Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!ucbvax!MCNC.ORG!ravi From: ravi@MCNC.ORG (Ravi Subrahmanyan) Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st Subject: Bounced messages: groups of 10 Message-ID: <8809292014.AA03250@speedy.mcnc.org> Date: 29 Sep 88 20:14:48 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 1942 From Mailer@Score.Stanford.EDU Wed Sep 28 07:25:10 1988 Received: from Score.Stanford.EDU by speedy.mcnc.org (5.59/MCNC/5-16-88) id AA13052; Wed, 28 Sep 88 07:25:10 EDT Message-Id: <8809281125.AA13052@speedy.mcnc.org> Date: Wed 28 Sep 88 04:17:51-PDT From: The Mailer Daemon To: Info-Atari16-Request@Score.Stanford.EDU Subject: PS:[--QUEUED-MAIL--].RETRANSMIT.69 Status: R No such host as "SANDIEGO.MT.DDN.MIL.#Internet", bad queue file follows: ------- =DELIVERY-OPTIONS:MAIL =NOTIFY: 2-Oct-88 22:55 =DEQUEUE: 30-Sep-88 22:56 _Score.Stanford.EDU.#Internet Info-Atari16-Request aerospace.aero.org grant CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU INFO-A16%MARIST.BITNET [128.59.40.130].#Internet chung DCA-EMS.ARPA.#Internet goertzel uunet.UU.NET.#Internet mutec!docbobo lasso!atari16 graf.poly.edu RUBIN MSR.EPM.ORNL.GOV.#Internet jcm SANDIEGO.MT.DDN.MIL.#Internet jensen hallock NOTE.NSF.GOV.#Internet jmurray [128.205.2.4].#Internet V069HPMS EE.UCLA.EDU.#Internet willing Louie.UDel.EDU.#Internet dist-info-atari16 Date: Tue 27 Sep 88 22:56:47 PDT Subject: Info-Atari16 Digest V88 #410 From: Info-Atari16 Digest Sender: Info-Atari16-request@Score.Stanford.EDU Errors-to: Info-Atari16-request@Score.Stanford.EDU Maint-Path: Info-Atari16-request@Score.Stanford.EDU To: Info-Atari16 Distribution List: ; Reply-to: Info-Atari16@Score.Stanford.edu Info-Atari16 Digest Tuesday, September 27, 1988 Volume 88 : Issue 410 This weeks Editor: Bill Westfield Today's Topics: Re: Free Sun bash Re: Wait a Sec... (was Re: Atari fair at Duesseldorf (West Germany)) Re: Media Change Bug Re: Wait a Sec... (was Re: Atari fair at Duesseldorf (West Germany)) ST news software / Sobozon C Re: Wait a Sec... Re: Free Sun bash Re: Boycott Apple Again TOS--Whats next?? Re: Wait a Sec... (was Re: Atari fa unpacking split postings to sources, etc. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 17 Sep 88 17:49:32 GMT From: mace.cc.purdue.edu!mtr@j.cc.purdue.edu (Miek Rowan) Subject: Re: Free Sun bash To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu In article <68544@sun.uucp>, cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) writes: > In article <626@mace.cc.purdue.edu> mtr@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Miek Rowan) writes: > >After cleaning up Sun's code, dealing with thier equipment et al ... > >I would not recommend a Sun to my worst enemy. They have had some > >good ideas, but thats about it. > >mtr > > After checking the Sun bugs database I find that Purdue has called in seven > (7) bugs, of which 4 were fixed more than two releases ago, 2 are fixed in > the current release and one is fixed but it isn't in a release yet. Oh and > *none* of the bugs have your name on them. Do you work for Kirk Smith? I do not work with Kirk Smith, and these opinions are my own, and I make no claims about or related to my employer. Take this in a personal respect as I am sure we will be contacting Sun in an official manner on these items and some others. First, I did *not* mention bugs, although I could have, so you checking a bugs database is kinda dumb. My *real* complaint is the state that you send your distribution out in. I have hit three major problems: 1) Some sources are missing completely. 2) Some binaries don't match the sources, and we can't recreate the binary without loosing functionality 3) Some of the sources even had syntax errors in them Some other points, good and bad: o The dyamic libraries are neat, although I have seen them before. (but sun never did claim they invented them). o The modifications to make can get pretty annoying. o The system is also one big security headache, although that is true of any workstation. 0 You guys were a little haphazard in moving some sources and not others. I have a color Sun 3 in my office and it is just unacceptably slow. Especially if you want to use X11R2, but it carries on to Sunview also. It can get so that scrolling is no better than 1200 baud dial up. HP's color workstation is about 100 times faster, although they have thier own problems with networking. Maybe I was a little harsh to say "my worst enemy". Everyone talks so highly of Suns equipment that I was really disappointed when i sat down and worked with one. If you are going to buy a Unix box, shop around. Maybe Sun is *your* best buy. It is all a matter of context: what are you getting it for? I hope that future releases continue to improve, and I would much rather deal with Sun than Apple (or even Dec). Again, I am stating what I think, not nessasarily how Purdue feels. mtr ------------------------------ Date: 17 Sep 88 18:16:21 GMT From: mailrus!um-math!dyer@csd1.milw.wisc.edu (Jon Brode) Subject: Re: Wait a Sec... (was Re: Atari fair at Duesseldorf (West Germany)) To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu In article <1579@tahoe.unr.edu>, mikew@wheeler.wrcr.unr.edu (Mike Whitbeck) writes: > In fact with the release of SPECTRE 128 I expect to not only > beat a MAC+ in performance BUT WHILE RUNNING MAC SOFTWARE!! What's the latest word on SPECTRE 128? How is it for compatability (Multi-finder, Excel, Hype-Card, Full-Write, etc...) with programs and sound? What is the projected release date? > But please, someone bring European hardware/software business > products over to the US!!! > ethernet , TeX and many other goodies await if only someone I would love to see some info on the Atari Ethernet. Does anyone know anything about it? Also, I have TeX for the ST. Someone just ported it and sent it to our intermediate archive. FTP to clio.math.lsa.umich.edu (35.195.16.4) and sign on as id ftp with any password. [If you were using euterpe, switch to clio, you'll get a better connection] We're still setting up our real archives on the 3090, but until then grab it off there. Feel free to send something back to us :-), especially suff that you ported and want to have distributed. Send sources too, we have next to unlimited disk space. Jon Brode -- dyer@math.lsa.umich.edu Moderator of PC7, President of WAUG ------------------------------ Date: 16 Sep 88 21:59:52 GMT From: hp-pcd!hplsla!andyc@hplabs.hp.com ( Andy Cassino) Subject: Re: Media Change Bug To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu | I have the media change bug on my Mega 2. (The escape key does not always | update the drive A directory when write protection is enabled). | | My Mega 2 is still under warranty. I am having trouble getting it repaired. | Although my dealer was not aware of the problem, he replaced by drive. | However, I still have the problem. | Who can my dealer talk to at Atari to get information on the media change | bug? My dealer claims he talked to Atari without success. . Although my | dealer is an authorized Atari dealer, he is not a knowledgeable dealer. | | What is the fix for the media change bug? I thought replacing the drive | would fix the media change bug. | | Gregory Gibson | gibson@trwrb.UUCP I've seen this on my ST2 as well. It always goes away when I close the disk and re-open it. I've only seen it twice but both times I had a RAM disk open. Both times my floppy was NOT write protected. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% % Andy Cassino % % uucp: hplabs!hplsla!andyc domain: andyc%hplsla@hplabs.hp.com % % Hewlett-Packard Lake Stevens Instrument Division % % 8600 Soper Hill Road Everett, WA 98205-1298 % % (206) 335-2211 % %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% ------------------------------ Date: 16 Sep 88 21:47:28 GMT From: hp-pcd!hplsla!andyc@hplabs.hp.com ( Andy Cassino) Subject: Re: Wait a Sec... (was Re: Atari fair at Duesseldorf (West Germany)) To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu As the new owner of an ST2, I'd like to add my two cents about this "dying computer" hoopla. While shopping around for my computer, many dealers told me whatever they could to discourage me from Atari and get me into an Amiga: "Atari ST computers are hard to get and we can't keep them in stock. They're backordered and who knows when they'll come in." "There isn't any profit margin in Atari computers since Atari shut out the discount mail-order activity." "We don't discount our Atari computers, except for demos, because they're hot sellers and we don't need to." "Most people are opting for Amigas these days because the Atari is pretty much of a dead end. Look at our software shelves - 90% Amiga and less Atari stuff everyday. No one is buying the Atari stuff." I ended up buying my Atari from a local music store, from stock, at a discount, and they got me all the software I wanted within a week, again at a discount (music stores don't sell lots of compilers!). The discounts rivaled those mail-order outfits that the other dealers seem to think are out of business. I can only speculate as to why these dealers are verbalizing these conflicting packs of lies. Somehow they must figure that they can make more money by doing it. Maybe they're overstocked on Amigas? ;-) Disclaimer: The author has no pecuniary interest in any of the companies mentioned. The opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% % Andy Cassino % % uucp: hplabs!hplsla!andyc domain: andyc%hplsla@hplabs.hp.com % % Hewlett-Packard Lake Stevens Instrument Division % % 8600 Soper Hill Road Everett, WA 98205-1298 % % (206) 335-2211 % %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% ------------------------------ Date: 16 Sep 88 06:33:32 GMT From: