The Alarm popdown
The Alarm popdown (activated with A) can be used to make your Cambridge Z88 remind you of important events or appointments, or simply to wake you up in the morning. Any number of alarms can be set up, and for each alarm you can specify the following information:
DATE
The date on which the first alarm will occur. For a new alarm this is initially set to the current date, or if the alarm is called from the Calendar or Diary, the Calendar or Diary date.
TIME
The time at which the alarm will occur. For a new alarm this is set to the current time, but you will usually alter it to the required alarm time. All times in the Alarm are given in 24-hour format.
REASON/COMMAND
For each alarm you can specify a message of up to 23 characters, or a CLI command string which will be executed to cause something to happen; see below.
To set an alarm, press
Note that the Cambridge Z88 will not switch off automatically while the alarm popdown is on the screen.
Alarm options
Each alarm can also have the following optional settings:
Bell: can be ON
or OFF
, determining whether the Cambridge Z88 bleeper sounds when the alarm is activated.
Alarm type: normally ALARM
. This can be altered to EXECUTE
to allow a command, in the REASON FOR ALARM
field, to be executed when the alarm is activated. Thus you could, for example, cause the Diary to be entered and a line of text to be typed in automatically on an alarm:
#D|CT Urgent message
For more information on executing commands, see CLI files.
Repeat every: normally set to NEVER
, so that an alarm will occur just once, at the specified time and date. The repeat rate can be altered to one of the following to obtain a repeating alarm:
YEAR, MONTH, WEEK, DAY, HOUR, MINUTE, SECOND
You can move between these options with
3 HOURS
, for example.No. of times: specifies the number of times that the alarm will be repeated before being cancelled. It is initially set to NEVER
, so that the alarm will occur just once. It can be set to FOREVER
by pressing , or a number from one upwards by pressing. Holding the
By setting these fields appropriately, you can obtain almost every possible alarm setting. For example, to cause an alarm to occur on the 3rd March, 3rd April, and 3rd May, at 12.00, set
DATE | 3 Mar 1987 | REPEAT EVERY | 1 MONTH | |
---|---|---|---|---|
TIME | 12.00 | NO. OF TIMES | 3 |
Note: Do not set the alarm to repeat every second for ever. You will not be able to cancel it without doing a soft reset.
Clearing alarms
To clear an alarm, select it with the cursor keys or on the list of alarms, select CLEAR ALARM
with and , and press
CLEAR ALARM
twice to remove a repeating alarm completely.If an alarm occurs while the Cambridge Z88 is turned off, the alarm will sound and the Cambridge Z88 will be turned on in LOCK OUT
state to prevent accidental key-presses. To clear this state turn the Cambridge Z88 off and then on again in the usual way, by pressing both