Turbo Pascal 6.0 and Lotus Print Graph on the HP 95LX

Good news for Turbo Pascal users. The 95LX runs perfectly with Borland's most recent version of Turbo Pascal, including the menu bar options, etc. You only have to copy the TURBO .TPL, TPC.EXE, and TURBO.EXE files to a RAM card and run the TURBO.EXE file. A 512K RAM card will be sufficient, but you better compress your .EXE files and set the System Disk to its maximum size.

 Turbo Pascal 6.0 will then run like an angel, even without further modifications. As expected, the 95LX screen covers only 1/4 the of the usual PC screen, but you can easily move within the full screen by pressing the appropriate Alt-Cursor key combination.

 For those who want to use Turbo Pascal's graphics mode, I recommend a TPGraph Unit specially adapted for the 95LX's screen. For German speaking users, I found the ready-to-use HPGraph Unit presented in following book-plus-disk package excellent: (HP 95LX Palmtop PC, author: Frank Riemenschneider, published by Markt & Technik Verlag AG, D-8013 Haar bei, Mnchen, GERMANY).

 [File TP5GRF.ZIP * in the 95LX programmer's section in CompuServe's HPSYS forum contains graphics units for Turbo Pascal 5 that should work with Turbo Pascal 6 -- Hal.]

 Microsoft's GW Basic seems to run fine on the 95LX.
 
 

LOTUS PRINTGRAPH

I'm happy to share with fellow readers my discovery that 1-2-3's PRINTGRAPH program executes perfectly on the 95LX! However, you cannot display graphs on the 95LX screen by pressing F10 in ImageSelect as one can on a PC since PRINTGRAPH does not have a graphics driver that works on the 95LX. The procedure is as follows:
 
 
  1. 1. Use 1-2-3's Install program on a PC to generate the driver set (123.SET) from the following choices in response to the prompts:

    2.  

     

Text Display: IBM/COMPAQ video graphics (VGA 80X25)

 Keyboard: IMB Keyboard

 Port Interface: IBM Port Interface

 File Translate: IBM PC or compatible

 Graph Printer: Epson-FX and RX series (works with the Diconix printer)

 * On the HP Palmtop Paper on Disk May/Jun 92.
 
 

  1. 2. Having thus created 123.SET, download it to the 95LX together with four other files: PGRAPH.CNF, PGRAPH.EXE, PGRAPH .HLP, and BLOCK1.FNT. These five files come to about 110K, so they can fit nicely on a 128K RAM card, or even reside on the C drive.
  2. 3. Using the 95LX's SET UP utility, configure the 95LX Memory setting to SYSTEM RAM of at least 298.
  3. 4. Execute PGRAPH.EXE from FILER (not from DOS as this can cause an "insufficient memory" message).
  4. 5. KEY STEP: Using the Alt-Arrow keys to navigate around the 80-column screen, in the SETTINGS/HARDWARE/ INTERFACE section, choose: 5 (DOS Device LPT1)! If you try to get PRINTGRAPH to output to a serial port (#2), nothing happens.

    5.  

     

Paul Levine

 San Diego, CA, U.S.A.