amdahl!ems!questar!midgard!syntel!dal@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Dale Schumacher) Subject: ST news software / Sobozon C To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu It looks like I've finally gotten a program working for posting news directly (with UUMAIL) to a normal uucp node. It is currently set up for my site only (compiled in values rather than a configuration file), but it should be generalizable. On another subject, I recently got a beta-test copy of the Sobozon C compiler. It looks very nice. As I understand it, this program will be freeware, not shareware, and not using the obnoxious GNU license scheme. Under the GNU terms don't you have to make any programs COMPILED the GNU C and/or LINKED with the GNU library available under the GNU terms? Sorry I got sidetracked, anyway, at least one of the authors is on usenet, so I'll let them, Tony Andrews, Johann Ruegg, or Joe Treat, tell you more about Sobozon C. In a message Tony left on my BBS, he mentioned that there were some compiler benchmarks in this months STart magazine and Sobozon compared quite well against the commercial compilers, rating better than all the compilers listed in two catagories, one of which was I/O. That makes me happy, since they are using extended dLibs for the runtime libraries, and thus the dLibs I/O routines are apparently pretty fast. -- Dale Schumacher 399 Beacon Ave. (alias: Dalnefre') St. Paul, MN 55104 ...pwcs!stag!syntel!dal United States of America "It's not reality that's important, but how you perceive things." ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Sep 88 14:32 MST From: Friesen@PCO-MULTICS.HBI.HONEYWELL.COM Subject: Re: Wait a Sec... Reply-To: Friesen%PCO@BCO-MULTICS.HBI.HONEYWELL.COM To: <@BCO-MULTICS.HBI.HONEYWELL.COM:info-atari16@SCORE.STANFORD.EDU> Mike Whitbeck writes: > >But please, someone bring European hardware/software business >products ofver to the US!!! The mail order company E. Arthur Brown Company offers European software. I have never seen what they offer, or ordered something from them, so I cannot tell you if they are trustworthy, but I remember someone on the net reccommeding them for mouse/ball controllers. Their address is: 3404 Pawnee Drive, Alexandria, MN 56308 If you want to place an order over the phone, their number is: 1-800-322-4405 If you want information their number is: (612)762-8847. I suggest that you write them a letter telling them what you want, and if they have it, I'm sure they'll send you information. They also carry a line of PD software for the ST and some software for the Amiga. Remember, I have never ordered from them, so I don't know how reliable they are. "Exterminate! Exterminate!"--Daleks /~\-* ###--< /***\ /*****\ Aric Friesen Addresses: Genie: A.FRIESEN ARPA: Friesen%PCO@BCO-MULTICS.ARPA ------------------------------ Date: 17 Sep 88 20:55:25 GMT From: madd@bu-cs.bu.edu (Jim Frost) Subject: Re: Free Sun bash To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu (This discussion doesn't really belong here so I've redirected followups to comp.unix.wizards) In article <657@mace.cc.purdue.edu> mtr@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Miek Rowan) writes: |I have a color Sun 3 in my office and it is just unacceptably slow. |Especially if you want to use X11R2, but it carries on to Sunview |also. It can get so that scrolling is no better than 1200 baud dial |up. HP's color workstation is about 100 times faster, although they |have thier own problems with networking. Hmm. I use a Sun 2/120 with x11r2 and it's not "unacceptably slow" for most things. If you put xterm into "jump" mode you get good speed on the scrolling. Of course you can't read it then but most people can't follow stuff running out at more than 4800 baud anyway; that's why "more" is there. On a Sun 3/50 x11r2 performance is much better, although still slow for really intensive graphics applications. This is mostly due to the lack of a good x11 server for the sun. A quote from the documentation of the Sun server: "The drivers are completely untuned and have inferior performance." If someone got on the ball and tuned the server you'd see much better performance, especially on the color systems (like yours) where the server is *really* untuned. I maintain that it's good enough to get work done on, though. If you want real performance I suggest using a Sun 3/50 (or better a Sun 4/110) as a smart graphics terminal to something like an Encore. Yanking all the non-graphics stuff off the Sun and putting it on a scream machine gives very nice performance and is fairly transparent under x11; even my Sun 2 runs nicely when I offload the application to a Silicon Graphics 4D. It's true that Sun's are sometimes plagued with hardware problems, but my experiences with their support were all favorable. In addition they understand that not all users are stupid and allow them to do board swapping and the like, something that I appreciate. I haven't any experience with their newer machines (we have 2 Roadrunners and a few Sun 4's coming, but nothing yet) so I can't comment on increasing or decreasing reliability. So far I've had one mono card blow up on me, a disk problem, and a couple of mono screens have flipped out, but Sun dealt with them quickly so I've no complaints. I have no idea just how long my Sun 2 has been around, but considering that it's a Sun 2 I'd say that it's been awhile. As for their software, it's a good and bad thing. I *like* SunOS, at least 3.5. Some of the networking stuff -- like the yp server -- is pretty hairy and not so reliable, but if you don't have a big network you don't need it and it runs very cleanly. NFS setup is simple and very easily maintained. Security is a problem but it ALWAYS is when the user has direct access to the hardware, not one manufacturer can say otherwise. It still takes a little ingenuity to really screw things up, to Sun's credit, and putting a password on single-user boots really blocks up some holes that exist in 3.5. In summary I don't think you've voiced a valid complaint. There is virtually nothing else that works as well as Sun workstations in their price range. 386 PC's don't have anywhere near the networking support that Sun's do, almost never have good support, and cost nearly as much. Higher-end workstations (eg Silicon Graphics) often address these problems but they're for a more specific audience and cost a lot more. jim frost madd@bu-it.bu.edu ------------------------------ Date: 17 Sep 88 02:35:23 GMT From: att!alberta!calgary!xenlink!deraadt@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Theo A. DeRaadt) Subject: Re: Boycott Apple Again To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu In article <626@mace.cc.purdue.edu>, mtr@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Miek Rowan) writes: > > In between IBM's bumbling of just about everything in sight (it's > > going to be an MCA future, but wait! here's a new AT!), Apple's greed, > > Atari's sort-of-ok acceptance, and Commodore shooting themselves in the > > foot, the calf, the knee, etc, with mismarketing the Amiga, I just > > don't know...I think I'll save up for a Sun ;-) > After cleaning up Sun's code, dealing with thier equipment et al ... > I would not recommend a Sun to my worst enemy. They have had some > good ideas, but thats about it. Yes, AmigaDOS has less bugs than SunOS 4.0 indeed. And new Sun releases come out about as quickly as Amiga software releases anyways - and the most well known bugs don't get fixed. Sun's right hand seems to have a problem with chopping of it's left hand as far as I hear - somewhat alongs what C-A did awhile back.. Date: Wed 28 Sep 88 04:17:54-PDT From: The Mailer Daemon To: Info-Atari16-Request@Score.Stanford.EDU Subject: PS:[--QUEUED-MAIL--].RETRANSMIT.70 Status: R No such host as "SANDIEGO.MT.DDN.MIL.#Internet", bad queue file follows: ------- =DELIVERY-OPTIONS:MAIL =NOTIFY: 2-Oct-88 22:55 =DEQUEUE: 30-Sep-88 22:58 _Score.Stanford.EDU.#Internet Info-Atari16-Request aerospace.aero.org grant CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU INFO-A16%MARIST.BITNET [128.59.40.130].#Internet chung DCA-EMS.ARPA.#Internet goertzel uunet.UU.NET.#Internet mutec!docbobo lasso!atari16 graf.poly.edu RUBIN MSR.EPM.ORNL.GOV.#Internet jcm SANDIEGO.MT.DDN.MIL.#Internet jensen hallock NOTE.NSF.GOV.#Internet jmurray [128.205.2.4].#Internet V069HPMS EE.UCLA.EDU.#Internet willing Louie.UDel.EDU.#Internet dist-info-atari16 Date: Tue 27 Sep 88 22:58:13 PDT Subject: Info-Atari16 Digest V88 #411 From: Info-Atari16 Digest Sender: Info-Atari16-request@Score.Stanford.EDU Errors-to: Info-Atari16-request@Score.Stanford.EDU Maint-Path: Info-Atari16-request@Score.Stanford.EDU To: Info-Atari16 Distribution List: ; Reply-to: Info-Atari16@Score.Stanford.edu Info-Atari16 Digest Tuesday, September 27, 1988 Volume 88 : Issue 411 This weeks Editor: Bill Westfield Today's Topics: Re: This "Dying ST" nonsense Strange '-s' flag behavior in the GNU linker ? Re: Animation Topics Re: gcc problems Re: Boycott Apple Again -- Now about Suns Re: Wait a Sec... (was Re: Atari fa SHADOW / BDT decline in sales Re: Boycott Apple Again -- Now about Suns Re: Fidonet mailer Change your titles often! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 17 Sep 88 17:41:11 GMT From: clyde!watmath!looking!brad@bellcore.com (Brad Templeton) Subject: Re: This "Dying ST" nonsense To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu While the ad says business, it also notes games, and Atari would be foolish not to advertise with Christmas coming. Unless they could sell all their production, in which case they would be foolish to advertise. -- Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Sep 88 13:30 EDT From: John R. Dunning Subject: Strange '-s' flag behavior in the GNU linker ? To: VBRANDT%DBNUAMA1.