Memory Expansion Problem I own a PCjr, have had for 3 years now, and am very pleased with it. I expanded it last year with 3 IBM expansion sidecars and a parallel printer port when they had their last great sale of PCjr equipment. I called the PCjr Hotline on how to use the expansion boards. This gave me a 512K machine with a parallel printer port and it has worked fine for me. I recently have had a problem when I boot up initially. I only get an indication that I have 384K of memory. I have gone through the diagnostics steps in the Guide to Operations Manual, and I go through every step until I get to a point where it says,"take your Junior to a service center." Well, there aren't any around here. I was wondering how many user have these expansion units, how they have stacked theirs up, and if they've had similar problems, and what they've done to fix them. I'd appreciate any help I can get. Steve Balek, Washington, IL EDITOR'S NOTE: Since you have several side cars mounted on your PCjr. and you are getting some memory, chances are that your problems are caused by a poor connection. This could be a result of some dirt or dust buildup, or simply insufficient contact. We suggest removing the sidecars, cleaning the connectors with a cloth and reinstalling. If you have any more problems, you can send your system to Solid Rock, Computer Reset, or PCEnterprises, all of whom repair PCjr. But our bet is that the cleaning job will do the trick. New Keyboard Delights User As Does Poor Man's Mouse Just a note to let you know that I still am enjoying your fine Newsletter and to inform you of a couple of things. Another Keyboard that you can add to your list of compatibles is the Northgate C/T 101 (extended keyboard with 101 keys). I got it for Christmas along with a keyboard adapter cable and it has worked flawlessly ever since. It has a great touch. I am able to use PMM (poor man's mouse) on the JR POWER PAK disk with a program called Easycad, and it takes the place of a mouse in every way. I talked to Paul Rau Consulting regarding their Nickel Express Turbo Board and am disappointed to find out that it does not work well with the Tecmar Jr Captain, which many of us have. Other turbo boards are in the works, however. A question for you regarding Easycad and other Cad programs I have tried. Regardless of what video driver I try to load, all I can get for screen size of 40x25 even though the driver states 320x200. Is this because of the difference in the pc bios? I have looked at the Jr video article on the Powerpac diskette, but have not come up with anything. Does anybody out there have a solution? Also in the April 1987 edition Brit Hume talks about programs using direct screen writes and how there is a patch forj this problem for Autocad. Would anybody know where to obtain one? Thanks for your time. Keep up the good work. Wesley Newbert, E. Longmeadow, MA EDITOR'S NOTE: We have heard from PCjr owners who are using Autocad. Generic Cad is also PCjr compatible. The screen size problem Wesley mentions is new to us. Anyone have a solution? Happy PCjr Owner Has 3.5" Drive and 20 MB Hard Drive Working Fine I am writing in response to your request for "tips for getting the most out of your PCjr" in the January, 1988 issue. I had an IBM PCjr with a Racore Drive Two, DMA, 640K and a Datadesk "AT" style keyboard. I recently decided to upgrade my junior with the Racore 20 MB hard drive. I also decided to replace my Racore 5.25" drive with a Toshiba 3.5" drive that I saw advertised by Priority One Electronics (18004235922) for $159. I called technical support at Racore to see if their Drive Two could be replaced with a 3.5" drive when it is used in conjunction with their hard drive. The technician said that they had tried it with DOS 2.1 and it didn't work because the 3.5" disk could only be formatted to 360K. I asked if they had tried DOS 3.X and they said no. I then called Toshiba technical support and asked their opinion. They said that they could see no reason why it wouldn't work as long as the Toshiba 3.5" drive was either model no. 4210G0K or 4206A0K and the serial number was ND352. The Toshiba drive sold by Priority One was model 4210G0K and ND352 so I decided to buy it and give it a try. The only problem I had installing the 3.5" drive was that the 34 wire ribbon signal cable to the Racore 5.25 drive was too short to attach to the 3.5" drive, so I had to buy a longer one. Otherwise, it was easy. I then installed my 20 MB hard drive on top. I formatted the new hard drive using IBM DOS 3.30 using FDISK and then the command "SELECT C: 001 US". I also put "DEVICE=DRIVER.SYS /D:1" in the CONFIG.SYS file when I boot the hard drive. This is the DOS 3.30 driver for the 3.5" drive which installs it as drive D: and allows it to be formatted to 720K. I found out that my 3.5" drive is also accessible as the b: drive, but there it behaves as a 360K drive and is not truly a valid drive. I was able to format the D: 3.5" drive