Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ukma!gatech!udel!mmdf
From: wzg91@ttacs1.ttu.edu (BROWN, KEVIN)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: RE: Questions and suggestions...
Message-ID: <14114@louie.udel.EDU>
Date: 27 Apr 89 13:00:11 GMT
Sender: mmdf@udel.EDU
Lines: 76

In article <13850@louie.udel.EDU>, BROWN, KEVIN writes:
>A couple of questions:
>
>Firstly, being a poor college student, I would like to expand my system in 
>the least expensive way possible.  Additionally, I would like to make my 
>expansion means as flexible as possible, so that I can add on more goodies 
>as I (somehow) acquire the $$$$.
>
>...

Since I posted this message, I have received one reply, and that a couple 
of days ago.  I've seen nothing regarding this on the newsgroup(s) itself.  
Did I break some sort of network protocol in the message?  I realize it was 
rather lengthy...

Under normal conditions I would not be so concerned about this, but my 
account(s) die in a couple of weeks.

To summarize my previous questions:

1.  I have the A1000 Expansion Specs, and contained therein are the plans 
for an A1000 card cage, using (I believe) the Zorro-I spec.  Does anyone 
know the differences between the Zorro-I and Zorro-II specs (timing and 
signal layout, etc)?  My goal is to build an expansion system that will 
allow me to use B2000 cards, and if there is interest, make the plans 
publicly available (a la LUCAS) so that others may do the same at 
relatively little expense.

2.  I've seen a few postings on the net about the Konica 10-meg removable
drive and am intrigued, but would like some detailed information about it
(like seek times, data transfer rates and compatibility with various
controllers, price, and reliability, and anything else you might want to 
mention :-)...

3.  I've seen windowed, menu-driven shells for almost all the compilers for
other computer systems, namely IBM (All the Borland and Microsoft stuff,
save BASIC), Mac (*everything*), and Atari ST (HiSoft Basic, Lazer C, OSS
Pascal).  It seems that the Amiga is the only system in its class that
lacks this.  I would be interested in writing such a shell for the Amiga
(customizable so you can use it with any cli-based compiler, editor, and
make facility), but need to know if there would be any interest in such a
thing.  Also, if there is interest in such a shell, then I need to know how
to get my window to be considered stdin, stdout, and stderr by anything I
happen to invoke (I want to be able to invoke the shell from workbench or
CLI). 

4.  How difficult would it be to write a run-time library that would act as 
an interface between C programs and dos.library?  Currently, dos.library 
expects a lot of BCPL constructs, and returns same, and while I haven't 
done extensive programming with it, it seems rather silly that Amiga 
programmers are constrained to use it when everything else in the system 
conforms to C calling conventions.  I was thinking that perhaps the new 
runtime library (cdos.library) could eventually replace dos.library in the 
ROMs so as to provide a consistent programming interface.  Any comments on 
this, guys??

As far as the above goes, please email responses unless you feel it would 
be of general interest to the net, but if the mail bounces then PLEASE post 
to the net!

				Many thanks!



				Kevin Brown
				Internet: wzg91@ttacs1.ttu.edu or
					  c8u00@ttacs1.ttu.edu

				Bitnet:	  WZG91@TTACS1 or
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