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU, info-atari16@SCORE.STANFORD.EDU In-Reply-To: The message from VBRANDT%DBNUAMA1.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU From: VBRANDT%DBNUAMA1.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU I have found what is not quite a bug, but a somewhat annoying feature in the GNU C linker. It seems that the '-s' flag does exactly the opposite of what I think it should do. If you don't specify '-s', the linker appends a symbol table to the executable, if you do specify it, no symbol table is produced. Well, I admit it's somewhat counter-intuitive, but the semantics of -s is unchanged from what it was in the unhacked LD.C. Ie, the default behaviour really is supposed to be to produce a symbol table. After thinking about it, though, it seems reasonable to change it in the ST version, as the ST format symbol tables are never useful. This means that to make executables without symbol tables, one cannot use GCC, but has to invoke everything manually. That's not true. GCC passes the -s flag along if it's specified. (At least it's supposed to; did I introduce a bug at the last minute?) Also, all the executables from the GNU package themselves have quite big symbol tables. Removing them would save several KB, which might help people suffering from storage/memory shortages. Indeed. I'm pretty sure I built all the executables with -s (to GCC), so if they've really got symbol tables, perhaps I did leave a bug in there. I'll investigate tonight and post the results. Anyway, thanks to John for his impressive work ! You're very welcome. ------------------------------ Date: 18 Sep 88 14:42:35 GMT From: tness7!tness1!sugar!peter@bellcore.com (Peter da Silva) Subject: Re: Animation Topics To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu In article <8809100453.AA01878@TIS.COM>, dmb@TIS.COM (David M. Baggett) writes: > Setscreen((char *) -1L, (char *) new_phys_base, -1); > Vsync(); I'm not particularly familiar with the ST, but since SetScreen is asynchronous, the following code (based on Amiga code) should work better: Generate animation in newscreen; Vsync(); /* wait for previous SetScreen (of oldscreen) to work */ SetScreen(newscreen); Go back to generate next screen. This way you get to do computations while waiting for SetScreen, and there's always a screen out there waiting to show up. -- Peter da Silva `-_-' peter@sugar.uu.net Have you hugged U your wolf today? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Sep 88 13:11 EDT From: John R. Dunning Subject: Re: gcc problems To: mcvax!cernvax!ethz!forty2!poole@uunet.uu.net, info-atari16@SCORE.STANFORD.EDU In-Reply-To: The message of 8 Sep 88 23:34 EDT from Simon Poole Date: 9 Sep 88 03:34:23 GMT From: mcvax!cernvax!ethz!forty2!poole@uunet.uu.net (Simon Poole) In article jeff@stormy.atmos.washington.edu (Jeff Bowden) writes: >I grabbed the gcc executables a few days ago. I found that I had >insufficient resources to run it (sob :-( ). Gcc can be run on a 1 MB machine! You will not be able to compile any larger files from GULAM, but you can revert to compiling from the Desktop if memory is a problem. To bootstrap you NEED: a copy of gulam a diskeditor 1) patch the executable of gcc-cc1.ttp so that only 300 kB of stack instead of 500 kB are allocated (you can search for the value 500000, it only occurs once, somewhere around 364kB). Yah, that's described in the blurb. In fact, 300000 is still far more than you need; in my experience, 128K is plenty for most things. The thing that really eats stack is compiling large hairy functions is -O; the 500000 value is for compiling the instruction-cracking routing in GAS. If you can live without -O, 64K or maybe even 32K will be enough. [That you have to do this is really a bug, there is NO need for a GEMDOS only program, that doesn't exec another program to give memory back to GEMDOS, I'm changing my crt0 so that it will take -1L in _stksize to mean: "Don't do a Mshrink"] Careful; memory that is malloc'ed comes from ABOVE the stack, not below it, so you really do want to keep the stack at the smallest value that works for you. 2) Now throw all resident stuff out (accessories etc. just keep GEMBOOT or folderxxx (you do have a HD?)), start gulam and setup the enviroment as described by jrd. You should now be able to compile most programs (you can compile all of flex except parse.c and scan.c for an example). This is a good time to get the sources and extract the documentation from them, how else are you going to know about -mshort -fomit-frame-pointer etc.? Right. If there's sufficient demand, I'll package up the docs separately; or someone else with more time could do so... hint hint... 3) If a source file is too large to be compiled from GULAM, you will get a "no more virtual memory" message or someting like that (probably already from gcc-cpp). typically from gcc-cc1, actually... You can workaround this by running the compiler from the desktop, the current gcc.ttp will NOT work from the desktop (reasons follow), so you will have to write a small wrapper program to do this (I'm fixing gcc.ttp right now.....). Note: all gcc stuff assumes: file-handle 0 = stdin 1 = stdout 2 = stderr since the GEMDOS default for handle 2 is the serial port, this isn't much good when you start stuff from the desktop. Yah, I've since realized that 2 is the serial port (!). If you fix std-init, would you post the fixed version? Also, does anyone out there have a description of what file numbers 'default' to what? So you need a Fforce(2,Fdup(1)) At the begining of your program to see any error output (and due to a bug in stdio to see any output at all). Trying this shows two bugs in the current runtime library: - Fforce has a wrong binding in osbind.h, it uses 3 short (aka 16 bit) arguments! Write a trap-1www function to do this. [BTW is anybody working on cleaning up the library, there is a lot of stuff that should be done] No kidding. As I said in the doc, the library is pretty ragged. I'm working on getting rid of the trap_foo functions, and generating the traps in line; perhaps it makes sense to post a recompiled library whe that happens? [...] Don't get put off by this description, GNC CC is worth it! Glad you like it. ------------------------------ Date: 18 Sep 88 15:05:32 GMT From: bobmon@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (RAMontante) Subject: Re: Boycott Apple Again -- Now about Suns To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu I love the IBM PC newsgroup. Where else could I see an Apple flame inspire Sun users to flame their own machines as well as Apollos, with Mac II users taking random potshots from the sidelines? Lemme tell you about the AT&T 7300 I'm trying to use at school.... -- -- bob,mon (bobmon@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu) -- "Aristotle was not Belgian..." - Wanda ------------------------------ Date: 18 Sep 88 09:54:47 GMT From: mailrus!um-math!dyer@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Jon Brode) Subject: Re: Wait a Sec... (was Re: Atari fa To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu In article <36500054@iuvax> franco@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu writes: > >Thank you WAUG. The TeXer/LaTexer is beautiful. I think we have a case of mistaken identities here. First thing, Dave Dermott did the port, all thanks and credit go to him for TeX and LaTeX. Second, WAUG is the Washtenaw Atari Users Group, I'm the President, but the group has nothing to do with the net. (If you want to join though... send e-mail :-) PC7 archive status report: 450 files, 26 megs. We'll be ready to go when I finish indexing it all. Jon Brode -- dyer@math.lsa.umich.edu Moderator of PC7, President of WAUG ------------------------------ Date: 16 Sep 88 18:57:16 GMT From: lean@sbcs.sunysb.edu (Lean L. Loh) Subject: SHADOW / BDT decline in sales To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu I've found 2 instances in which SHADOW always crashes. i) Use GULAM's rx to receive some files. THen invoke SHADOW at some point later. Two bombs (i think). ii) Use UW.prg. Then invoke SHADOW while in UW.prg or at some point later. Same two bombs. And doing a warm-boot will not revive SHADOW. It will still crash until a cold boot is done. Has anyone else been hit by this? I'm using version 1.01 with a monchrome and a 20Meg Supra. ---------------------------------------------- I've used BDT Micro-Cshell and AnsiTerm. Both are good programs. However, there're quite a few public domain programs out now which are equally good (if not better) when compared to SOME of BDT's programs. GULAM and Uniterm comes to mind. I think this might be one reason why sales for BDT has declined. -- if you can dream it, you can do it. CSNET:lean@sbcs.csnet ... go sleep ARPA:lean%suny-sb.