for 720K and my hard drive works fine in combination with it as the C: drive. I now have a 5.25" drive, a 3.5" drive, and a 20MB hard drive on my junior and I am very pleased with the system. I do not miss having two 5.25" drives because DISKCOPY and COPYIIJR works fine with one drive and 640K and I now have compatibility with IBM's new 3.5" standard as well as twice the floppy disk storage on my D: drive. I run Wordstar 2000 plus version 3. Lotus 123 vers 2.01, Dbase III+, PFS First Publisher, and PC Paint Plus on my system. j܌ In the future I would like to find a way to add more features to my junior system such as more memory and 386 compatibility. There are lots of creative people out there! I enjoy subscribing to jr Newsletter very much and find it very informative. I hope that other subscribers will continue to write about how they are improving or expanding their PCjr systems. Thank you. Joe Pavlovich, Flint, MI Rightwriter Checks Your Grammar I use a grammar checker on top of my word processor. The one I use is Rightwriter by RightSoft. You need 256K and one disk drive, but it operates better with more memory and a ram drive. To operate with 256K and one drive, copy the file to the system disk to avoid constant disk swapping. This limits the length of the files. With more memory and Rightwriter copied to a ram drive it is comparable to running a spell check. Rightwriter is fully compatible with Wordstar, Peachtext 5000, Volkswriter, PC Write, Perfect Writer, Lex, PFS Write, Writing Assistant, Spellbinder, Edix, EDLIN, Eaglewriter, Microsoft Word, Multimate, and all other ASCII editors. To use with DiaplayWrite III, Easywriter II, Wordstar 2000+, WordPerfect, Wordvisor, and XyWrite II, translate the files into ASCII files. I use it with Writing Assistant. It only inserts comments. You decide what you want to change, then run the utility to remove the comments. Rightwriter is not copy protected. Donald C. Gardner, Sutton, MA Can A PCjr Have 736K? Just a note to tell you how much I appreciate your newsletter. I look forward to getting it. I'd like to know how you can put more than 640K into the Jr. My curiosity on this was stimulated by your mention of the little utility that allows the Jr to address up to 736K. Also, what about giving the excess memory to DOS? I've had my Jr for about a year now but have found little information on how to put it to best use until now. As you know, to the uninitiated, technical manuals are terribly obtuse; so I appreciate your newsletter for helping straighten out some of my questions and for the ads from Jr hardware and software suppliers. Thanks again. Lance Fowler, WHERE FROM !!!!!! EDITOR'S NOTE: Yes, it is possible for your PCjr to have more than 640K. A relatively simple, though not for the novice, modification to one of the many types of memory expansion sidecars made for PCjrs (IBM, Microsoft jr Booster, etc.) canj give you 736K of DOS addressable memory. Check with PCjr advertisers in this issue for details on the modification. Once the modification has been performed and your modified sidecar installed, you need a version of DOS which will address the extra memory. Larry Newcombe's jrconfig.sys, which is on JR POWER PAK (DISK #52) will do this for you. If you want more information on the memory expansion to 736K, see the July 1987 issue of jr Newsletter. If you started subscribing since then and don't have the July issue, we don't have any back issues to send you, but we will be reprinting all the major articles printed between June 1987 and May 11988 on a disk, called BEST OF JR NEWSLETTER (Volume 2), next month. Add Jumpin BBS To jr Support Systems I just received my February jrNewsletter and saw to my dismay, that my bbs was not listed. I don't know how you would have known about it as I haven't written since I wrote to tell you about jUMP (jUNIOR USERS of the MONTEREY PENINSULA). I now run jUMPIN (jUNIOR USERS of the MONTEREY PENINSULA INFORMATION NETWORK) BBS. The board has been public since June 27, 1987. It is unfortunately not run on jr. It is run on an XT clone. I didn't want to give the use of jr, so I bought an "inferior" machine to do the work! I am currently running off a 20 meg hard drive, but plan to install another 20 megs soon, probably before this letter reaches you. I test all the files on my jr to see if they will work on jr. To the best of my knowledge, all the files on line will run on a PCjr in one or another of the configurations that we have. With the bbs files and the support files taking up a lot of room, I have about 14 megs of files on line, with another 6 or 7 megs in the "library". All of which run on jr! The Facts: Name jUMPIN BBS Number (408) 3948842 Hours 24 hours a day Baud 300/1200 N 8 1 Where Seaside CA (Monterey Peninsula) PC Pursuitable YES 408 Is that really a word? Software RBBS ver 15.8 Sysop George Layton Also, I will remind you of our users group. jUMP (jUNIOR USERS of the MONTEREY PENINSULA) P.O. BOX 