[Coco] Bill Brady

KnudsenMJ at aol.com KnudsenMJ at aol.com
Fri Aug 6 23:12:51 EDT 2004


In a message dated 8/6/04 9:01:13 PM Eastern Daylight Time, elderpav at juno.com 
writes:

> I've always wanted a copy of The Wiz. Anyone know where I might be able
>  to find one? What do people think of it? Was it a good program? How did
>  it compare to other terminal programs?

I might still have my original copy of The Wiz around.  Many users swore by 
it, but I just swore at it for a few days and gave it up.

It has one odd, confusing feature -- it does not let you select Baud rate, 
parity, and other serial parameters.  Instead, it takes these from some bits 
packed into your serial device descriptor.  Once you figure that out, and dig up 
the bit definitions from the OS-9 manuals (not in The Wiz manual), you can 
presumably make it work right.

A bigger disadvantage is The Wiz is mostly compiled BASIC09 I-code.  Getting 
that stuff to run with a simple command line is iffy, especially if it 
references some of the extended functions provided external to BASIC09 (I forget 
which they are, but there are three binaries that we usually Merge in with RUNB).

And I think there were some binaries supplied with The Wiz that also had to 
get linked from RUNB.

But as I said, there were those who got it to work.  They may be able to tell 
you how.
--Mike K.



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