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Howdy from Texas

Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2023 5:59 pm
by okto
Looking to get my first Organiser II shortly. I've been fascinated with portable computing since I was a kid, and it's fun to get to explore it more as an adult, especially in a time when there are so many resources for upgrading and expanding old hardware.

Howdy from Texas Getting Started

Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2023 8:31 pm
by Martin
Welcome Okto

We are only a small Forum here but we have attarcted members from all over the globe, Canada, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Turkey, Poland, Austrailia, the UK of course and now Texas US.

What type of Organiser are youi getting?

Jaap Scherphuis a long established Organiser II enthusiast has a web page looking at all the different models (here).

There is some reading for you while you are waiting, a buyers guide and other information (here) and a getting started thread (here).

Sincerely
Martin

Re: Howdy from Texas

Posted: Mon Jun 19, 2023 11:49 pm
by okto
Since posting this, I picked up an LZ which I love, and I have an LZ64 (2nd version with the plastic bezel, seems somewhat uncommon?) with a Dyna-Sys RS232 module on the way from eBay.

This is one of the most fun-to-program computers I've ever used. OPL is like what BASIC should be; there are a couple commands I miss from BASIC (coercing numbers to strings and vice versa without arguments, for example), but it's a fun puzzle to figure out how to do things within the parameters of a new language.

I actually have a couple programs I'll probably share once I sand down the rough edges, as well as a couple simple processes that I use as modules in other programs.

Re: Howdy from Texas

Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2023 1:31 pm
by Martin
Okto.. It is always difficult trying 'not to teach grandmother to such eggs'

But the republished LZ Programming Manual has..

Mixing strings and numbers
If you try to allocate a number to a string variable, an error will be reported. There is no automatic type conversion between string and numeric variables. However, OPL does have facilities for forcing conversion of numbers to strings and vice versa. These are the SCI$, FIX$, GEN$, NUM$ and VAL functions.

Along with the string handling functions
ASC Returns the ASCII value of the first character of a string
LEFT$/MID$/RIGHT$ Select characters from strings according to their position
LEN Returns the length of a string
LOC Returns the location of a string within a string
LOWER$/UPPER$ Convert a string to lower/upper case
REPT$ Returns repetitions of a specified string
VAL Converts a numeric string to a floating point value

Anyway I'm looking forward to seeing you OPL programs
Sincerely Martin