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Usi ng he SAGE il
The Journal Stcff Repoft on rhis Impre.ssiq.,e 68000 -based Srystem
Jmachine has only the two drives and a single IED that is usually red but turns green when the data bus is active. The back panel has RS-232 serial, parallel printer, and monitor ports. There is also an I E E E 4 8 8 p o r t w h i c h i s s u p p o r t e d by a Pascal Unit for use in local network and device driving ap' p l i c a t i o n s .
T h e p e r f o r m a n c e o f t h e S a g e is w o n d e r f u l . S a g e g r a c i o u s l y p r o ' v i d e d u s t h e t o p o f t h e l i n e c o n ' f i g u r a t i o n ( w i t h t w o d o u b l e - s i d e d , d o u b l e - d e n s i t y d i s k d r i v e s a n d h a l f a m e g a b y t e o f R A M ) . 1 2 8 K o f the memory is directly addressed b y t h e C P U , t h e r e m a i n d e r is c o n ' f i g u r e d a s a v i r t u a l d i s k ( R A M - D I S K ) . W e h a v e f o u n d t h i s c o m ' b i n a t i o n a n e f f i c i e n t o n e .
The p-Systemo on the Sage I t r s p o s s i b l e t o s e t u p t h e S a g e ' s b o o t s e q u e n c e s o t h a t t h e s y s t e m f i l e s a r e a l l a u t o m a t i c a l l y l o a d e d i n t o t h e R A M D I S K . T h i s m e a n s t h a t t h e r e i s a l m o s t n o d e l a y b e t ' ween calltng up any of the system tools. such as the filer or editor, f r o m t h e m a i n c o m m a n d l i n e . a n d the appearance of the prompt for the system tool. tt is gratifying to c a l l u p t h e f t l e r a n d b e a b l e t o u s e i t i m m e d i a t e l y , r a t h e r t h a n waitlng for it to be read from a floppy disk and loaded into main memory.
I have had occassion to use an A p p l e o a g a i n a f t e r u s i n g o n l y t h e Sage for several months. While I did not exactly become impatient waiting for the system to load the tools, t found myself able to check my notes or find a page in a minual whlle waltlng for the tool promptlinFl've been spoiled bY the Sage.
While the access speed of the Sage's RAMDTSK ls amazing, the Sage's floppy drives have fast, effi' cient access as well. Even when the operatlng system files are read from- a floppy rather than the RAMDISK, the system still steps quickly from one tool to another.
The Sage is of course equiPPed with the latest version of UCSO
P R O D U C T : S a g e ll 68OOO-based Microcomputer
Two 640K floppy-disk drives
128K directly- addressed RAM
3 8 4 K R A M D I S K ( v i r t u a l d i s k )
MANUFACTU REB:
Sage Computer "' Technology,
4905 Energy WaY R e n o , N V ' 8 9 5 0 2 P R I C E : $ 5 1 5 0 0 0 (system as listed)
$3600.00 (one disk d r i v e ; n o R A M D I S K ) (Other configurations possible)
For the past three monthE, we have been using a Sage II com' puter in our office. The Sage comes with UCSD Pascalo, FOR' TRAN, a BA^SIC comPiler, and a 68000 assembler. Of these, we have used the Pascal comPiler er' c l u s i v e l y " ( V o l l t t o n S y s t e m s ' Modula and CP/M 6EK are op- ttonally available lnstead of the p Systemo). We have also used the UCSD Paecalo edltor for extenslve w o r d p r o c e s s i n g a n d h a v e bothered the Sage staff at the Reno offtce with a lot of questlona.
