Re: Applesoft Basic Question

[Rich Hare <rhare@mich.com>]

Dave (and several other people who were particularly helpful)
 Thank you all for your help.
 Got the routine up and running and it sure does make a difference!
 I'm helping a person who has perhaps 100 disks full of old Applewriter
// files created by his father.  These mostly contain family history
compiled over many decades; too valuable to be lost.

I DID remove onerr to finish troubleshooting; that was a help.
Obviously my problem was not including the slot and drive info in
quotes.  

Interesting to me was that, after fixing the syntax, the program would
bomb out when I included slot and drive parameters with both the OPEN
statement and the WRITE statement.  I dropped them after the WRITE
statement and now everything works fine.

Right now, I've done about 12 disks (about 150 files) and my contact
tells me he's got about 100 disks (He's sent me 24 so far).  My process
is:

1) Copy the original disk (as a safeguard I NEVER work with originals)
2) Convert each file from DOS 3.3 binary to DOS 3.3 TEXT
3) Copy the DOS 3.3 TEXT file to my PRODOS hard drive
4) Copy the file from the hard drive to a MSDOS disk using my Bluedisk
card.
5) Load the file on my Pentium from the 1.44 floppy
6) Attach the file to EMAIL to my contact in another state.

PHEW!



Dave Althoff wrote:
> 
> Rich Hare (rhare@mich.com) wrote:
> : I've got my old Applesoft Basic book out and my Dos manual and I'm still
> : stumped.
> 
> : I've got a small routine that reads a DOS 3.3 file off of a disk and
> : converts it to a text file and writes it back.  Input statements are
> : provided for the name of the incoming file and for your choice of names
> : for the outgoing file.
> 
> : Problem is that it directs all disk operations to S6,D1.
> 
> : I have a large number of files to process, and the disk swapping is
> : slowing me down.  I'd like to have the program read the file from S6,D1
> : and write it to S6,D2; but darn it I can't seem to parse the statements
> : to make it work.  It seems that it should be something like:
> 
> : 100 D$=CHR$(4)
> : 110 PRINT D$;"BLOAD"A$;S6,D1
> 
> There is your first problem.  That should read,
> 
> 110 PRINT D$;"BLOAD ";A$;",S6,D1"
> Note that if all of your access is coming from S6, there is no need to
> specify.  Also, I am guessing you are converting a Bank Street Writer or
> AppleWriter ][ file here?  You might want to specify the load address...say...
> 
> 110 PRINT D$;"BLOAD ";A$;",A8192,S6,D1"
> 
> : and later
> : 120 PRINT D$;"OPEN"T$;S6,D2
> : 130 PRINT D$;"WRITE"T$;S6,D2
> 
> Here, again the syntax is wrong...it needs to be OPEN FILENAME,S6,D2.
> Also, again, you just accessed S6,D1, so the S6 is redundant...though not
> a bad idea.  Re-write as follows:
> 
> 120 PRINT D$;"OPEN ";T$;",S6,D2"
> 130 PRINT D$;"WRITE ";T$
> 
> Note that specifying slot and drive is not necessary for a WRITE, READ, or
> POSITION instruction relating to a file that is already open.  Uncle DOS
> remembers where the file is from the OPEN instruction and will use that
> file.  In fact, I am not certain that S and D are valid parameterd for
> READ and WRITE if the file is already open.  Note that DOS 3.3 will
> automatically OPEN an existing file for you if you forget, but if the file
> does not already exist, it will not be created.  Also, unlike ProDOS, DOS
> 3.3 will automatically close open files if the program crashes most of the
> time, but not always, and not necessarily predictably.
> 
> : Got to be a simple answer but I just can't see it.
> 
> It's just the syntax.  Here's a useful tip when you are writing code--
> 
> As you are creating your program, disable the ONERR GOTO instructions
> whenever possible.  That way, you can see *which* error you are getting,
> and *where* it is coming from (for instance, "^G?SYNTAX ERROR" is an
> Applesoft error, while "^GSYNTAX ERROR" comes from DOS...notice the
> difference?).  Of course, this is not always possible; I know I sometimes
> use ONERR GOTO to trap the FILE NOT FOUND and END OF DATA messages in
> order to check for file existence and to find the end of a text file.  In
> those cases, write yourself an error handler which will report back the
> line number and error code before crashing.  Also, at the end of the area
> where you expect to find errors (as when hunting all disks for a
> particular file), issue a POKE 216,0 to disable the ONERR GOTO.  Also
> useful for using multiple error traps for different sections of the program.
> 
> For reference, the error codes--
> DOS 3.3:
> 1:  LANGUAGE NOT AVAILABLE
> 2:  RANGE ERROR
> 3:  RANGE ERROR
> 4:  WRITE PROTECTED
> 5:  END OF DATA
> 6:  FILE NOT FOUND
> 7:  VOLUME MISMATCH
> 8:  I/O ERROR
> 9:  DISK FULL
> 10:  FILE LOCKED
> 11:  SYNTAX ERROR
> 12:  NO BUFFERS AVAILABLE
> 13:  FILE TYPE MISMATCH
> 14:  PROGRAM TOO LARGE
> 15:  NOT DIRECT COMMAND
> 
> Applesoft:
> 0:  ?NEXT WITHOUT FOR ERROR
> 16:  ?SYNTAX ERROR
> 22:  ?RETURN WITHOUT GOSUB ERROR
> 42:  ?OUT OF DATA ERROR
> 53:  ?ILLEGAL QUANTITY ERROR
> 69:  ?OVERFLOW ERROR
> 77:  ?OUT OF MEMORY ERROR
> 90:  ?UNDEF'D STATEMENT ERROR
> 107:  ?BAD SUBSCRIPT ERROR
> 120:  ?REDIM'ED ARRAY ERROR
> 133:  ?DIVISION BY ZERO ERROR
> 163:  ?TYPE MISMATCH ERROR
> 176:  ?STRING TOO LONG ERROR
> 191:  ?FORMULA TOO COMPLEX ERROR
> 224:  ?UNDEF'D FUNCTION ERROR
> 254:  ?REENTER (bad response to INPUT; non-fatal error)
> 255:  BREAK  (^C has been struck)
> 
> After an ONERR GOTO you can find the code with a PEEK (222).  Somewhere
> around here I have the formula for the error-causing line number, but I'm
> not sure where...
> 
> --Dave Althoff, ][
> --
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