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa UUCP:{allegra, hocsd, philabs, ogcvax}!sbcs!lean ------------------------------ Date: 18 Sep 88 06:20:26 GMT From: mailrus!um-math!hyc@rutgers.edu (Howard Chu) Subject: Re: Boycott Apple Again -- Now about Suns To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu In article <620@bnlux0.bnl.gov> drs@bnlux0.UUCP (David R. Stampf) writes: > I wasn't going to respond to this figuring that there would be a >huge response from Sun users, but since it wasn't posted to the sun newsgroup >I'll put in my $.02 worth. > > I've had a Sun on my desk for 4 years now, and my department has >about a dozen. Schools by us have Sun's by the 100's. Compared to other >machines, Sun's software is top notch and we frequently use the sun's to >monitor our networks. I really think that Howard's opinions are in the >minority viewpoint. So much so in fact, that it would be interesting to >find out what he *would* recommend to his worst enemies as an alternative. > > < dave stampf I think we've seen more than enough of this topic, so I'll try to keep this short. First of all, I'm sure many schools have Suns by the 100's. I'm sure they're also often wondering if they'd made a mistake. I've heard many times how Michigan State University fared, with amazing ethernet broadcast storms and meltdowns rendering their campus-wide broadband completely unusable. We all remember the stories of Sun 3/50's ARP requests getting shunted along cross-country by ethernet bridges, yes? In any case, (consider this a challenge if you wish, I know you will not be able to meet it) you cannot put anywhere near 100 Suns on a single network, and get any useful service out of them. The network would simply collapse under too many collisions. I don't believe you will find any place running more than 40 machines on a single network. Contrast this with, say, an Apollo network. Our engineering school runs over 300 Apollos on a single Apollo token ring, on two campuses spanning over two miles. There's no such thing as a network meltdown there. Diskless nodes don't have to have disk space pre-allocated on servers, and don't eat up bandwidth trying to find their own internet addresses. There's no need for special partitioning of a drive, no particular use for the mount command except for use with NFS. No need to dedicate any piece of disk to swap space - all disk use is dynamically allocated. All disks on a net are always accessible, quickly and transparently. They have a bunch of Suns now too, but they can't compare in performance to the Apollos. Using NFS, all 300+ Apollo disks are accessible thru a single mount point on a Sun. In contrast, it's an amazing hassle to keep fstab's up-to-date to keep all the necessary Sun disks accessible. It would be nearly impossible to run a bunch of Suns as a well-coordinated network without Sun's Yellow Page service. All well and good, as long as it works, which is, unfortunately, not All the time. A Sun workstation just isn't configured to work in a network - load it up off the distribution tapes and it wants to think it's a standalone mini, like a big Vax or something. Its own password file, hell, its own copy of /etc. You know how silly it is to have 25 copies of /etc/termcap or /etc/hosts online? I couldn't even keep a full hosts file in the yp database because it was so huge it would timeout during ypxfr updates. When 1 of the 4 ypservers went down, the silly machines were unable to locate any of the 3 other running servers, and the whole network was unusable. YP is supposed to be fault tolerant, and is billed as a dynamically load balanced system, but in practice it is as inflexible and fragile as a piece of thin glass. It was also quite disconcerting, when I went looking for possible ways to improve the code, to note that my sources and binaries were not the same version, even though they had identical SCCS IDs. (Different date stamps, different object files.) And I'm one of the fortunate few to have access to full Sun source code. Contrast again with an Apollo network - these machines were obviously designed from the start to operate in a distributed computing environment. Sun's network support seems to be more of a hastily added asfterthought in comparison. The password database, for example is dynamically updated among what they call replicated databases. It's the same idea on the surface as yp - a few key nodes playing host to some servers. The implementation is much smoother though. For the password database, or "registry," there is also a locally cached registry, which maintains a selectable history size of local users, so even if the main registry becomes inaccessible due to a network failure, the node can be logged into for use. Apollo's network management software is easily the most sophisticated and mature as any I've seen. And with their filesystem, you won't find your NFS partitions temporarily evaporating, you won't be denied access to files that you own, etc. (This is certainly an odd problem to appear in a "stateless" filesystem, but Sun NFS often gets confused and will deny Joe User access to NFS mounted files that Joe owns. Usually fixed by a couple sync commands, so it's only a minor inconvenience at worst, but nonetheless it's a telling sign.) So much for keeping it short. I didn't even get to talking about how much faster Apollos are, how much more responsive the Apollo Display Manager is than any Sun windowing system, how much more sophisticated the filesystem is, or a lot of other points. Or Apollo's Network Computing System, with which I can writea huge resource intensive application that will utilize all available CPUs and disks on the network. (250 68020's can solve a lot of problems in one helluvausmall amount of time!) So much for that. I have no vested interest in either Suns or Apollos, I use them both all the time. Obviously I prefer the Apollos, even though I'm maintaining 25 Suns here in Math. It's truly amazing how many people I've encountered have only heard good things about Suns, and never bad. Sure, they have their good points, but there's a lot of bad to be aware of, and, more importantly, there are good alternatives to be aware of. -- / /_ , ,_. Howard Chu / /(_/(__ University of Michigan / Computing Center College of LS&A ' Unix Project Information Systems ------------------------------ Date: 18 Sep 88 10:48:30 GMT From: clyde!watmath!water!ljdickey@bellcore.com (Lee Dickey) Subject: Re: Fidonet mailer To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu In article <590@stag.UUCP> to_stdnet@stag.UUCP writes: |From: thelake!steve@stag.UUCP (Steve Yelvington) | |I ran across the following on a local Fidonet node and thought |it might be of general interest. -- Steve |>Subject: New version of GS-Point released |>The new version of GS-Point, v0.61, has finally been released. For those who |>don't know, GS-Point is a non-commercial package that allows an Atari ST user |>to act as a FidoNet point, and receive and send network mail and echomail. I am interested, and would like to know more. Has anyone who has tried it yet? Is it on one the USENET or BITNET file servers? -- L. J. Dickey, Faculty of Mathematics, University of Waterloo. ljdickey@WATDCS.UWaterloo.ca ljdickey@water.BITNET ljdickey@water.UUCP ..!uunet!watmath!water!ljdickey ljdickey@water.waterloo.edu ------------------------------ Date: 18 Sep 88 15:58:36 GMT From: rubbs1!Robert.Lisowski@rutgers.edu (Robert Lisowski) Subject: Change your titles often! To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu People ought to change the message titles for their posts more often. If you are continuing a discussion on the same subject, allow your titles to evolve with the discussion so everybody can scan the titles and see what the messages are actually about. It seems I've been seeing "Another great quote from Mr. Good" and "To fix or not to fix" appearing above a large percentage of posts here, and those aren't the only ones that are recycled again and again. I'm not bitching, but I think we would all be well served if everyone made their titles a bit more original and unique. After all, a title should reflect closely the subject matter of an article. I realize you may want someone to recognize the post as a reply to a previously posted article, so maybe you could put a number at the end of the title, or modify the wording. (some use "(was: .....)", but even THOSE are getting recycled, so there ya go.) This post comes to you as a result of my having to read alot of articles that don't interest me---due to poor titles. C'mon, it's not that difficult to come up with original titles, just condense what you are posting about down to about half a line. PLEASE don't flood this area with replies to this message. If you feel an uncontrollable urge to use your flame thrower, E-mail it to me. Thank you for your time. Rob -- Robert Lisowski - via FidoNet node 1:107/330 UUCP: ...!rutgers!rubbs1!Robert.Lisowski ARPA: Robert.Lisowski@rubbs1.FIDONET.ORG \...!rutgers!rubbs1!Robert.Lisowski ------------------------------ End of Info-Atari16 Digest ************************** ------- ------- From Mailer@Score.Stanford.EDU Wed Sep 28 07:26:16 1988 Received: from Score.Stanford.EDU by speedy.mcnc.org (5.59/MCNC/5-16-88) id AA13062; Wed, 28 Sep 88 07:26:16 EDT Message-Id: <8809281126.AA13062@speedy.mcnc.org> Date: Wed 28 Sep 88 04:17:55-PDT From: The Mailer Daemon To: Info-Atari16-Request@Score.Stanford.EDU Subject: PS:[--QUEUED-MAIL--].RETRANSMIT.71 Status: R No such host as "SANDIEGO.MT.DDN.MIL.#Internet", bad queue file follows: ------- =DELIVERY-OPTIONS:MAIL =NOTIFY: 2-Oct-88 22:55 =DEQUEUE: 30-Sep-88 23:18 _Score.Stanford.EDU.#Internet Info-Atari16-Request aerospace.aero.org grant CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU INFO-A16%MARIST.BITNET [128.59.40.130].#Internet chung DCA-EMS.ARPA.#Internet goertzel uunet.UU.NET.#Internet mutec!docbobo lasso!atari16 graf.poly.edu RUBIN MSR.EPM.ORNL.GOV.#Internet jcm HUACHUCA-EM.ARPA.#Internet Mrhyner%sed.huachuca-em.arpa SANDIEGO.MT.DDN.MIL.#Internet jensen hallock CSS.NRL.NAVY.MIL.#Internet info-atari NRL-ACOUSTICS.ARPA.#Internet MENTON corsaro NOTE.NSF.GOV.#Internet jmurray [128.205.2.4].#Internet V069HPMS ICS.UCI.EDU.#Internet uci-info-atari16 EE.UCLA.EDU.#Internet willing Louie.UDel.EDU.#Internet dist-info-atari16 cvl.umd.edu.