The Hardware
T h e s m a l l , d t g n t f i e d ' l o o k i n g Sage II ls a powerful computer. It ftti in a compact case: about four inches high, twelve across, and fourteen deep. The front of the
Pascalo which has real'time and low-level access features. With a little help from Sage to find the r i g h t p a g e i n t h e d o c u m e n t a t i o n , we were able to write some fairlY s o p h i s t i c a t e d p r o g r a m s t o d r i v e o u r m o d e m . T h e o p e r a t i n g s p e e d . of the Sage is fast enough that we
can check to see if the modem is s t r l l d e t e c t i n g a c a r r i e r b e t w e e n e a c h c h a r a c t e r s e n t t o t h e m o d e m . w e s u s p e c t t h a t t h i s m o d e m s y s t e m w r l l p r o v e m o r e r e l i a b l e t h a n t h e o l d s y s t e m o n t h e A p p l e o u \ e c a u s e of the frequent testing for
e r r o r c o n d i t i o n s .
t , r , . ,
Sofnsare Support
The Sage II comes with the P' Systeme Pascal, FORTRAN, BASIC, a n d a s s e m b l y l a n g u a g e s . I t i s a l s o p r o v r d e d w i t h a u n i q u e s e t o f t o o l s f r o m S a g e . T h e s e in c l u d e u t i l i t t e s t h a t m a y h e l p y o u t r a n s f e r f l l e s f r o m a n o t h e r m a c h t n e to t h e S a g e , a c o n f i g u n n g a n d f o r m a t t i n g u t t l t ' t y t h a t s e t s a l l k i n d s o f t h i n g s y o u mrght expect to be able to do with D I P s w i t c h e s - o r n o t a t a l l , a n d a demo program that is fun to watch when you first pull the Sage out of t h e b o x a n d s e t it u p .
Although we did not manage to transTer any code files from our o l d A p p l e t o t h e S a g e , w e d i d u s e Sage's tools to transfer our text files and simply recompiled the programs we needed. wtthout the tooli provided with the Sage, thle would have been a real chore.
The menu-driven configurtng a n d f o r m a t t i n g u t i l l t Y l e marvelous. This pachage, called
"SAGEIITIL," does much more than format dtskettes. SAGEUTIL can set the parallel port to run on interrupts or poll the Port for a busy signal at intervals you set from the keyboard-no openlng the case and fiddling with swtt' ches. SAGEUTIL can also set the disk drives to read disks other than the standard 8O-track Sage format. We tried to read Appleo disks but that proved to be too much of a stretch for our drlves.
Depending upon the indivtdual ' drive,'you may or may not be able
J o u r n a l o l P a s c a l a n c J A d a J u l y / A u g . r 9 8 3 p a g e I I
to do it. 4O-track, and IBM formats are supported and readable with b e t t e r c h a n c e s o f s u c c e s s . SAGEUTIL also sets the parameters of the serial port.
Speed . :
It is marvelous to watch the Pascal compiler zip through a program. With both source and object files in the RAMDISK (and not writing a listing file), the Sage compiled the 786-line Formatter, p u b l i s h e d i n v o l . l , no. I of the
Journal, in 35 seconds-more than 1 3 O O l i n e s p e r m i n u t e . E v e n w i t h both source and object files on a f l o p p y , t h e c o m p i l e r f i n i s h e d i n 4 O s e c o n d s - s t i l l a l m o s t 1 2 O O l i n e s p e r m i n u t e . ( A n o t h e r in d i c a - t i o n o f t h e S a g e ' s e x t r a o r d i n a r i l y f a s t f l o p p y a c c e s s . ) W i t h b o t h source and object files in the RAM- . D I S K a n d a l i s r i i l e o n o n e o f t h C , f l o p p i e s , t h e S a g e s t i l l m a n a g e d 8 5 0 l i n e s p e r m i n u t e . A f r e r a g o n i z - i n g o v e r c o m p i l a t i o n o n a s l o w m a c h i n e , t h e S a g e i s m o s t refreshing. It is not nearly so an- noying to find a syntax error in the next-to-the-last procedure of a pro- g r a m w h e n y o u k n o w it will only take a minute to recompile the w h o l e f i l e .
