=========================================================================
 
INFO-ATARI16 Digest         Thu,  7 Dec 89       Volume 89 : Issue 771
 
Today's Topics:
                       ATARI sales .. going up?
                          FORM, nice but...
                       hard disks and Minix ST
                      Late-breaking Atari news!
                            Shareware MAC
                      THE MAC LAPTOP and STacey
                          Wanted: Nethack 3
                      Word Writer format company
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Date: 7 Dec 89 19:54:19 GMT
From: shlump.nac.dec.com!harpo.enet.dec.com!powers@decuac.dec.com  (Bill Powers)
Subject: ATARI sales .. going up?
Message-ID: <6698@shlump.nac.dec.com>
 
In article <4748f7bc.14a1f@force.UUCP>, covertr@force.UUCP (Richard E.
Covert) writes:
 
> Has *ANYONE* out there in NEtland SEEN a Real Live AD for the ST, either
> on TV or in print?
>
 
Yes, in "Keyboard" magazine, and "Electronic Musician" magazine.
 
Bill Powers
----
Digital Equipment Corp. - Advanced Service Delivery Systems - Stow MA
The opinions expressed above are my own, not my employers, so there.
TELEPHONE - (508) 496 - 8725
E-MAIL - powers@harpo.enet.dec.com
       - ...!decwrl!harpo!powers
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 7 Dec 89 19:31:54 GMT
From: cs.yale.edu!fischer-michael@CS.YALE.EDU  (Michael Fischer)
Subject: FORM, nice but...
Message-ID: <7851@cs.yale.edu>
 
In article <34894@grapevine.uucp> koreth@panarthea.ebay.sun.com (Steven Grimm)
 writes:
>>On a (sort of) related subject, does anybody else find the shar'ed source
>>code in comp.sources.atari.st to be a constant source of trouble?
>>UUDecoding a .ZOO file
>>is *so* much simpler.
>
>When I started moderating comp.sources.atari.st, I put all the sources in
>uuencoded arcfiles (check the early volume 1 entries on panarthea).  I got
>about twenty complaints from people at various sites, demanding that I
>use shar instead for various reasons.  Since that seemed to be what the
>public wanted, I switched over.  Frankly, shar is often more of a pain for
>me, too, as (posting rules notwithstanding) sources are frequently sent to
>me as arc or zoo files, which I have to repack as sharfiles.  (Such sources
>tend to sit in my queue for a while.)
>
>What do people think?  Should I switch back to uue'd sources?
 
I'd much rather have a UUD encoded .arc or .zoo file.  They're much
easier to decode, and I can do the decoding reliably on my ST, whereas
I generally decode shar files on a Unix machine.  Also, I am another
person that goes through the nuisance of pulling the sources off
comp.sources.atari.st, the binaries off of comp.binaries.atari.st,
decodes them both, and finally combines the result into a single .arc
or .zoo file.  It would be nice if this process could be streamlined.
==================================================
| Michael Fischer                                |
|    Arpanet:    <fischer-michael@cs.yale.edu>   |
|    Bitnet:     <fischer-michael@yalecs.bitnet> |
|    UUCP:       <fischer-michael@yale.UUCP>     |
==================================================
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 7 Dec 89 18:32:54 GMT
From: phoenix!mpsimon@princeton.edu  (M. Patrick Simon)
Subject: hard disks and Minix ST
Message-ID: <12032@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
 
In article <17411@rpp386.cactus.org> you (mark@rpp386.UUCP) write:
>...
>I just got Minix yesterday.  The ST documentation talks about certain
>drive partitions "/dev/hd?" (where ? stands for 1-3).  My problem is that
>I do not have that type of partition information in the Supra Format
>Utitlity.  Could someone tell me what I would need to do to give MINIX a
>10Mb partition on my hard drive?  At the current time, I am unfamiliar
>on how to dedicate a disk partition in such a way that MINIX can use it.
>
>Also, a good source told me that I will have problems getting MINIX to
>use my Supra drive because of sector sizes.  Does anyone know of a fix
>for this.  Thanks a lot.
 