1191, Seaside, CA 93955 Lloyd Reece President George Layton Vice President Meeting normally 2nd Wed. of the month at the Seaside Library, 515 Harcourt, Seaside, CA Current membership.....about 35 Thanks for your efforts on behalf of ALL of us jr users! George Layton, Seaside, CA Reader Provides Tips on Good PCjr Products Thought maybe that I would offer a tidbit of info in a product that I purchased over the Christmas holidays. It is a mouse driver called "MousePerfect". Naturally for, "WordPerfect" and it works GREAT! after you configured it for the Jr. There seems to be some strange things going on in the way that the driver addresses the Jr's memory. After reading the instruction booklet, which is nicely done, I had some problems. By the way, my Jr. is a full 640K with IBM Sidecar, a second 80 track floppy drive using the card from Creative Firmware, a 7.4 Mhz speed up kit, a V20 chip, a "Microsoft" serial mouse, and jrVideo cartridge from PC Enterprises (which is fantastic). This spring I hope to get that HardDrive from SPC..I also use the "Dualfonts" chip to enhance my color monitor. It too works fantastic..A new keyboard and I am all set for a couple of years. Anyway back to the story, I was quite upset with MousePerfect so I called them and got a recording. I hastily explained my problem and hung up, figuring that's the end of it.. Low and behold later that very evening I got a call back from them. That fellow asked me to turn on the machine and he walked me through the whole process and Voila! It worked! It seems that just on the Jr. you have to install the driver then uninstall it and then install it again and then it recognizes the mouse...weird! Anyway it sure does a beautiful job with popup screens (12 of them) and the fellow was very nice and courteous and said if I had anymore problems to please call back. As you may know, with the Jr. keyboard it is almost impossible to run WordPerfect. Now it is just like the "Word". The price is $30.00 plus $5.00 shipping and handling from MousePerfect, Inc., P.O. Box 367, Clarkston, GA 30021, 18006282828 ext. 564. I noticed you were looking for comments on the PCPaintbrush. Well I have been running it for about 3 months and I have had no problems with it what so ever. It works great on this system. There are instructions on page 110 in the Appendix for setup with the various PCjr enhancements. On the contrary a friend of mine brought over his "MouseSystems" PC Paint and it will run in the normal 4 color mode but not in the 16 color mode. I also noticed a review on the ProComm communications software. It is my opinion that the fellow did not run it on a PCjr. Those commands hitting the Alt key then the Fn key then the # key requires the dexterity of an octopus.. And another wonderful thing (sarcastic) is the Jr's lack of DMA makes it a "B...." to upload or download from a disk. I have latched on to the latest ver of Qmodem SST (3.1) and let me say it will run circles around ProComm. It handles all file transfer protocols! The doc is twice as thick as ProComm's (about 140 ps) plus there is additional do in other pertinent protocols and there is even a section in the manual on a setup for a PCjr. It also has a section so that you can set the tones (3 of them) example 1005001000 cps for correct, uploading and downloading. True it takes up a little more memory, but what do you want, a BMW or VW? In a catalog for the TI994A they have a 64K Printer Bufferj (cat #34888) for only $59.95. It is a parallel interface and comes with its own external case and power supply. Boy! I tell for the price the cannot be beat and I cannot even think anymore how anyone can live without one. It has enough memory to hold 45 pages double space and boy when a person is printing a biggie like Qmodem SST doc, it sure is a super unit. And the price is cheaper than I have seen advertised in the "Shopper". I believe that was something like $90. The catalog comes from TENEX Computer Express, P.O. Box 6578, South Bend, IN 46660, 18003482778. George J Trombly, Grosse Pte., MI EDITOR'S NOTE: Thanks to George for his many good tips. Although we don't agree with his comments about ProComm on the PCjr, we recognize that judgments on software are sometimes very subjective. One thing to keep in mind when using the PCjr keyboard to use the Fn key in combination with other keys do not hold the Fn key. Just press it and then press the next key. This makes it a lot easier to use, especially when you are doing something like shiftF3 or other commands where you have to hold the first key down. This is common in WordPerfect, and once you realize you don't have to hold the Fn key, it makes a big difference. Is Your PCjr Socially Acceptable? Thanks for your newsletter. I know that I have all the power I need in my enhanced PCjr; but without the moral support provided by your newsletter I honestly believe that many of us owners would have ben psyched into unnecessarily replacing our units with one