Once we haci our faithful epple Pascalo programs tranferred by modem to the Sage, they ran w i t h o u t m o d i f i c a t i o n . ( W e a c t u a l - ly had to transft:r th€ text flles and recompile them because we had no way to transfer code.) Our pro- g r a m s f o r m a i n t a i n i n g our mail- ing lists ran five times as fast on t h e S a g e w i t h o u t c h a n g t n g anything. When we made some modifications to the programs to take advantage of the high access speed of the Sage II's RAMDISK, our sorting program ran ten tlmes as fast on the Sage as it used to on the Apple IIc. This ts partly because of the llghtentng-fast response of the RAMDISK, partly the larger heap space avialable on the Sage, and partly the speed of the Motorola 68000 CPU.
Documentudon
The documentatlon for the Sage comes ln four looseleaf volumes (thts tncludes Soffech'8 documen- tation for the p- System). Ae ls often the case, it always seems easler to flnd somethtng you
- t
a l r e a d y k n o w a b o u t t h a n something you need to know to solve a sticky problem. We called Sage about things that we could have found if we had consulted the index. we like to think this might not have happened quite so many times if the index had its o w n l i t t l e t a b s o t h a t y o u remembered that there was one.
However, Sage's documentation is well-written and warns of poten' ttal problems with more candor than is often seen in hardware documentation. An examPle of this is the following line from the section on Computer SYstem Inter' c o m m u n i c a t i o n : " s e t t i n g u P a c o m m u n i c a t i o n l i n k o v e r a n RSz32 channel . . . is usually easier said than done. The number of details which must be coordinated usually require an experienced user." (The remainder of the sec' tion is devoted to explaining how to use the tools sage provides to make system intercommunication as easy as possible.)
The portions of the documenta' tion actually done by Sage (large parts are from Soffech) include some helpful cross-references-an i m p o r t a n t p a r t o f t e c h n i c a l writing that is too often ignored in documentation. As usual, I think there could be more; but it is a pleasure to find a number of good cross-references-rather than the usual none.
Servlce Staff
Between some problems we had w i i h o u r p r i n t e r n o l r e c e t v i n g te x t correctly from the Sage and a few o t h e r t h i n g s w e m i g h t h a v e answered ourselves if we had c h e c k e d t h e m a n u a l s m o r e carefully, we spent a lot of tlme on the phone wtth members of the Sage staff. You might say that they brought the slmple questlons on themselves by betng so helpful wlth more dtfftcult matters. wlth help from the Reno staff, we solv' ed problems wlth an unetable CRT dlsplay, the printer lnterface, and a modem cable whtch dld not have the rtght wlrlng (never tru6t an RS 232 cable-open lt up and look at lt at the flrst stgn of trou- b l e l ) .
We were pleased to recelve con' elderate treatment from Sage's ser' vlce etaff. Nothlng ls more annoy' lng than havtng a nlce ptece of
hardware that you cannot use ef- fectively because the service staff is nonexistant or unfriendly. Sage provided professional, polite, and helpful service.
Potential Users
We have used the Sage II for everything from word processing to program development and it faithfully broods over the Journal P r o g r a m H o t l i n e e a c h n i g h t without getting hot. The Sage is a versatile piece of hardware that could work in almost any applica tion that did not call for multiple users (other Sage models suPport s e v e r a l u s e r s ) . T h e o n l y o b j e c t i o n t o u s i n g th e S a g e i n t h e h o m e i s i t s cost (and there may not be enough g a m e s a y a i l a b l e fo r i t t o k e e p t h e kids habby). It would certainly be approprtFte for software develop- ment or business uses. The Sage I I ' s s p e e d , a n d a b i l i t y t o i n t e r f a c e with a large number of external devices makes it ideal for research p u r p o s e s a s w e l l .
j o h n M . C r a i g
Journal of Pascal and Ada
NOTE: Watch for a review of Modula-2 on the Sage ln an up- coming tssue. Ed.
t'.
P a g e 1 2 J o u r n a l o l P a s c a l a n d A d a J u l y / A u g . 1 9 8 3
