Nasprint 80 Review

by A.C. Dickens

Nasprint 80 is a printer drive and formatting package for use with the Epson MX80 series of printers, although it can be used with other printers. Details of interfacing are included in the manual. The package runs under Nas-sys 1 or Nas-sys 3. I was lucky enough to be given a pre-release version for evaluation purposes. There now follows my review of this invaluable piece of software.

Nasprint 80 is a 2K package supplied in 2x2708 or 1x2716 EPROM. It is located at B000H in the Nascom memory map so it resides just below Naspen. The package can be purchased for £12.95 from Program Power. Apart from the EPROM, a comprehensive 23 page manual is included. This contains full information about the operation of Nasprint. Nasprint has been designed to operate with all the standard Nascom packages; Debug, Nasdis, Nas-sys, Naspen and Zeap.

There are two modes of initialisation, a cold start at B000H and a warm start at B003H. When initialised, a list of options appears on the screen. These allow the software package which is to be used to be selected. Various options can then be specified if required. These are:

C – centre the title
D – print dividers between pages (for seperating pages when using roll paper)
F – modify format (see later)
N – page number
O – output codes (allows you to output Hex codes directly to the printer)
P – paginated (divides the output into pages)
T – title (prints a user defined title at the top of each page.

The format option allows the exact layout of each page to be specified. This is done in a very neat and easy way. A list of parameters followed by their current values is displayed on the screen. By moving the cursor around and modifying the relevant values, the printer output format can be changed. The number of line feeds, page Length, line Length, margin length and first page number can all be modified in this way. The spaces for the page number, title and between the top of the page, title, page number and bottom of the page can all be specified as well.

At thin stage, all of the Nasprint options have been specified so program execution continues under whichever package was selected. With Nas-sys, Nasdis and Debug, everything typed at the keyboard is output to the printer (unless the printer is