No Subject

[jfox@xxxxxxxxxx (Jeff Fox)]

Subject: Offete and other MISC stuff,

I have talked to Robert about his problems in dealing with Offete.
It seems he has a real horror story about trying to deal with them
from a remote location.  

I recall the first time I called Offete to order something (before
I knew Dr. Ting.) and got his dad.  I had a very hard time getting
what I wanted.  I guess that now that Dr. Ting is so busy with so
many aspects of the P21 stuff that the Offete Enterprises Inc, mail
order business is having more problems than usual.

Most people figure they should be able to call Offete and order
stuff.  I think they would like to be able to ask a few semi-technical
details about the products too.  This second one is unlikely, and
just ordering can be difficult.  In fact, it can be almost
impossible if you don't resort to calling Dr. Ting at home, or
talking to him via the email at his job.  

Perhaps we can come up with an alternative.  Dr. Ting sells some
of the stuff from his catalog through FIG.  I don't know why he
sells some stuff, but not all.  Maybe he sells excess stuff there,
I don't know.  

Perhaps we could get him to put more MuP21 stuff in the FIG catalog
so it could be ordered through the FIG office which seems to work
pretty well, mostly due to Frank Hall staying on top of it. 

Another alternative might be to set up a second distribution point.
Perhaps some place in Europe could carry More on Forth Engines and
chips and boards.  It might complicate the distribution, but it
might be a way to help deal with problems with Offete.

For those of us who see Dr. Ting at meetings, or can just drive over
to his house and pick something up we have a way around the Offete
mail order problems.

I am not willing to offer to become an alternate source myself, but
I will think about it.  As you know I have too much to do already.
But I would like to make up some serial and parallel  cables and ROMs
to go along with P21Forth.  A cable to the parallel port, or a cable
to the serial port and a ROM would provide what I intended for P21Forth.
I wanted to offer something "plug and play" for P21 that would provide
ANS Forth and nice utilities etc, and would not require lots of 
hardware trial and error that characterizes kit building.

It didn't work out that way as Dr. Ting only sends a diskette and manual
for P21Forth, so it becomes an advanced kit project, not a basic one.

Perhaps other MISC readers have some ideas on how MISC might be used
to help set up and support a second source for MISC stuff.  As I say
I will look into the details with Dr. Ting.  I don't think it will
seriously cut into the Offete operation, but it will be in Dr. Ting's
interest to get stuff out there however it is done.

I will be setting up a mail order when I have stuff to send out.  As
it is now it is a little early.  But since I am only a few miles from
Dr. Ting it doesn't solve problems with interest in Europe etc.

There seems to be at least as much interest outside of the US now as
there is here.  I hate to think that those who can't pick up stuff at
SVFIG meetings are not able to get access to this stuff.

Anyway, this seems like a good subject for the MISC group.

On a second subject:

Penio asks:
>Well, (inst inst RET +) may be useful from time to time if RET allowed
>the instructions till the end to be executed. Is this the case with F21,
>Jeff?  I guess this will be the behavior of P32 anyway, since RET does
>not occupy a whole instruction slot. 

This is not the case on F21.  In MuP21 or F21 if you execute a RET (;)
it is the last instruction you execute in that word.

You are right about P32 where there will be a one bit RET instruction.
I don't know if that means that Chuck will replace the normal RET 
instruction with something else.

Jeff Fox