of the more socially acceptable PC's. Keep up the good work. Peter P. Palker, Jeffersonville, VT Reader Reports on Compatable Software I've just finished reading my January issue and would like to comment on the "Notes on Compatability" article. With regards to the PCPaintbrush program, I have found it to work satisfactorily with the PCjr. However, a single drive owner will experience an annoying screen when attempting to save to disk B:. The screen prompt "place disk in drive B: and strike any key when ready" scrolls across the screen. After saving the picture, only a portion of the prompt is repainted over. This screen repaint only affects the drawing being displayed. The ICONS and MENU bar written over still have remnants of this prompt. I have found that placing a data disk in drive A before invoking the save process will spare the user this annoyance. Another recent purchase of mine was Wilderness distributed by Spectrum HoloByte. This program is a good adventure and learning tool for the outdoorsmen (And women? ed) However, there is one caution to jr owners. The program is copyj protected, but there is an install program on the disk that will allow you to make a backup. But this is only for a two disk drive machine. If you try to run the install program on a single drive jr, the program will eat the entire disk. I learned this the hard way. If you have a single disk drive, and copyiijr, you can make a backup of this disk for yourself. Other programs which I have tested and found to run acceptable on the jr are: CCS Design CAD pcTools Crosstalk XVI Write Right Harvard Presentation Graphics Drafix Graph in the Box I hope I've been of some help to you and your readers. Jim Duda, W. Richland, WA NO TITLE Gentlemen: I purchased an enhanced jr. 128K with an IMB thermal compact printer almost 2 years ago. About 2 months later IBM announced they were stopping production of it. I thought I'd been stuck with something that would be obsolete and non expandable in no time. Out of the blue came jr Newsletter (which I immediately subscribed to!!) and with it expansion of jr with the Racore Drive II Plus with DMA, now having 640K memory, 2 disk drives and DMA. My jr was purchased to learn computing, which I knew nothing about. Realizing the surface of computer knowledge has barely been scratched, I still have learned a lot and really enjoy my jr which performs flawlessly. I can tell by reading the articles from your subscribers that there are people who own jrs that really know computers. It's reassuring to read the fine things they write about the jr. I use PCWrite exclusively which I think is a fine word processing program, especially for the price. I was given the 2.5 version with the purchase of the jr., then updated to the 2.55 version. Now I'm a proud registered owner of the 2.71 update, which I just received and am doing this letter on. Borland recently had a sale on their Quattro spreadsheet which I've purchased. I'm just getting into it and so for it has worked perfectly on my jr so it appears to be compatible with my jr. My next purchase is going to be a printer. Would love a laser printer but on my budget the new NEC P2200 sure looks good. I do have a couple of questions for you: 1. When making backup copies and work disks I have a lot of trouble with the computer telling me the copies do not compare, (I always COMP the disks) and that one of the disks may not be usable. With both the PC Write and Quattro it took several tries before the backups would work. On both of them the computer said the disk in drive a:, which is the source disk sent by thesej firms, was bad. After tiring of using Abort and Retry I pressed Ignore. The computer said one disk may not be usable. I checked the DIR on both disks, source and backup, and the DIR's read the same amount of memory so I couldn't understand why they weren't comparing. I've used them anyway and they seem to work. I also used several different formatted blank disks and got the same results. I will say that the blank disks were purchased from a local Clone dealer and are generic disks. Could this be the problem? Could I be doing something else wrong? 2. I've used the previous versions of PC Write on my jr with no problems. With the Racore II, I leave the jr. and PC mode toggle switch in the PC mode. Sometimes now in the PC mode the screen flashes when I page up or down or hit the Enter key. This is very disturbing but goes away when I switch to the jr mode. I haven't checked with Quicksoft yet. Do you have any idea what would be causing this and how it can be corrected? The jr Newsletter is greatly appreciated here, believe me. Until receiving my first issue of the jr Newsletter I was about to throw the jr out. Thanks for preventing a "BIG" mistake!!! In fact thanks to your publication (and upon purchase of a better printer) my jr will be doing most of my employment clerical work which is done at home, tediously banging on a portable manual typewriter. I