Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!spock!kim
From: kim@spock (Kim Letkeman)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal
Subject: Those units again ...
Message-ID: <3786@kim>
Date: 28 Jun 90 19:47:15 GMT
References: <10303@hydra.gatech.EDU> <1990Jun12.181121.180@cbnews.att.com> <3083@PEDEV.Columbia.NCR.COM> <3613@kim> <1990Jun19.141836.2220@aucs.uucp> <3643@kim> <1990Jun21.162724.11442@aucs.uucp> <3689@kim> <10865@hydra.gatech.EDU>
Organization: Mitel. Kanata (Ontario). Canada.
Lines: 51
In-reply-to: gt3070b@prism.gatech.EDU's message of 28 Jun 90 01:40:25 GMT

In article <10865@hydra.gatech.EDU>, gt3070b@prism.gatech.EDU (Jeff Watkins) writes:
| I am still working on the Documentation files for my units and will
| distribute them as they become available.  I am using windows Write
| to compose them and will post both the .wri and .txt files to
| attlab.gatech.edu when they are done.

I would prefer commented modules and procedures.  But if you insist on
writing documents, please post to the net. That's where I got the
code. 

| So, if you feel the uncontrollable urge to argue about the
| merits/definitions of hackers, please do so under a different
| heading.  Someone may have an actual question about the units and as
| I have gotten into the habit of killing the subject, I would never
| get to answer.  

All right. Why are there so many interrupt 33 calls in the init
routine for the mouse unit? I commented out half of them and things
still worked fine. As well, a new interrupt is issued every time a
single data item is polled. Would it not be better to provide an
interface to allow the user to sample the mouse and then poll the
information items? Saves a lot of real time (I checked with Turbo
Debugger - the call to dos is quite expensive.)

Also, just curios, but what does the video mode have to do with a
mouse unit? Your write to low memory in the init procedure seemed a
bit misplaced. Is one of your other units better suited?

I would have really appreciated the ins and outs of intr $33, since I
have been unable to find the info in the usual sources (e.g. Norton.)

| My time is VERY EXPENSIVE (long distance from West Palm Beach to
| Atlanta) and I don't like wasting it reading postings by people who
| disagree, especially over such a trivial subject as whether a hacker
| is an expert programmer or a lousy programmer, or whether any given
| hacker would prefer an assortment of dried fruits or a 1lb bag of
| Nachos.

Sorry about wasting your time Jeff. But imagine, if you will, that 100
people on the net took your code and began trying to work with it.
Since the code is undocumented, and pretty mixed up in places, they
all spent a couple of hours trying to make sense of it. I doubt that
you wasted 200 hours wading through the discussion. And I doubt that
many of them carried on with the units, as the lack of traffic might
suggest. 

Now, before anyone wants to flame me all over again, forget it. I
already agreed with most of you on what a hacker is or is not.

-- 
Kim Letkeman    mitel!spock!kim@uunet.uu.net