I know this is the wrong forum, but...

R

Randy

Please don't laugh, but I am working on a problem with a retail system
that is running IBM 4690 BASIC. I won't go into detail regarding the
problem other than an application on the cash register is dumping and
no one can figure out why. I am hoping (praying) that someone can point
me to a resource. I have searched in vain to find something and figured
since this is a forum that deals with open source that, perhaps, there
would be somone with an open mind who could point me in the right
direction. I apologize if this is an inappropriate post...
 
H

HalcyonWild

Randy said:
Please don't laugh, but I am working on a problem with a retail system
that is running IBM 4690 BASIC. I won't go into detail regarding the
problem other than an application on the cash register is dumping and
no one can figure out why. I am hoping (praying) that someone can point
me to a resource. I have searched in vain to find something and figured
since this is a forum that deals with open source that, perhaps, there
would be somone with an open mind who could point me in the right
direction. I apologize if this is an inappropriate post...



me -------------
Even if this is a wrong forum, how can we help if we dont know anything
other than this .

randy -----------
an application on the cash register is dumping and
no one can figure out why.
 
R

Roedy Green

Please don't laugh, but I am working on a problem with a retail system
that is running IBM 4690 BASIC.

try comp.lang.basic. Look it your newsreader for the list of
newsgroups your server supports. Search for the word "basic". and
check out the promising possibilities.
 
R

Randy

O.K. here goes... The application is dumping. It is obviously
attempting to write to an inappropriate address in memory. In other
languages there are ways to analyze the dump and find out the address
of the offending instruction and relate that back to the actual code,
i.e. C. I have read the IBM manuals and all they say is send the dump
code to IBM. IBM does not support this application any more. I was
hoping that maybe their was someone out there that had some experience
with this earlier in their careers. I hope that this helps. If not you
can email me with more specific questions. Thanks...
 
M

Mike Schilling

Randy said:
Please don't laugh, but I am working on a problem with a retail system
that is running IBM 4690 BASIC. I won't go into detail regarding the
problem other than an application on the cash register is dumping and
no one can figure out why. I am hoping (praying) that someone can point
me to a resource. I have searched in vain to find something and figured
since this is a forum that deals with open source that, perhaps, there
would be somone with an open mind who could point me in the right
direction. I apologize if this is an inappropriate post...

Do what programmers did in the olden days: put in the equivalent of
"println"s (whatever that might be. Can you print things out on the
register's tape?) to try to narrow down where in the code the dump is
ocurring, and what the data values are at the time.
 
R

Roedy Green

It is obviously
attempting to write to an inappropriate address in memory.

it can also be a bug in the Basic interpreter or compiler.

You may find your best business solution is to dump everything
including the cash register and start over with something whose code
can be maintained.
 
R

Rhino

Randy said:
O.K. here goes... The application is dumping. It is obviously
attempting to write to an inappropriate address in memory. In other
languages there are ways to analyze the dump and find out the address
of the offending instruction and relate that back to the actual code,
i.e. C. I have read the IBM manuals and all they say is send the dump
code to IBM. IBM does not support this application any more. I was
hoping that maybe their was someone out there that had some experience
with this earlier in their careers. I hope that this helps. If not you
can email me with more specific questions. Thanks...
IBM may not support the application any more as a corporation but some of
the developers who wrote and maintained it are probably still around. Even
if they are retired - I'm not sure how long this system goes back - they may
try to 'keep their hand in' and may very well be willing to lend a hand with
some tips and suggestions. I know for a fact that some IBM staff (present
and retired) are very active in newsgroups so the trick is to get their
attention.

IBM has at least one public news server with a variety of newsgroups; I know
that some at least are monitored by the IBM lab responsible for that
product. For instance, I know that comp.databases.ibm-db2 is monitored by
the DB2 development team at the Toronto lab. I would suggest that you look
at the newsgroups available on that newserver - news.software.ibm.com - and
see if any of them address your problem directly. They still have at least
one OS/2 newsgroup on that server and OS/2 is effectively dead so they might
have a newsgroup for your problem. If you can't find a newsgroup for your
particular problem, try something "close" - same operating system, same
business area - and maybe your problem will be seen by someone who knows
something about it. Or maybe someone will see it and remember a colleague
that used to work on that application and pass it on to him/her.

It's a bit of a long shot but it may just pay off bigtime.

Good luck!

Rhino
 
C

Chris Uppal

Randy said:
I am hoping (praying) that someone can point
me to a resource.

You might try comp.programmer, or look for a group with an interest in old
machine architectures (sorry, but I don't know of one myself -- I can only
think of comp.architecture and it's long time since I read that so I don't know
how they'd react to this question).

Whereever you do ask, try giving interesting details about the machine it's
running on -- age, CPU type, amount of RAM (or core ;-), etc.

-- chris
 
Joined
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4690 dump analysis

If you haven't already discovered how to analyze the 4690 dumps: Go to the IBM retail knowledgbase and search on "BASIC TOOLS". From here you can download the current 4690 dump analyser. It is a little clumsy to run, but works just fine. Once you get the analysis, you can wander through the stack trace, call trace, buffers, etc.

Good luck
 

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