save each of my jr Newsletters and refer back to them frequently. Do you have an index or contents listing of all of jr Newsletters articles? If not I think it would be a good idea. My issues will be in a 3ring binder notebook soon and an index reference guide would be extremely helpful. Thanks for the jr Newsletter. If there's anything to say against the jr Newsletter it's that it doesn't seem to come often enough. When it does I read it from cover to cover. Keep up the fine work. The PCjr and jr Newsletter Lives!! Marvin Sehestedt, Roswell, NM EDITOR'S NOTE: We appreciate the compliments. As for the questions, we'll attempt to answer, since similar questions have been raised by other readers. When you make backup copies of program disks, the preferred method is to format a new diskette, using the DOS format command, then use the copy *.* command. This will, however, skip over bad sectors, if there are any, on your target disk. Then the diskettes will not be exactly comparable. When using the DOS comp command, you should get a good match on a file by file comparison, otherwise there is a cause for worry. As for getting a message that the source diskette (in Marvin's case a new program diskette) is bad, don't believe it until you have tried to copy it several times without success. Sometimes a speck of dust or a slight misalignment of your drive's read head can cause that message to appear. The disk may have nothing wrong with it. The flashes of Marvin's screen upon pressing Enter or PgUp or Dn are probably not the result of the software he is using. It's more likely a slight problem in the setup procedures. A different number of video buffers, or the elimination of certain memory resident software (such as Sidekick), may solve the problem. At any rate, in his case the problem disappears in jrj mode, so try using jr mode for those applications where the flash occurs. There is very little difference between the jr and the pc modes in the Racore units, so you will probably find that you can use all the software you have without ever switching from the jr mode. The last question about indexes for jr Newsletter has been asked before. We think we have come up with something much better in our Best of jr Newsletter disk (Disk #54). On that disk we include a great utility called LIST. Using LIST, a shareware program by Vernon Buerg, you can go through the entire disk of past articles from jr Newsletter, looking for a specific word or combination of words. It will take you instantly to each occurrence of that word or words. This can be much handier than an index because many times the information you may be looking for may be buried in an article that is primarily dealing with another subject. So an index would list it under one heading, causing you to skip over it in your search for the nugget of information buried in the text. It's an amazingly useful utility and we urge you to use it, not only to search the Best of jr Newsletter disk, but to search any text at all. DoItYourself PCjr Owner Finds Many Uses for Jr Power Pack Gentlemen: When I first subscribed to "jr Newsletter" I was a little disappointed in what I was getting, but I guess some of the better things were printed prior to my subscription. As an example: I'm a retired IBM engineer and I repair, alter and make anything I can figure out. Well I wanted an inexpensive way to increase my memory and I had the 128K sidecar. I have all the books but it was too late to get the logics for the memory expansion unit. I ordered the Best of jr Newsletter and there was everything I needed to know. I already knew that 256K x 1 x 150 ns DRAMS could be substituted. When the now defunct "TI99er" had an article on a hardware modification to the IBM disk controller card I went ahead and altered the card and implemented the clumsy software. Since it was accomplished by batch files it would never work on programs like IBM's Personal Communications Manager or PC Paint or many other programs without a helluva lot of patching and renaming, etc., etc.,. Thanks to your wonderful Disk #52 "jr Power Pack" and Mr. Newcomb's programs, I've redone all my disks and they and the drives work as smooth as honey...Kudas to jr Newsletter! Those two disks have made life at the Keyboard comfortable again. Now for some questions. I would like a printer driver program alone without a memory driver and I assumed the file "JRDRIVE.COM" was it but there's no documentation for it that I can find. "FIXMEMJR" refers to a lot of things it can do as well as Larry Newcomb's program but I don's see it documented anywhere either. NEXT: I implemented the Basica patch in the disk and the author says that to activate the soft keys as in cartridge Basic at the DOS prompt you enterj BASICAJR KEY. Either way, either entering BASICAJR or the above results in same thing no function keys. I haven't used the other options of Mr. Newcomb's yet, since I'm waiting for the DRAMS and a V20 to arrive by