image? I have a 1571 with the  
C128 in storage. Confusingly, I _have kept_ a 1.2MB 5.25" floppy  
drive working on one PC, but I don't know whether those can read the  
old Commodore GCM format at all. (I remember ones from the time  
couldn't.)

> In the meantime, the guys in the forums will be interested in  
> hearing this - may I post your message (withouth your email address  
> of course) to the forum ?
Sure. Maybe one of 'em even has it! ^_^

Hee, old memories. I just remembered "quote mode" and how I stopped  
it from being a problem - I mapped " to "" in all the keymaps  
because that was much faster than pokes, requiring no code. I  
benchmarked, god, four or five solutions iirc, and that was in fact  
the fastest. ^_^

Oh, if someone wants to make a compiled version, it should be very  
easy. Particularly if you have a compiler that can still let  
programmes trap the runstop interrupt without trashing the do/loop  
stack. That should just, you know, compile out of the box. I didn't  
have a compiler back then or I'd have done it myself because it  
couldn't maintain 2400 baud. (Or close to it. However, it should do  
the right thing with the serial port all the way up to either 9600 or  
19200, I don't remember which. I just had no way to actually test  
that.) So compiled it should ramp up to higher speeds speeds  
reasonably nicely.

Gosh, I haven't thought about this in _years_. I hope the disks  
still read. ^_^

- Dara

[Pinacolada]

*bump* Hey this sounds interesting. Wonder if she's still contactable?