Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!ames!apple!rewing
From: rewing@Apple.COM (Richard Ewing)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: Re: Just got GS/OS
Summary: Tips for getting around GS/OS 3.0
Message-ID: <33692@apple.Apple.COM>
Date: 3 Aug 89 13:13:29 GMT
References: <8908021658.aa23622@ADM.BRL.MIL>
Organization: Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA
Lines: 90

Hi Bill,

Here are a few tips on using System Disk 5.0, since you found a few concerns.

>I heard rumor that I could get new software from FCP to make my hard drive boot
>nice and fast with System 5.0.  Is this true?  If so, maybe I can dump all
>those dormant NDAs back onto my system disk :)

This is supposed to be true.  The FCP people are supposed to have new Sider
drivers for GS/OS 3.0.  Don't quote me on this, but its just what I've heard.

>Let's see....windows open and close nice and fast, but when I scroll a window
>that I'm viewing by name, it still crawls along at a snail's pace.  Also, I
>couldn't see much difference in MultiScribe GS screen activity speed.  Perhaps
>when I've used it a bit more, though, I'll notice some differences.  The large
>number of fonts I now have available is a great improvement...

I've found that hitting the scroll bar to have a "by name" listing jump by
a page at a time is far faster than using the scroll arrows.  I don't
even like scrolling that way on my Mac!  Haven't tried Multiscribe GS,
although Appleshare 1.0v2 works pretty nicely, save the Appleshare file  
access bugs (anybody listening at Claris?)

>First, an old one that hasn't been fixed.  When I booted with System 5.0, the
>finder appeared, but my two hard disk volumes did not.  After a few tries, I
>found that by entering basic.system and setting the prefix to those volumes,
>then BYEing back to the finder, I could get them to appear.  But that shouldn't
>be necessary.  I've got a Sider 20 in slot 7.
>
>Later, and this is a new problem, I found that certain icon files cause the
>system to crash when it tries to use them.  I'm not sure which ones yet, but
>will post again when I am.  Anybody else had this problem?  Any ideas about it?

I'm probably guessing that you have a Sider that has various partitions
on it instead of just being a pure ProDOS volume, and GS/OS will only
recognize and automatically mount volumes that it recognizes are ProDOS
unless there are special drivers.  You should call FCP.

I've noticed the icon problem too.  Several icon files (mostly from
shareware and freeware sources) caused GS/OS 3.0 to barf violently, either
by locking the machine on boot, or crashing with an "bad icon file" system
error.  I've since removed those, and my system is fine.  We should
probably fine out which Icon editor is causing the incompatibility problems.

Other problems I've had include:

The inability for GS/OS to be able to mount by second Apple HD20 ("GS/OS
can't recognize this volume, do you wish to format?"), even though System 4.0
liked it before.  I eventually had to reformat the sucker.  thank god
for Appleshare so that i could back up my primary volume before lunching
the second.

GS/OS Appleshare can't recognize an older 1.1 Appleshare server.  This really
shouldn't be a problem with most people, although I did notice it here.
This is probably to retain compatibility with ProDOS 8, which must access
an Appleshare 2.0 compatible server.

Some programs and NDAs/Inits are of course, flakey if not downright
incompatible.  Most glaring is Paintworks GOLD.  Since it forces itself
to try to access a particular memory segment in the first megabyte,
if it doesn't find it, it justs crashes to the monitor (how elegant!).
Since I have several NDAs, CDAs, now cdevs, and a few inits load up on
boot, my first 700K or so is taken up by system overhead.  Kinda
frustrating when you have a 4 meg GS to play with.

The biggest common problem with programs I've seen involve the new
file manager, as some programs and NDAs/CDAs can't deal with ":" as
pathname delimeters instead of "/"s.  Also, some of programs can't deal
with an Appleshare server at all (Appleworks GS comes to mind).  Jumpstart
seems to work in every aspect except the filename filter, as it is
impossible to select the Finder file as the program you want to run when
you select "Run the Finder" from its menu.  I expect a flurry of upgrades
from various sources.

One thing for sure, though.  All the benefits of the new OS GREATLY outweigh
the little problems, and every Mac person in the office I've shown
it to has been impressed.  Heck, I can even bring the Vax to my desktop
via Alisashare.  This is an Apple II????  You bet it is! ;-)

__________________________________________________________________________
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