mail, but I don't anticipate problems. Keep up the good work of keeping the "jr" alive and well and if you could find time to answer the questions on the files mentioned above on disk #52 I'd appreciate it. James A. Jann, Vallejo, CA EDITOR'S NOTE: We're glad James' initial disappointment turned to joy. To answer the questions raised in his letter No, jrdrive.com on JR POWER PACK is not a printer driver. It enables you to add drives to your jr. As for fixmemjr, there is no such file on JR POWER PACK, so we don't know what James is referring to here. As for restoring the use of function keys after using the basica patch, you just run the program called key.bas, which is on the disk. In order to run it, first install the patch, then run key.bas. Want Help Learning Dos? Try McGufy's Dos Primer When I first used Jrconfig.sys a key utility on the JR POWER PACK disk (#52) I didn't quite get the point. Then the other day it dawned on me that Low Ramdrive implied the possibility of a High Ramdrive. I publish a little quarterly magazine of cartoons and commentary on my PCjr. Files rarely exceed 50K. Why not put a bunch of utilities in C:, the Low Ramdrive and my PCWrite in a 300K D:, the High Ramdrive. Why not, indeed! Everything happens in an instant. In fact, things were going a little too fast at first and made me nervous. Now I tell people I only have four drives but I'll get used to it. No disk swapping (I load command.com as well into C & D), the long autoexec.bat takes up about a minute and a half but then it's work all day and copy to a data disk from time to time. A $15. NEC V20, a $145. memory upgrade to 640K and Jrconfig.sys ended my search for a new computer! So I am exceedingly grateful to you for disk #52. And I see you have a free offering classifieds. Enclosed is a primer on DOS which I have written for new PC users. It will make them proficient in a matter of hours. I know that almost everyone who reads your fine paper is an old pro, but now and again I see a pleading for some rudimentary help. Bob Monahon, Limerick, ME EDITOR'S NOTE: We checked out Bob Monahon's DOS Primer and found it to be an excellent wy to learn DOS commands. Many people are confused by the DOS manual, which, like most books written on DOS, read like the Dead Sea Scrolls. Bob's primer gives you short, clear examples which new users as well as old hands will find enlightening. For $4 it's a steal. See the classified section for details on ordering. Reader Gets 736K On His PCjr But Wants To Go To 1024K Like many people I find myself coming up with ways to use more and more RAM. Once you have used a program like DOSAMATIC,j (jrNewsletter disk #49) you will be amazed as to how many programs you would like to have running at the same time and just a few keystrokes away. I presently have a PCjr with a Tecmar Captain and Cadet sidecars. I removed the 64K chips from the Captain board, soldered in sockets and then installed 256K chips. While this was rather easy to do, I caution people from attempting this on their own unless they have a talent for this type of work. One slip or error and it will cost more to get it fixed than if you had a professional do it from the start. My system now has 512K on the Captain, plus 384K on the Cadet and 128K on the main board for a total of 1024K on a PCjr! While this looks great there is still the problem of DOS recognizing only up to 640K. Being a novice in the area of modifying DOS programs, I contacted Tecmar for assistance in solving the problem. They did not know if the memory addresses above 640K could be accessed for normal RAM use and offered no help to find a solution. While Temcar's products work well, their quickness to make a sale outweighs their desire to service the customer after the sale. After extensive reading I had learned everything I needed to know except exactly how to solve the problem. It seems every text assumes the reader already knows all the basic yet critical steps to put the information into use. A short example is often all that is needed to clarify how to incorporate the information into a program. I was very excited to receive the CONFIGJR.SYS program by Larry Newcomb on Jr. Newsletter disk #52. With this program DOS recognizes 736K. This gives me more encouragement the full 1024K can be recognized as usable RAM. Since memory addresses above 736K are reserved for video buffers and jr. cartridges, some sacrifices may be necessary in these areas to reassign these addresses. I would like to contact Larry Newcomb to see if he has the ability and is willing to modify the JRCONFIG.SYS program further to accommodate 1024K RAM. Unfortunately I do not have a modem so I can not send him a message. I would appreciate it if jr Newsletter would forward my letter to Larry and present the challenge to the jr Newsletter readers for I am willing to compensate them for their time and knowledge. Do you or any of the jr Newsletter readers have a copy of the patch for Auto Cad? If