By Ward Christensen:

     Whenever you get a new piece of software, you want
to see it WORK.  You don't want to have to do a lot of
reading.  Trouble with that attitude, you might miss some
of the more interesting things available.  SAM76 falls into
that category.
     I'm going to tell you enough to at least see your computer
spit somethng back at you under SAM76.  Then I'm going to tell
you to read "BOOK.DOC" and get the documentation.

     I found that copies of S.COM which were generated on
one system were not necessarily transportable to another
system.  Trying it, my disks performed some unnatural acts
with the head load solenoid until I smashed reset.  So
I therefore have (wrongly or rightly) deleted the S.COM
file from the disk, and instead suggest you generate your own.
     You generate your own copy of SAM76.COM via the following
procedure (this somewhat duplicates S.DOC):

A>ILRAW			which brings in a "raw" SAM76
A>CPMSETL		set up for CP/M running SAM at 100.
			SAM76 comes to life at this point.

%bf,g/=			Reads in G.SAM.  If it accesses the
			wrong disk (I was actually running
			on B: for example, and it went to A:
			to get "G.SAM") then type:
	%sdu,1/=	Select disk unit 1 (B:)
	%bf,g/=

%G/=			Will run G (upper case - case matters
			almost everywher in SAM76 - incorrectly
			specifying a name due to having the
			wrong case might cause an error
			message, or might just "cr/lf")

SAVE 63 S.COM		or B:S.COM

You now have a copy of SAM76 to run.  Try the demo
program:

S

%bf,news/=		Bring in file "news".  If it goes
			to a: and you want b:
	%sdu,1/=
			then try the %bf,news/= again

%lt, /=			Will list the texts in memory.  The
			' ' after the comma is the delimiter
			to use when listing.

%vt,P/=			View the text of "P", which is the
			mainline function of NEWS.  It calls
			p1, p2, p3, and p4, then itself again.

%A/=			Runs news itself.

CP/M users might find SAM76 a little "unfriendly" in that
it uses control-x for line delete instead of control-U, and
that control-s to suspend output, is not implemented.
But one of the ideas of this language it to experiment,
dissect, see what makes a program tick.  Within 1 hour's
experience with SAM76, I rewrote "P" in "NEWS" to pause
for character input before re-executing itself.  Thus the
lack of ^S didn't seem so serious.  
     The more I see the more interesting I get.  I have decided
I'm interested, so the next step will be to send in an order
for the book.  
     Have fun...

P.S. I was unable to generate a copy of a COM file which
would successfully run "S NEWS".  It always tried to go to
drive A, while SAM was on drive B:.  I diddled with "%sdu,1/="
to select the B: drive, but was unsuccessful.  Mind you,
I DIDN'T try very hard - just an hours diddling or so.  I'll
await the book before getting more serious.  The DDJ article
from volume 3, issue 1, is a start, but doesn't have
everything, and I'm sure some things have changed since then.
		----------------
     Now, about that book:  If you have successfully gotten
this far, you must be serious, so get the book!  Here's a
copy of "BOOK.DOC":

A 240 page text book entitled:

SAM76 The First Language Manual

is available {perhaps} from your computer store
and {surely} from the publisher:

	SAM76 Inc.
	Box 257 RR1
	Pennington, N. J., 08534
	U.S.A.

Price is $15.00 postpaid if cash with order.

Otherwise terms are:

$30.00 net 30 days (postpaid) plus
$5.00 for each copy of the invoice required by
the purchaser in addition to the original one which
is furnished free of charge. {U. of FLA. please Note}.

Details of the language may be found in back issues
of Dr. Dobbs', and Creative Computing.

Send a Self Addressed Stamped envelope for a free reference
sheet which lists the commands and gives some examples.


.