Ford COMPUTRUCK

[Jeff_Birt]

The Ford Truck Division 'COMPUTRUCK'. A TRS-80 PC-2 customized for specifying a Ford semi-truck (tractor). Manufactured by Trends, Inc. of Detroit Michigan (no doubt contracted by Ford).
While it has a regular 4K RAM module in it a note in the manual/leaflet suggests a new 'computer module' will be released soon that plugs into the Computruck. Guessing this must have been a CE-160 or a custom EPROM board.

Trends Inc is no longer in business, sadly, so I'm not sure where to try to look for more information or the software that would have been used. I was able to look up all the incorporation papers for Trends, Inc. but they provided little information.

I am hoping to somehow find out more about how/why this was created. A friend is going to check with a Ford engineer she knows but it has been so long it might be hard to find someone who remembers it.

   

[Xorand]

Just slightly reminiscent of all the PC-1270 versions dedicated to specific purposes and industries.

Would be interested what you find on it.

[rprosperi]

(10-31-2022 01:54 PM)Jeff_Birt Wrote:  I am hoping to somehow find out more about how/why this was created.

This may have come from Pygmy Computer Systems (now closed) from the Miami area; they specialized in application programs for Sharp pocket computers and I know they did some stuff for Ford.

Another similar Sharp VAR is P*ROM in Burlington, VT (which I believe is still in business, these days selling windows s/w for finance companies) that also could be the source. If you contact them, tell Bill Bob says hello.

[Jeff_Birt]

(11-01-2022 01:28 PM)Xorand Wrote:  Just slightly reminiscent of all the PC-1270 versions dedicated to specific purposes and industries.

Would be interested what you find on it.

Yes, this is a similar idea of a 'run-only' pocket computer. Sharp released the PC-1252 a 'run-only' version of the PC-1251 in 1984. The PC-1270 was a further refinement of the PC-1252 which came out two years later.

Trends Inc. was incorporated in 1983 which helps date the COMPUTRUCK.

[Jeff_Birt]

(11-01-2022 02:45 PM)rprosperi Wrote:  This may have come from Pygmy Computer Systems (now closed) from the Miami area; they specialized in application programs for Sharp pocket computers and I know they did some stuff for Ford.

Another similar Sharp VAR is P*ROM in Burlington, VT (which I believe is still in business, these days selling windows s/w for finance companies) that also could be the source. If you contact them, tell Bill Bob says hello.

The documentation that came with it shows Trends, Inc. as the manufacturer but they could have subcontracted Pygmy to develop the code. I wound up with a Pygmy ROM module a while back and just dumped it this past weekend but alas it is HVAC related software.

I had not thought about trying to contact Promsoft, they might indeed know something about it.

[Bill (Smithville NJ)]

(11-01-2022 02:57 PM)Jeff_Birt Wrote:  The documentation that came with it shows Trends, Inc. as the manufacturer but they could have subcontracted Pygmy to develop the code. I wound up with a Pygmy ROM module a while back and just dumped it this past weekend but alas it is HVAC related software.

I had not thought about trying to contact Promsoft, they might indeed know something about it.

I would be interested in seeing the HVAC software that you dumped from the ROM module. I've worked in HVAC engineering and would be curious to see what programs it had.

73
Bill WD9EQD
Smithville, NJ

[Jeff_Birt]

(11-01-2022 04:39 PM)Bill (Smithville NJ) Wrote:  I would be interested in seeing the HVAC software that you dumped from the ROM module. I've worked in HVAC engineering and would be curious to see what programs it had.

73
Bill WD9EQD
Smithville, NJ

I will upload it to Git hub soon. One ROM is called 'LOGIC jr II' and has 4 16K banks. The code is classic BASIC spaghetti. The second is on a Pygmy Software PCB, no bank switching, and the EPROM may be corrupt or failing. There is a block of data before the BASIC program starts that I'm trying to figure out.

[rprosperi]

(11-01-2022 05:16 PM)Jeff_Birt Wrote:  

(11-01-2022 04:39 PM)Bill (Smithville NJ) Wrote:  I would be interested in seeing the HVAC software that you dumped from the ROM module. I've worked in HVAC engineering and would be curious to see what programs it had.

73
Bill WD9EQD
Smithville, NJ

I will upload it to Git hub soon. One ROM is called 'LOGIC jr II' and has 4 16K banks. The code is classic BASIC spaghetti. The second is on a Pygmy Software PCB, no bank switching, and the EPROM may be corrupt or failing. There is a block of data before the BASIC program starts that I'm trying to figure out.

Application code for these machines was developed on PCs using a 'compiler' (actually a tokenizer) and those tools also optimized the code for various reasons, though mostly for size (reduce byte count to get more code into the EPROM) and in fewer cases for speed. The resulting code, when un-tokenized back into BASIC, often looked highly spaghettified and fairly ugly, this is probably the reason.

It turns out some very un-obvious commands and sequences are much smaller than the 'normal' intuitive commands.

As an analogous HP-75 example of these unintuitive commands, consider this line:

Code:

50 C$=CAT$ @ IF NOT DELAY? OR C$[COS(EPS),6]="AUTOST" THEN 110

"COS(EPS) is used instead of "1" because the program is a few bytes shorter. So these kinds of of substitutions were made by the 'compiler' to save space, but when looking at the equivalent BASIC source code, it looks like something is broken.

[Jeff_Birt]

Bill from Promsoft seconded Bob's guess that the Computruck software was probably done by Pygmy. I tried to contact Pygmy by snail mail several months ago about another PC-1500 related subject but got no reply.

The search continues

[Jeff_Birt]

(11-01-2022 04:39 PM)Bill (Smithville NJ) Wrote:  I would be interested in seeing the HVAC software that you dumped from the ROM module. I've worked in HVAC engineering and would be curious to see what programs it had.

Bill, I started a new thread for the topic of dumped modules:

PC-1500 Dumped ROM Modules