so, I am also willing to pay for a copy of it. I commend you for your excellent newsletter, software, and fellow readers. Donald E. Ellis, Wooster, OH EDITOR'S NOTE: We believe 736K is the limit as far as DOS addressable memory on the PCjr is concerned. But the so called impossible has been done before, so we don't rule it out. As for a patch for Auto Cad, we know of PCjr users who have successfully used Auto Cad without a patch. We'll try to get more information on this for a future issue. Warning About Printer Drivers I have a PCjr with 640K (Tecmar upgrade) and one drive. I recently purchased a Mouse Systems mouse made especially for thej Jr's connectors and a PC Paint Plus program. I purchased the products from PC Enterprises from the ad in the newsletter. It runs fine except I can't print anything. I have a STAR NX10 printer which is one PC Paint Plus does NOT support. I called them and they referred me to some company in the state of Washington who MIGHT have a print driver to make it work. I spent $150 already and they suggest that I spend another $50 to try a solution that MAY work. I'm waiting right now and asking questions before I spend any more money. If you have a solution (or an attempt at one) I'd love to try it. If not, caution your readers to CHECK PRINTER SUPPORT BEFORE BUYING! Patrick Delahanty, Elkhart, IN EDITOR'S NOTE: We don't know of a solution to this problem, but perhaps another reader has found one. If so, please let us know. Reader Benefits from Newsletter's Easy to Follow Articles I've read issues of Personal Computing and other similar magazines and sometimes feel overwhelmed by the amounts of information provided. With your newsletter, I inevitably read something where I say "That's exactly the problem I experienced" or "That's the same question I had." I have an advanced degree in business and am used to reading various manuals and textbooks, and I still find no better substitute for articles that are succinct and easy to follow, which is exactly the format of your newsletter. Enough of the flattery. In the future how about some comments on accounting software or educational software for the kids in the family. Bruno Dacanay Chicago, IL EDITOR'S NOTE: We don't usually publish letters that are flattering to us because we doubt you want to read them, but we thought many readers might take heart from the fact that even a person with an advanced degree finds it difficult to follow some of the writing on computers that appears in most computer magazines. And, yes, we will try to review more accounting software and educational programs.PCjr User Loves Compuserve, Writes Textbooks With WordPerfect I have found Compuserve very helpful in expanding the use of my PCjr. Recently I downloaded an excellent Polynomial Regression work sheet for Lotus 1 2 3 (By D. Graiver). I checked it out with regression program in a math book and it verified the results. The neat thing about this program is that it runs automatically with a lattice of macros. In addition, you can add other features to it and save the modified program. Presently, I am writing two engineering textbooks on my PCjr using WordPerfect. The "end note" feature in WordPerfect is great for listing references. You can put them in as you develop and edit text and they all wind up on the last page which I title "References," all correctly numbered. The text saved to floppy disk can be printed out on a laser printer at work. This system works so well that it has made writing a pleasure rather than a chore. William Glaeser Columbus, OH Procomm User Uses RAM Disk For Faster Downloading One reader commented in the March issue that Procomm downloads slow to disk. This is true, but i have found a way around this: download to a RAM disk. By using a RAM disk, I have even used Zmodem, the fastest protocol I know about. The new Procomm, Procomm + V.1, is wonderful! It has a 200 number dialing directory with multiple directories available. It supports many more protocols plus you can install your own. Making auto logon script files is even easier with the Record function that writes one for you! The host mode now supports individusl password protection and doesn't allow an unverified user drop to DOS. You can also define your own file lister and editor. Procomm Plus requires 192K memory free. It should run on a 256K jr, but I know it runs on a 640K jr with a 200K RAM disk. Jay Hofacker Lexington, KYMore on Speeding Up Writing Assistant Your July '87 issue contained an aswer to a reader's question about speedup up the IBM Writing Assistant program. I followed your advice and it made a world of difference. (The writer is referring to substituting the version of WRITE.EXE that's on the sampler disk for the original version on your workdisk, then deleting WRITE.SWP from the workdisk and copying WRITE.NON to the workdisk from the sampler. See July issue for details. ED) I followed your advice and it made a world of difference. However, I