Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!rutgers!cbmvax!andy From: andy@cbmvax.cbm.UUCP (Andy Finkel) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Further file format problems Message-ID: <1958@cbmvax.cbmvax.cbm.UUCP> Date: Mon, 1-Jun-87 17:09:02 EDT Article-I.D.: cbmvax.1958 Posted: Mon Jun 1 17:09:02 1987 Date-Received: Wed, 3-Jun-87 01:41:50 EDT References: <8705280817.AA02563@ingres.Berkeley.EDU> <162@l5comp.UUCP> Reply-To: andy@cbmvax.UUCP (Andy Finkel) Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA Lines: 79 In article <162@l5comp.UUCP> scotty@l5comp.UUCP (Scott Turner) writes: >[a lot of stuff] Everyone who has 'come to our defense', I'd just like to say, thank you for your continued support. (It's nice to be appreciated) Following my new 'ignore posted flame but answer the questions' policy, I'll just respond to the points raised: Re: buffers Sorry I confused you. Basically, the AmigaDOS (ie, Tripos) filehandler was not designed for a trackdisk.device. The trackdisk.device reads in a track at a time. The current file handler does not take advantage of this; instead, its logic is more oriented to a conventional "read a sector at a time" type of disk. (I don't think I saw anything especially funny about your use of buffers, BTW. And, looking over my comment, I didn't mention that I did. All I wrote was that it just doesn't happen to work that way now, for reasons like the one above.) Our support of Amiga people on Usenet isn't a company supported thing. (We officially provide support on BIX). My hours are between me and my boss. I participate in the amiga group on Usenet because I like to. I like helping people, and hearing new ideas, suggestions, etc. The interaction isn't one way...I've learned a good bit from the postings people have made, as well as helped people. (hell, I'm downright impressed by some of the postings) re: parallel.device The parallel.device is in assembler. It doesn't look that strange. Has labels, comments, etc. Perhaps the author has an original in C, then played with that; perhaps he just learned programming from reading compiler output. Perhaps he just uses different techniques. It isn't especially relevant. The previous description ("retuned") made is seem like you fixed bugs, and improved some code. I'm glad to hear you rewrote it completely. I hope you bumped the versionation a lot, by the way, to avoid confusion with our releases. Guess I'll see it soon. re: Parallel bits: I just found the allocation bug 2 months ago, and fixed it. Thanks for your report. The reason there are two possible allocations for the parallel bits is based on the actual resource (device) in question. The 8520 port has both 8 bi-directional pins, and 2 handshaking lines. They can be used seperately. In other Commodore computers I occasionally found it useful to give control of the handshaking lines to one part of a program, and the parallel lines to another. Splitting the resource as we did gives a 'supportable under multitasking' method of doing similar things. (as well as a chance for a bug to creep in, but that really is a separate issue) speaking of bugs, we'll fix the docs about the order of EOF chars next documentation. thanks for reporting it. re: copyrights: your comments are certainly interesting. re: goldfish BTW, my comment was "injured your gold fish". If you feel it necessary to jump down my throat about this posting, (though I tried to avoid any flames) why not try email ? Then you can really take the gloves off. :-) (all right, one flame crept in; answering the crack about my hours; as a hacker I resent others telling me when they think I should be working, and when I should be doing other things) andy -- andy finkel {ihnp4|seismo|allegra}!cbmvax!andy Commodore/Amiga "An end is always a new beginning." - Captain Cloud Any expressed opinions are mine; but feel free to share. I disclaim all responsibilities, all shapes, all sizes, all colors.