#Internet gyuri Date: Tue 27 Sep 88 23:18:34 PDT Subject: Info-Atari16 Digest V88 #412 From: Info-Atari16 Digest Sender: Info-Atari16-request@Score.Stanford.EDU Errors-to: Info-Atari16-request@Score.Stanford.EDU Maint-Path: Info-Atari16-request@Score.Stanford.EDU To: Info-Atari16 Distribution List: ; Reply-to: Info-Atari16@Score.Stanford.edu Info-Atari16 Digest Tuesday, September 27, 1988 Volume 88 : Issue 412 This weeks Editor: Bill Westfield Today's Topics: Re: HARD DISK: HELP OFFERED AND WANTED Glendale Atari Faire v.3 report(!) Spectre 128 Spectre 128 info from Glendale Atarifest News from Southern California Atari Faire ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 18 Sep 88 20:28:10 GMT From: titan!bro@rice.edu (Douglas Monk) Subject: Re: HARD DISK: HELP OFFERED AND WANTED To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu In article <382@bdt.UUCP> bms@bdt.UUCP writes: > > ... Atari host adapters do not pass back SCSI/SASI status(error) codes > properly. This causes hard disk boot software to install "phantom" drives > on the system. ... > >Vance Chin Berkeley Microsystems > P.O. Box 20119 > Oakland, CA 94620 As a result of this "phantom drive" phenomenon, you can't install ram disks since all the drive letters are spuriously taken. For this reason I wrote a little program that goes in the AUTO folder (after your hard disk driver) that reads a file to determine what YOU want the active drive mask set to. Thus, you set the active drives before running the ram disk program which can then install itself correctly. The only trouble with this scheme is that I have trouble with reset-surviving ram disks, though I am not sure why. Does a warm reset leave the drive bits alone, including the surviving ram disk? If that is the case, all I need to add is a check to see if the program is being run after a cold or a warm reset. The way I currently use it is to set the drive bits every time and use a non-surviving ram disk, so I haven't been motivated to fix it up any more. If there is an interest in the program (which can either be run from desktop, shell, or auto folder, and uses command-line arguments or a file if no arguments are found to LIST current active drives, SET the desired active drives, CLEAR the undesired active drives, print a MESSAGE, and HOLD the resulting printout until a key is pressed) I can post it to the sources and binary lists. If someone can make suggestions on how to deal better with reset-surviving ram disks, I will incorporate those changes first. Suggestions welcome. Thanks, Doug Monk (bro@rice.edu) ------------------------------ Date: 18 Sep 88 20:45:50 GMT From: nunki.usc.edu!rjung@oberon.usc.edu (Robert allen Jung) Subject: Glendale Atari Faire v.3 report(!) To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu Well, it's now Sunday, 9/18/88, and the Glendale Atari Faire v.3 is over. Here's a report, for those who are interested. (If you're not interested, I suggest you hit "n" now:) The Glendale Faire may have been a local event, but there were a few things that net.people would be interested in: * SPECTRE 128. It's _here_. NOW. David Small brought 200 copies out to Glendale, and were they selling! The price is around $180 -- Make your checks out to "Gadgest By Small". David (a very funny and fun guy) was accompanied by his wife Sandy, his infant son, and a few friends. And yes, I did see Hypercard running on an ST with my own eyes. David also gave a humorous talk on the development of the Spectre, and denies any plans to do an Amiga emulator for the ST or a Mac emulator on the Amiga. * 8-bit GEM. You want to revitalize your 8-bit Atari? Then take your picks: Obviously, the biggest expectation in the 8-bit community is GOE (Graphics Operating Enviroment). Yes, it was at the Faire, and yes, Total Control Systems is selling them. They're not _shipping_ until October, but you can order it now and get a discount. It looks like a TOTAL clone of the ST's GEM (You can even hook up an ST mouse and run GOE through it), and ran solid for the entire show. The author says it will run 95% of all 8-bit programs. It comes on a ICD "piggyback" cartridge, and takes up only 8K of RAM. There's supposed to be a library of GOE routes, so other developers can easily make GOE calls and write GOE products. Looks really terrific. From the makers of _Celebrity Cookbook_ comes DIAMOND OS (aka ST jr, depending on what time of the day you were at the booth). For $30, it's a graphics interface that offers drop-down menus, windows, and other good stuff (it doesn't _look_ like GEM, however). Reeve Software is promising to release DIAMOND Paint, Write, Publish, and Programmer's Kits, for $30 each as well. It looks like it's disk based (I can't be sure), but that's okay -- it can support up to 16 megabytes(!) of RAM. * Genlock for the ST was demonstrated, in an open-board "final" version. JRI says they're only waiting for the FCC, and then they'll ship. It's very impressive -- An ST Cyberpain animation was being superimposed over a music video, and the Genlocked result was being shown on both a standard TV _and_ the SC1224 (how do they do that?). Ready to tackle the Amiga? * Neocept, makers of FONTZ! and WORDUP (a great word processor -- an unsolicited endorsement) were present. Nothing major was presented, although the new version of WordUp, with numerous minor bug fixes, is expected to ship in two weeks. Registered owners will recieve a card in the mail about the upgrade procedure. Neocept also says they'll gladly take user input for improvements for their products -- Just drop them a line. * Animation buffs like myself will be happy to hear that FILM DIRECTOR is finally being released. Epyx has gotten the rights to this two-year-old cel-based animation program, and it has been SUBSTANTIALLY improved (16 screens for cels, runs in 512K, better user interface, etc.). It should be out in October, and the $50 price tag gets you both FILM DIRECTOR and ART DIRECTOR -- A bargain! Maurice Molyneaux (a fun guy to chat with, a real professional artist) had a lot of input into the final user interface, and it shows. I can't wait. * Megamax was also showing their soon-to-be-released Laser DB. It's a source level debugger for Laser C, and offers lots of features -- Source-code trace viewing, register value displays, breakpoints, multiple windows. If you liked Laser C, you'll want this. * Codehead software was also demonstrating G+PLUS (I won't say anything about this, everybody and his cousin knows about it by now) and a new product called MULTIDESK. MDesk allows you to have 16 accessories of your choice in ONE menu slot. Even better, you can clear out and load NEW accessories at any time! You can also change the name MultiDesk registers itself on the menu, so you can have six copies of Multidesk -- each one with 16 different accessories -- for a mind-numbing total of 96 accessories avaliable simultaneously. Future products promised include FatBack ("A unique hard disk backup system") and CodeHead Utilities (A collection of programs and accessories). * ICD was present and selling their cartridge-based SPARTADOS X. My friend bought a copy ($80, on a piggyback cartridge), and it appears to work just fine. Improvements include 1000+ files per directory, faster disk access, and built-in ARC/ALFCRUNCH support. The manual is still a preliminary copy, however, but ICD promises to send out the finals to registed owners when they become available. They also showed their FA-ST hard drive, available for 8-bit or ST hookup. * Regent Software was selling copies of REGENT WORD II for the jaw-dropping price of $15 each -- Not $15 off, $15 EACH. * Broderbund, surprisingly, was present. They were showing their new _Typhoon Thompson_ game for the ST (known on the Apple // as _Airheart_), as well as _Star Wars_ (imported from Europe; Broderbund is distributing). A version of _Karateka_ for the ST is promised, and "maybe" _Print Shop_, but little else. (The dealer was frank in why there was less Atari support -- "Our biggest market is the //gs"). No word on 8-bit support. * And now, the word from Atari. Conspicuous by their absence, none of the Tramiel family showed up. Instead, we were treated to Sig Hartman, who promised us that "[1989] will be a critical point for Atari in the US market". He also apologized for the lack of more ST's in America ("We had a limited number of Ataris, and we decided to put them in West Germany -- If we didn't, there would have been a hole for the Amiga or the Macintosh to get in"), and pledged closed attention to the end users, through user groups and public information services. Sig refused to "officially" confirm/deny the existence of the Atari Transputer, the 68020/68030 workstation/machines, or anything else -- except by saying "We're working on 7 or 8 products right now, and I can't say what they are." He did promise that 520/1040 owners will be able to get TOS and blitter upgrades, and that he will personally try to get more companies to produce 8-bit titles. In a related vein, Federated promised the increased development of "compu-centers" in all their stores, and the possibility of offering in-store servicing for Atari products. They are also supposedly toying with the idea of carrying hardware accessories (boards, wiring, etc.) in the centers. * Pledged to appear -- but never did -- were Data Pacific and Antic. Dealers who did appear, but didn't produce anything major, included Astra systems, Michtron, Migraph, and Seymour-Radix. Bill Skurski Enterprises was present, peddling copies of his "New User's Guide to the Atari ST" (book and videotape), as well as Best Electronics, Logical Choice for Computing, Mid-Cities Comp/Soft, and Comsoft. Special thanks to John King Tarpinian, the local user groups, ACENET, and everybody else for makign the whole thing possible. --R.J. B-) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Disclaimer: These are my views, and mine alone. # ## # Mailing address: Beats me, just reply to this message # ## # (rjung@sa132.usc.edu?) ## ## ## ------------------------------ Date: 19 Sep 88 00:07:59 GMT From: pasteur!cory.Berkeley.EDU!landay@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (James