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From: mugc@utecfa.UUCP (ModemUserGroupChairman)
Newsgroups: net.micro.atari
Subject: Re: (ST) Install-application from menu
Message-ID: <1746@utecfa.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 4-Sep-85 20:26:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: utecfa.1746
Posted: Wed Sep  4 20:26:53 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 4-Sep-85 22:26:15 EDT
Organization: Engineering Computing Facility, University of Toronto
Lines: 66


	The "save desktop" option allows you to set your preferences the
way you can on the LISA or Mac. On the Mac, most of your options such as
double-click speed, volume etc. are stored in parameter-ram which is battery
backed up, so it stays permanent (at least until the battery runs down).
On the ST, preferences are stored on disk in a file called desktop.inf
(on the disk that is in the drive *when the option is invoked*). In order
to make your preferences "permanent", you should insert your system disk
and save desktop so that from then on whenever the ST is booted, it will
come up with those preferences. Among things like mouse click-rate and
keyboard repeat speed, save desk-top will also save information regarding
the installation of applications. For instance, if you install command.prg
as a TOS application and then save desktop on your system disk, command.prg
will run as a TOS application from ANY disk.

	Hacking around with the ST, I have discovered a number of little
interesting things listed below:

1. Reverse the ST screen to make it white on black and then use the vt52
   desk accessory -- it looks great!

	To do this:
		1. select the control panel
		2. pull the three controls for Red Green and Blue all the way
		   down
		3. quit the control panel
		4. select vt52

   This configuration also goes well with the command.tos program


2. Sitting in GEM, if you want to change disks without having to close the
   the current disks window and double clicking on the disk icon after
   changing disks, simply hit the ESC key while a disk-window is open.
   (This will not work if there is no disk-window open on the desktop)

Question time:  Does anyone know how to transmit a BREAK signal using the
	        vt52 DA?

Fact time: In last month's Byte (August 1985), on page 132-133, there were
	   a number of machines benchmarked using a C program on page
	   133 (of the same issue). I ran the (EXACT) same program on
	   ST after compiling with the development C compiler (DRI's C)
	   and the results are tabulated below


n	XT	AT	11/750		11/780		DSI-32
8191   11.6    3.7       2.41		 1.90		 1.85
20000  35.3    8.13	 6.11		 3.04		 4.52
40000 351.5   99.71	13.13		 6.38		 9.04

		(All times in seconds)

For the ST
	n = 8191  2.7? seconds
	n = 20000 6.7  seconds
	n = 40000 16   seconds

	(All times may be +/- 0.2 seconds since I measured the times by
	hand)

	For all kinds of details on the benchmark, refer to the magazine's
article on the DSI-32 co-processor.

	Please post questions etc. to the net