Impulse 100 Users.

quirks and problems

how to get around some of them.

Chris O'Connor used the IMPULSE 100 with 640K of memory.
He installed 2 banks of 8 each 256K chips.
At a current price of around $225 for the board with
no memory, a parallel port and a clock calender it is a very economical
way to expand the Jr.

256K chips can be bought for $2.47 from :

       MICROPROCESSORS UNLTD.
       24000 So.  Peoria Av.
       Beggs, OK  74421
       (918) 267-4961

that is the good part of the IMPULSE 100.

And now for some of the problems.........

The worst problem is a lack of confidence in the continued existence of
the company.  They are a pretty small company with freelance engineers
and poor documentation and support.  The other problems will become
apparent as I list the tips for using the IMPULSE 100.


The board has an "automatic" clock/calender.  When DOS boots and gives
it's automatic "DATE" and "TIME" prompt the time is automatically read
from the IMPULSE clock when you hit enter.  This is great if you don't
use an autoexec.bat file... but if you don't you should!!
What's needed is some redirection of input. See DOS 2.1 p.1-5 ff.
But the way to get around it is this.  Can I have and extension I'm on a
type copy con:carriage(enter)(enter)(ctrl)z(enter).

This creates a file called "carriage" which contains of all things one
carriage return.  Now if I use the file as input for the date and time
commands in DOS, I can have the computer "push" the enter key for me.
(That's good since it should do things for us ,right?)
You do it by using this autoexec.bat file (created with copy con: or
even better a text processor):

autoexec.bat follows:
date<carriage
time<carriage


This will allow the IMPULSE board to send the time and date to the
system clock without sending it manually.


Problem 2:(No solution as yet).  The MICROCOM ERA-2 appears not to work
with the IMPULSE installed.  The only way I could get up on this system
was to physically disconnect the IMPULSE board.  This is very bad since
I can not use the printer and 640K.  Any help on this problem is
appreciated.


Problem 3 is the memory management and ramdisk.com software supplied by
IMPULSE.  They seem to have had problems from the beginning.  I did a
memory dump of the higher parts of memory with the IMPULSE and found
that the board has a ROM with ramdisk software.  IMPULSE doesn't
document it's existence at all.  Probably an aborted/rejected attempt at
a ramdisk.  I've found that IBM's memory management and ramdisk software
(pcjrmem.com and ramdisk.com) work just find.  As a matter of fact, I
have second info that the machines at IMPULSE it too!!


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