A. Landay) Subject: Spectre 128 To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu Can someone post some info about this product (Dave Small.) What exactly do you get? No ROMS included, right? Is there anything to do if you own a magic sac besides throwing it out? Do you need to buy translator from DP to read and write disks? Price and availability? Thanks James A. Landay ARPA: landay@cory.berkeley.edu ..!ucbvax!cory!landay ------------------------------ Date: 19 Sep 88 00:06:51 GMT From: (Association for Computing Machinery) Subject: Spectre 128 info from Glendale Atarifest To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu A SPECTRE COMES BACK TO HAUNT APPLE Gadgets by Small was showing Release 1.0 (?) of Spectre 128 at the "Southern California Atari Computer Faire, Version 3.0". It is now selling. Dave Small has outdone himself again, coming out with a superior product in an incredibly short amount of time. What warrants the word 'superior'? In addition to the things you might expect, like being 20% faster than the hardware it emulates, having a larger screen with a mono monitor, being compatible with SC1224 monitors, Translator 1, all Mack System and Finder versions, HFS, and the 128K (not to mention the 64K) ROMS, Dave's Cartridge now refreshes the screen 400% faster and writes to floppies 800% faster than the Sac. In addition, you can use Apple's own SCSI HD's with it if you want. Admittedly not a godsend to most ST owners (who would balk at Apple's prices, for one thing), but most probably useful for current Mack users who already have the HD, either at home or at work. Where the Spectre really shocked me, though, was when I heard about its HD transfer speed, which, according to Dave's modest figures, is fully 2.5 times faster than the Mack itself. Much to the delight of the crowd at the seminar, and as you could imagine, Dave commented that Apple's ghostbusting lawyers are *furious*. I think the decision to release the Spectre now at this comparatively small Faire (as opposed to say, Comdex in the Fall) was a good way to keep the lawyers from showing up to harass him. Dave is betting that word of mouth and the networks are going to spread the news of this development further and faster than trade publicity anyway. I almost forgot: yes, it runs hypercard (with a mere meg, even)...and pagemaker, and adobe illustrator, and...well, in Dave's own words, it is "...far more compatible" than the last mack emulator to appear on the market. Of my own first-hand experience with the setup there, its speed and its (larger screen) appearance made it subjectively very reminiscent of the feel of a monochrome Mack II. There is a downside to everything, hard to find to be sure, but still there. Dave said that version 1.0 has a minor bug in it, but he noted that updates that contain bug fixes will be free (as usual, right?), and that update charges in the future will be smaller than what Data Pacific levied. The initial cost for the Spectre, however, will be more expensive. It is currently listing at $179.95. But my guess is that this compares favorably with Apple's charge to 'enhance' a 512K mack. One thing that bugged me is that I didn't see anywhere a list of the software that doesn't run (the list of software that DOES run would probably be too obnoxiously big). But surely something must break? According to Dave, he said he actually finished Spectre "last Tuesday," so just maybe they haven't had the time to compile a long impressive list suitable for printing. A couple other things: still no support for Mack sound or MIDI. Dave said that he's working on getting the sound to work, but that at present enabling it uses up too much CPU and eventually crashes the machine (funny, I thought that the former was true of the real Mack). As for MIDI, I forgot exactly what reason he gave, but the bottom line is "no go". Since some of you probably would have asked, here is the address that was given for ordering purposes: Gadgets by Small, Inc. 40 W. Littleton Blvd. #210-211 Littleton, Colorado 80120 Plinio Barbeito acm@cs.ucla.edu UCLA Student Chapter of the ACM UUCP: ...!{...}!ucla-cs!acm 3514, 4801 Boelter Hall ARPA: acm@CS.UCLA.EDU Los Angeles, CA 90024 VOICE: (213) 825-5879, 825-7597 ------------------------------ Date: 19 Sep 88 00:14:25 GMT From: acm@CS.UCLA.EDU (Association for Computing Machinery) Subject: News from Southern California Atari Faire To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu Report from the "Southern California Atari Computer Faire, Version 3.0" (a.k.a. The Glendale Atarifest): The biggest news at this show was the introduction of Spectre 128. Check out a separate posting for info on this. CodeHead Software was showing G+plus, a "totally compatible" GDOS replacement program, that is faster and has the added capability of reloading fonts and device drivers without rebooting. I never got to see it in action, so I couldn't verify the above statements. They were also showing MultiDesk, a program that can load up to 96 desk accessories, at any time without rebooting to load and 'unload' them. It takes up one regular acc slot. In addition, it allows the use of some sort of macro files to load in a predetermined group of up to 16 accs. at once, with few mouse clicks. They are also the authors of TopDown, the program that cuts bootup time by putting auto programs and accs at the top of memory. Their address is P.O. Box 4336, N. Hollywood, CA 91607 JRI was showing a Genlock System for the Mega ST. They had a cute animation program running on top of video from a VCR. They showed the animation program by itself in one ST monitor and the combined output in both a TV and another ST monitor. The genlocking is fully hardware based, so that no supporting software is needed (i.e. choose from whatever paint program or animation package already available), it has a lot of features I won't mention here. They are tentatively pricing the card at $500. They are currently awaiting FCC certification, and are planning similar device(s) for the low-end ST's. Neocept was showing the WordUp wordprocessor there. As has been noted elsewhere, it was enjoying a good deal of popularity at the show, more so than the WordPerfect booth. Text routing is very sophisticated, very natural to use, and reasonably fast, as are screen updates of a window full of big fonts and pictures. The print quality is really professional, as is the screen output on a monochrome monitor. It wins hands down for ease of use over a lot of other WP type programs. For example, to include a picture along with your text, you practically just have to choose a filename, the text will automatically route around it (the picture appears right where the cursor is). Resizing or removing the picture is as easy as manipulating a miniature GEM window. The latest version has reportedly fixed the bugs in the initial release. Some of the printed pictures could have looked a bit better, though. Practical Solutions was showing a triophonic/true stereo sound adapter board. Solderless and internal, it will be selling for $50 starting November. This, in combination with Yamaha's new 10-bit pin compatible, functionally compatible version of the sound chip (anybody know where I can get one cheap?) could open up possibilities for much better sound right out of the ST. The extra bits make a big difference. Why, just think, 6 more bits and we have CD quality B-). Anyway, PS's Videokey composite/RF converter/audio line box goes for $120. They were also showing their mouse, monitor, and drive master boxes, all three of which simply switch safely from one set of lines to another ($40-50). They say they'll sell bulk ST floppy and monitor connectors for less than $6.00 each. Somebody (I don't know who) was showing midi-gram, what seemed to be a microphone that converted sung notes (i.e. sounds) into midi notes (i.e. binary), for use with any sequencer for recording. Don't know if this is specifically an ST product or simply a MIDI port hookup or what. Of the few displays only showing games at this show (maybe the only one?), there was Broderbund. Nothing to note. Antic Software was showing the usual 3D sterotek glasses (forms a crowd, but not really that impressive, folks). I didn't get to see their new CyberSculpt, the latest of Tom Hudson's creations, so don't ask. A lot of people were showing Spectrum 512 and Cyber pics, however -- mainly to show off their monitors or monitor attachments or the speed of their hard drives and such. Megamax was showing their Laser C compiler, announcing that by Christmas they will have LaserDB, a source debugger, available. Seymor/Radix was showing an impressive 75,160,216,300,360,600, up to 1000 dpi image scanner. Of course, the output can be used with all major picture formats and DP programs. Their printed output looked very good. Last but not least Atari was represented at the show. Sig Hartmann was hard to track down, so I asked Cindy Claveran if she had any info on the 68030 UNIX box, but although she was very courteous, she had no comments about any possible release date. Somebody nearby also asked about the transputer. Essentially what she said about that is that all of the prototypes are now in developers' hands. That would explain, at least, why there was no transputer to be seen there. But I didn't see 1280x960 monitors popping up anywhere either. What *did* Atari show, you ask? Pretty much their whole current product line, all the way down to the game machines, running various types of software. Plinio Barbeito acm@cs.ucla.edu UCLA Student Chapter of the ACM UUCP: ...!{...