found recently that the change does not permit you to print to a disk. I wanted to convert some files to ASCII text for transfer to another system and each time I tried to print I received the message "wrong file name." After exhausting all the other ideas, I used my original program disk and it worked fine. Something must happen when you substitute the sampler programs for the originals. I don't print to disk very often, so it's no big deal. Just thought you'd like to know. The speed of operation with the changes is well worth a minor inconvenience once in a great while. Your publication is great. I've learned so much from your articles particularly during the past six months. I'm semiretired and work out of my home. Hence the use of my jr for business and financial matters. Couldn't do without Lotus 1 2 3, utilities like Sidekick and those from jr Newsletter's Software Store, like JR POWER PACK that makes my system more flexible and work faster. I enjoy playing around with resident programs and utilities and only whish I had a hard disk so I could do more with DOS and file management programs. Hope to get a hard disk one of these days. What I'd really like is to speed up the processor. Is the V20 chip the only way? A clock speed of 7MHz and a memory of 1 MB or more would put me in jr heaven. Walter K. Neubauer, P.E. Fayetteville, NY EDITOR'S NOTE: The V20 chip is certainly the least expensive way to boost your PCjr's processing speed (under $20). But greater speed is available with the Nickel Express, from Paul Rau Consulting (see ad in this issue). With IBM expanded PCjrs a clock speed of 8MHz is possible with the Nickel Express. Others will go to 6.77 or 7.37MHz, which is still heaven, if you place a high value on computing speed.Here's How to Shatter The 2400 Baud Barrier In a recent issue of jr Newsletter, you indicated that people have not been able to get the serial ports on PCjrs to operate reliably at more than 2400 baud. I had the same problem until I remembered that the jr steals cycles to do disk input and output. So I set up a memory disk and routed the data being received by the jr to the memory disk. My communications software does no disk I/O during data transfer and thus did not have to be on the memory disk. As a result, my jr transfers data reliably at 9600 baud. It is also important to eliminate any other software that might steal the CPU, such as a reminder program which regularly wakes up to check the time, or a program which updates the time on the corner of the jr's screen. Wayne Stevens Fairfield, CTThexder DOES Run On PCjrs With Legacy Just a note on compatibility. A reader of jr Newsletter said that he could not run Thexder on his jr with Legacy expansion. I have Legacy II expansion, upgraded to Legacy III, with 640K, two 360K floppies, one 1.2MB floppy, two hard drives (20 & 30MB), plus. I have run Thexder for over a month several times a week, when not several times a day, and never had any problem whatsoever, in 16 colors and three voice sound. I usually use DOS 3.3 with my config.sys set to: device=jrconfig.dsk c d2 j p t3 w79 x (This requires using the latest version of jrconfig, which is on JR POWER PACK II (Disk #65)) Sometimes I boot from drive A using DOS 2.1 and config.sys set to: device=jrconfig.dsk c d2 t3 w79 Same excellent result every time. As you see, there is no vxx (no memory for video) and I do not run any other program that does. Conclusion: Thexder will run using Larry Newcomb's jrconfig.dsk. It does not run on my computer when I just boot with no config setting and does not run using legacy.com either, which is to set the jr to PC mode or equivalent. Better said, it relocated the video memory, but no luck with this either, as I said. Since I use jr config.sys and later jrconfig.dsk it seems that my jr overcame many conpatibility problems. Thanks for publishing jr Newsletter. I am very satisfied with it. Very informative, especially if you have a PCjr. Antonio D. F. Martins Bridgeport, CTWarning About Printer Drivers I have a PCjr with 640K (Tecmar upgrade) and one drive. I recently purchased a Mouse Systems mouse made especially for the Jr's connectors and a PC Paint Plus program. I purchased the products from PC Enterprises from the ad in the newsletter. It runs fine except I can't print anything. I have a STAR NX10 printer which is one PC Paint Plus does NOT support. I called them and they referred me to some company in the state of Washington who MIGHT have a print driver to make it work. I spent $150 already and they suggest that I spend another $50 to try a solution that MAY work. I'm waiting right now and asking questions before I spend any more money. If you have a solution (or an attempt at one) I'd love to try it. If not, caution your readers to CHECK PRINTER SUPPORT BEFORE BUYING! Patrick Delahanty, Elkhart, IN EDITOR'S NOTE: We don't know of a solution to this problem, but perhaps another reader has found one. If so, please let us know.