}!ucla-cs!acm 3514, 4801 Boelter Hall ARPA: acm@CS.UCLA.EDU Los Angeles, CA 90024 VOICE: (213) 825-5879, 825-7597 ------------------------------ End of Info-Atari16 Digest ************************** ------- ------- From Mailer@Score.Stanford.EDU Wed Sep 28 07:26:48 1988 Received: from Score.Stanford.EDU by speedy.mcnc.org (5.59/MCNC/5-16-88) id AA13068; Wed, 28 Sep 88 07:26:48 EDT Message-Id: <8809281126.AA13068@speedy.mcnc.org> Date: Wed 28 Sep 88 04:17:56-PDT From: The Mailer Daemon To: Info-Atari16-Request@Score.Stanford.EDU Subject: PS:[--QUEUED-MAIL--].RETRANSMIT.72 Status: R No such host as "SANDIEGO.MT.DDN.MIL.#Internet", bad queue file follows: ------- =DELIVERY-OPTIONS:MAIL =NOTIFY: 2-Oct-88 22:55 =DEQUEUE: 30-Sep-88 23:19 _Score.Stanford.EDU.#Internet Info-Atari16-Request aerospace.aero.org grant CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU INFO-A16%MARIST.BITNET [128.59.40.130].#Internet chung DCA-EMS.ARPA.#Internet goertzel uunet.UU.NET.#Internet mutec!docbobo lasso!atari16 graf.poly.edu RUBIN MSR.EPM.ORNL.GOV.#Internet jcm HUACHUCA-EM.ARPA.#Internet Mrhyner%sed.huachuca-em.arpa SANDIEGO.MT.DDN.MIL.#Internet jensen hallock NOTE.NSF.GOV.#Internet jmurray [128.205.2.4].#Internet V069HPMS ICS.UCI.EDU.#Internet uci-info-atari16 EE.UCLA.EDU.#Internet willing Louie.UDel.EDU.#Internet dist-info-atari16 Date: Tue 27 Sep 88 23:19:09 PDT Subject: Info-Atari16 Digest V88 #413 From: Info-Atari16 Digest Sender: Info-Atari16-request@Score.Stanford.EDU Errors-to: Info-Atari16-request@Score.Stanford.EDU Maint-Path: Info-Atari16-request@Score.Stanford.EDU To: Info-Atari16 Distribution List: ; Reply-to: Info-Atari16@Score.Stanford.edu Info-Atari16 Digest Tuesday, September 27, 1988 Volume 88 : Issue 413 This weeks Editor: Bill Westfield Today's Topics: Damaged moriabin.arc header installing LARN low cost HARDDISK interface Re: installing LARN spectra 128 SH204 RLL Formatting (was: Re: CONNECT YOUR OWN HARD DISK...) Re: Boycott Apple Again -- Now about Suns Re: Damaged moriabin.arc header ibm compatibility Hard disk in 1040ST was Re: low cost HARDDISK interface ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 19 Sep 88 03:54:12 GMT From: agate!web-1a.berkeley.edu!c60a-1bq@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU Subject: Damaged moriabin.arc header To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu When I uudecoded moriabin, i found that the header file for MORIABIN.ARC was damaged. Did this happen everyehere, or am I doing something wrong? BTW, our uudecode is pretty primitive, so I had to knit the files together to decode it. I doubt this had any effect on this particular error as it occured on the 2nd file in MORIABIN.ARC John Kawakami ------------------------------ Date: 19 Sep 88 04:50:19 GMT From: rubbs1!David.Hochhauser@rutgers.edu (David Hochhauser) Subject: installing LARN To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu HELP!!!!!!!!!!!! I don't know what I'm doing! I just downloaded LARN from the FIDO files. I unARCed the file LARN12S.ARC and got: -README- FIXED.BUG LARN.ARC LARN.DOC LARN.FTN LARN.HLP LARN.MAZ LARN.OPT OLARN.HLP OREADME TERMCAP.ARC Was I supposed to get a file called LARN.TTP? What do I do with LARN.ARC and TERMCAP.ARC. Do I need a special compiler? Would someone familiar with this game please contact me either on this BBS or call me at 201-932-0597. Thanx. Sincerely David Hochhauser -- David Hochhauser - via FidoNet node 1:107/330 UUCP: ...!rutgers!rubbs1!David.Hochhauser ARPA: David.Hochhauser@rubbs1.FIDONET.ORG \...!rutgers!rubbs1!David.Hochhauser ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Sep 88 03:59:20 GMT From: Ronald Lamprecht Subject: low cost HARDDISK interface To: INFO-Atari16@Score.Stanford.EDU Sorry for the long pause after my first announcement -- but there was a lot of work to do and I wanted to collect requests. Due to the number of requests I decided to post some articles about the Atari DMA port and my hardware solution, because they may be of general interest. But the software is too large - I will try to store it (as source and as executables) at a fileserver. In this article I want to answer some common requests: Hardware: - The layout can only be photocopied , there exists no machine readable version of it. - The assembly is very simple - there is no need of an oscilloscope , a voltmeter is sufficient. Nearly all hardware errors can be detected and analysed by the software. - General remarks to Harddisks: (My experience, my own opinion) - there is no harm in using harddisks with short seek rates (28ms) instead of `slow' ones (40ms) (28ms are louder than 40ms). But I couldn't recognice any increase in access speed - the operating system and it's access to harddisk is more important. So I suggest to invest your money in harddisk size and not in speed. - Someone asked if it would be possible to install a ST157 (3"1/2) instead of the floppy in a ST1040: answer: no : - harddisks use other mounting screws - there won't be enough space to mount the interface with the OMTI controller (especially if you plan or have added an 68020, memory expansions or SRAMs instead of (E)PROMs) - hardisks need a lot of power and the ATARI power supplies are weak (HD-Requirement: c 2A on 12V at power-up, c1A at 5V -- critical at seek operations) Software: - A MINIX driver will be written immediately after I have received the ST version. Please send me a note when you received it in Germany. - All programs which use legal GEMDOS and BIOS calls will work with my driver - only programs that try to access the harddisks directly won't work (besides HD format and partion utilities only a virus would try to access the harddisk in this manner) Until now we haven't detected a single program that doesn't work with our harddisk (besides the ATARI hardisk driver & formater). Even all harddisk backup programs like Turtle,... work correctly ! (some programs have troubles with too many partitions, so we allow you to undefine and redefine single partitions) - The software was developped for high res. monitors - no restrictions for the driver, but our HD utilities will not work with low res. colour monitors !!! - Now all comments and helps are translated to English ! - The software can also be used in connection with the c't-solution (one short source file must be substituted - no multiple DMA port usage) - The boot software exits as a disk bootable version as well as a ROM bootable version (ROM patch) - Foreign utilities for GEMDOS speed increase and 40 folder bug solution are necessary: FATSPEED and GEMBOOT recommended (Thanks to Ulrich Kuebler & Konrad A. Hahn) I think the main reason for our solution is in fact the software: - You can make use of 8 partitions with arbitrary drive IDs (you may use K: and O: and keep C: for a RAM disk) - You can connect several drives, several interfaces - You can create, change, delete partitions at any time (the next version will even allow you to move,enlarge and shrink partitions) - The drive recognition scheme is `intelligent': you are allowed to switch off drives and to reconnect them without rebooting your system - The driver needs only about 4k of RAM (!) - The utilities make full use of GEM - ... I hope that answers the most important questions. Those of you who had further special questions I will contact within the next days. Bitnet: V61@DHDURZ1 Ronald Lamprecht UUCP: ...!unido!DHDURZ1.bitnet!V61 Theoretische Physik ARPAnet: V61%DHDURZ1.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (Heidelberg, West Germany) ------------------------------ Date: 19 Sep 88 05:38:55 GMT From: mailrus!um-math!hyc@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Howard Chu) Subject: Re: installing LARN To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu In article <57.2334A7BA@rubbs1.FIDONET.ORG> David.Hochhauser@rubbs1.FIDONET.ORG (David Hochhauser) writes: >HELP!!!!!!!!!!!! > >I don't know what I'm doing! I just downloaded LARN from the FIDO files. I unARCed the file LARN12S.ARC and got: > -README- > FIXED.BUG > LARN.ARC > LARN.DOC > LARN.FTN > LARN.HLP > LARN.MAZ > LARN.OPT > OLARN.HLP > OREADME > TERMCAP.ARC > >Was I supposed to get a file called LARN.TTP? What do I do with LARN.ARC and TERMCAP.ARC. Do I need a special compiler? Would someone familiar with this game please contact me either on this BBS or call me at 201-932-0597. Thanx. What you downloaded was the complete sources for my port of Larn 12.0 to the ST. There are no executable files in that archive. The subfile LARN.ARC has the actual source code, and TERMCAP.ARC has the source for the termcap library, as well as a description of the ST's built in VT52 emulation. I wrote this port using Mark Williams C version 2.0. All you need to do to get a working game is unpack the files and type "make," assuming you have that compiler. If not, then you're better off getting hold of the executables. Look for a file named LARN12.ARC (note the absence of the letter 'S' in the name...) and just use that. A lot of copies of LARN12.ARC were distributed without the termcap description included. I've posted the termcap separately to this group a few times already, so you should be able to find it at an archive site. Has anyone else run Larn from a BBS? It will work, if you redirect all three I/O descriptors to the serial port. (Actually, it might be best to leave stderr directed to the ST console...) I suppose it's not such a hot idea, after all, since you can't limit the time someone plays for. But since it uses termcap, you can support a wide variety of terminals in the game. -- / /_ , ,_. Howard Chu / /(_/(__ University of Michigan / Computing Center College of LS&A ' Unix Project Information Systems ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Sep 88 7:56:22 CDT From: "Norman R. Frech" To: dlm%ruhi!ATT.COM.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU Subject: spectra 128 Dan, I just got Dave Small's newsletter and I am fairly excited about this product. I don't know how to get to Dave on Usenet so I though maybe you could answer a few questions. He talks about a version 2.0 coming up in the near future; will this be a free upgrade from 1.0 or will there be a charge? Second, is it absolutely necessary to have a monochome monitor? Thanks, Norm Frech ---------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Norm Frech USAMC ALMSA, ATTN: AMXAL-HL, Box 1578, St.Louis, MO 63188-1578 COMMERICAL: (314) 263-5231 AUTOVON: 693-5231 ------------------------------ Date: 18 Sep 88 17:05:11 GMT From: mcvax!cernvax!ethz!jungfrau!marvin@uunet.uu.net (Rico und Jan) Subject: SH204 RLL Formatting (was: Re: CONNECT YOUR OWN HARD DISK...) To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu In article <9160@cup.portal.com> Ric_I_Clayton@cup.portal.com writes: > > Here's my Hard Disk Story: > > I had an Atari SH204 20Meg Hard Disk. I needed more disk space and >didn't want to spend another $600 for 20megs. (Not to mention the fact >that the SH204 has no Daisy-chain port.) This is what I ended up with: > > (From my SH204) > o Seagate ST225 20Meg Hard Disk > o Adaptec 4000 Controller > > (From my local Hard Disk Dealer) > o Seagate ST251 42Meg Hard Disk > > (From ICD) > o Host Adaptor Board > o 5 1/4 Hard Disk Case (w/HDA Mounting Kit & Cutout) > o Controller-to-Disk Cable Set > o 36" DMA Cable > >The only problems I had were with the Hard Drive >Case. Some of the drive bracket mounting holes were miss-aligned and had >to be re-drilled, the hardware-kit (screws,etc) didn't have the right >hardware, and space is _real_ tight inside the case. Nothing a drill and >a trip to the hardware store wouldn't solve. Also, saving the leftover >SH204 parts gives me a head-start on my next storage increase. By just >adding an RLL controller, a 96Mb drive, and replacing the PAL chip on the ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >Atari Host Adaptor board, I'll have more storage than I'll possibly need. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ This is what I thought, too. I replaced the Adaptec 4000 controller by the 4070, which is completely compatible with the 4000, except that it uses RLL encoding scheme instead of MFM. I also bought a second drive, a Seagate ST157R, which is RLL and has a capacity of 49MB. The old drive in the SH204 was (still is) an Tandon TM262, which is a 3.5", MFM, 20MB drive. I checked out with Tandon, if that drive accepts RLL (i.e. if it has plated media), and they said yes (although it was not certified for it). Formatting the Tandon drive didn't cause any problems, but, however, it has quite a lot of read errors. The errors do not appear in specific sectors, but just randomly anywhere, especially on the cylinders with low numbers, i.e. on the inner cylinders of the drive. It looks like it mostly works just perfectly, but sometimes there are these read errors. It seems that timing margins are so close, that it does not work properly from time to time. A few days ago I got the PAL replacement from BMS. It doesn't help very much, except that read errors are now 'officialy' being recognized. If anybody is out there, who has similar experience, or who has a solution, please post/mail it... Tomas *********************************************************************** Disclaimer: I'm a student at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zuerich, Switzerland, studying Computer Science ('Informatik' as we call it in German). UUCP: ...!mcvax!ethz!jungfrau!marvin (marvin@ethz.UUCP) Surface: Tomas Felner, Quellenstrasse 30, 8005 Zuerich, Switzerland ------------------------------ Date: 17 Sep 88 18:00:17 GMT From: att!alberta!calgary!!paquette@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Trevor Paquette) Subject: Re: Boycott Apple Again -- Now about Suns To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu In article <620@bnlux0.bnl.gov>, drs@bnlux0.bnl.gov (David R. Stampf) writes: > In article <406@stag.math.lsa.umich.edu> hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu) writes: > > > >Lots and lots of problems, no single one of which renders a Sun totally > >unusable, but altogether adding up to too many headaches. Bad network > >support, flaky network services, etc. etc. etc... For a company whose > >motto is "the network is the computer" it's pretty disgusting how > >poorly their network software runs. > > > > I've had a Sun on my desk for 4 years now, and my department has > about a dozen. Schools by us have Sun's by the 100's. Compared to other > machines, Sun's software is top notch and we frequently use the sun's to > monitor our networks. I really think that Howard's opinions are in the > minority viewpoint. So much so in fact, that it would be interesting to > find out what he *would* recommend to his worst enemies as an alternative. > > < dave stampf I must agree with Dave. I have been using Sun workstations for about 3 years now and I think it is the best devellopement system around. The Sunview window environment is a joy to work in compared to other windowing systems I have seen. Mex on the Iris is totally brain damaged in comparison to it. I have nothing bad to say about Sun (the computer or the company). I really hate it when some people give there 2 cents worth when it is only worth 1. Alot of people don't give things a chance to improve, if it does not work first time then they refuse to look at it again. ============================================================================= Trevor Paquette - GraphicsLand, U of Calgary[Home of The Great Train Rubbery] Email:paquette@cpsc.UCalgary.CA ICBM:51 03 N/114 05 W Luminous beings we are, not this crude matter. *** Don't worry, be happy ------------------------------ Date: 19 Sep 88 08:04:50 GMT From: ssyx!koreth@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Steven Grimm) Subject: Re: Damaged moriabin.arc header To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu In article <14436@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> c60a-1bq@web-1a.berkeley.edu () writes: >When I uudecoded moriabin, i found that the header file for MORIABIN.ARC >was damaged...it >occured on the 2nd file in MORIABIN.ARC There is only one file in MORIABIN.ARC, so you should be safe. Feel free to request the relevant parts of the posting (06 through 15) from the ssyx archive server if you have more problems. --- These are my opinions, and in no way reflect those of UCSC, which are wrong. Steven Grimm Moderator, comp.{sources,binaries}.atari.st koreth@ssyx.ucsc.edu uunet!ucbvax!ucscc!ssyx!koreth ------------------------------ Date: 19 Sep 88 16:32:34 GMT From: hubcap!trev@gatech.edu (Trevor Bauknight) Subject: ibm compatibility To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu im planning to upgrade very soon from my current televideo 803 cp/m machine to one of the 68000 beasts...i have and have access to a great deal of scientific and engineering software to run on an ibm pc compatible machine but i detest the idea of *owning* an ibm compatible, though inferior system... could someone, an expert in the respective camps, e-mail information concerning tthe ibm compatible nature of the atari st, themac, and the amiga...i can get a mac at a reduced price through the university and would like to have a hard disk system, a meg of memory, probably color (but that is not entirely necessary), and ibm compatibility. i need to know the cost of an ibm compatible system, or at least the cost of the attachments needed to make it ibm compatible. i appreciate it...thanks in advance... -- trev @ hubcap.clemson.edu Trevor Bauknight Box 2507, University Station Clemson, SC 29632 ------------------------------ Date: 19 Sep 88 17:03:08 GMT From: oliveb!dragon%olivej.atc.OLIVETTI.COM@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Give me a quarter or I'll touch you) Subject: Hard disk in 1040ST was Re: low cost HARDDISK interface To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu In article <8809190537.AA09957@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>, V61@DHDURZ1.BITNET (Ronald Lamprecht) writes: > - Someone asked if it would be possible to install a ST157 (3"1/2) > instead of the floppy in a ST1040: answer: no : > - harddisks use other mounting screws > - there won't be enough space to mount the interface with the > OMTI controller (especially if you plan or have added an 68020, > memory expansions or SRAMs instead of (E)PROMs) > - hardisks need a lot of power and the ATARI power supplies are > weak (HD-Requirement: c 2A on 12V at power-up, c1A at 5V -- > critical at seek operations) I've done this. I had to use an Atari host adaptor board (since it is the smallest), but it is quite possible, and was a hit at our local user group meeting. Might add that it was an ST157N, with imbedded SCSI. It uses the exact same holes that the 3.5" floppy does. As Ron said, if you plan to add alot of other crud, it's not a good idea, though. The power supply was beefed by replacing the regulators with higher capacity units, and a fan was installed to keep everything cool. Otherwise, it works great. The power supply can't be that big of a deal because Supra sells their internal drive kits for the Mega ST, and they run off the Mega internal power supply (which happens to be the same unit in my 520STfm, but different than the one in the 1040ST the hard drive is mounted in. I bet the newer 1040STs have the same power supply). ---- Dean Brunette {ucbvax,etc.}!hplabs!oliveb!olivej!dragon Olivetti Advanced Technology Center _____ _____ __|__ _____ 20300 Stevens Creek Blvd. | | _____| | | Cupertino, CA 95014 |_____| |_____| |__ |_____ 'Dancing, screaming, itching, squealing, fevered feeling hot Hot HOT!' ------------------------------ End of Info-Atari16 Digest ************************** ------- -------