I have a hard disk from Toad Computers, which uses an ICD interface and ICD
software, hooked up to my ST, so I am not sure how much of my experience
will apply to your case. Assuming your hard disk is SCSI device 0,
controller 0, you should be able to get Minix to work without recompiling
the sources. You need to know what partition you want to devote to Minix.
If you don't know, and none of the Supra utilities will tell you how your
hard disk is partitioned, I suggest getting the January, 1989 issue of
STart Magazine, which has a partition lookup program by David Small and/or
Dan Moore. This program runs under GEM, and saved me alot of grief when
I was trying to hook up my hd to minix because the documentation that came with
my hd was incorrect about which SCSI device my drive was set up as.
     Once your hard disk is formatted, and you know what partition
you want to use, you need to "mkfs /dev/hd? NNNN", where NNNN is the
number of sectors in that partition divided by 2 (assumes 512 byte sectors),
e.g. NNNN = length of partition in kbytes (1 kbyte = 1024 bytes), and hd?
is hd1,2,3,or4 depending on whether you want to dedicate partition 1,2,3,or4.
The ICD formatting software automatically created 512 byte sectors (I would
assume this is standard for Atari ST hd's, but I could be wrong), and this
worked fine with Minix. If mkfs says it can't do what you ask, it probably
means that your hard disk is not SCSI device 0, but you should already know
whether that's true before you get to this stage (when you find out the
partition info, you should also find out what SCSI device and controller).
If your hd is
not SCSI device 0, controller 0, then you will have to re-compile the
Minix sources to allow for multiple hd's (change NR_DRIVES in kernel/stwini.c)
to be >= number of drives (each SCSI device counts as 2 drives because it
can have 2 controllers). There is also
a note in the ST Minix manual which modifies what I said about NNNN slightly,
so please check there before attempting mkfs.
 
>I hope I don't sound like a fool.
 
You don't. I had even more fun than you are going to because I needed to
recompile Minix from floppy to look for multiple hard disk drives. In
addition to the modification to stwini.c above, I also modified kernel/stdma.c
to have all the dmaxxxx subroutines' arguments explicitly declared. Other
useful changes on a multiple drive hd system include changing fs/main.c
constant RAM_IMAGE to your hd drive,controller # and changing subroutine
load_ram to default load the ram disk from hard disk. There are also some
modifications that need to be made to Makedev in /dev if you have multiple
drives or a drive other than SCSI 0, but these are fairly obvious from
the current entries in Makedev and the stwini.c source.
 
>Mark Lehmann
 
Good luck,
--Patrick Simon    mpsimon@phoenix.princeton.edu     12-7-89
 
# Standard disclaimer applies
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 7 Dec 89 18:47:00 GMT
From: apollo!rehrauer@eddie.mit.edu  (Steve Rehrauer)
Subject: Late-breaking Atari news!
Message-ID: <4749a8d5.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM>
 
Just in case some of you haven't heard yet, Richard Covert sold his SLM804
Atari laser printer.  He replaced it with a Panasonic KXP4450 laser printer.
He likes the latter much better.
 
There, can we PLEASE drop the laser-war?  I believe we're all sufficiently
educated on the issue by now to make our own decisions intelligently.
--
>>"Aaiiyeeee!  Death from above!"<< | Steve Rehrauer, rehrauer@apollo.hp.com
   "Flee, lest we be trod upon!"    | The Apollo System Division of H.P.
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 7 Dec 89 20:16:10 GMT
From:
 zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!aplcen!jhunix!esp_05@tut.cis.
 ohio-state.edu  (Stdnt 05)
Subject: Shareware MAC
Message-ID: <3566@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU>
 
Although Apple's DOS is really (IMHO) messed up, you have to hand it
to them for doing a really, really nice job with their graphics and
user interface routines.  Anyone who suggests that creating an Apple
clone would be like creating an IBM clone, do-able by a small group of
hackers in their spare time, probably hasn't programmed a Mac.  Once
you program a Mac, you can really appreciate the time put into that
part of their OS when you realize that maintaining windows on the
screen in virtually EFFORTLESS.  I find myself quite impressed by many
aspects of the toolbox, and I realize why the original low-powered
Macs were awkward to use and am surprised why it took them so long to
implement their OS on a better machine, the Mac II.
 
If I were writing a clone of the MAC OS, I wouldn't know where to
begin.
 
Eric Ruck
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 7 Dec 89 17:37:06 GMT
From: philmtl!atha!rwa@uunet.uu.net  (Ross Alexander)
Subject: THE MAC LAPTOP and STacey
Message-ID: <1297@atha.AthabascaU.CA>
 
Larry Rymal, Z4648252@SFAUSTIN.BITNET (Z4648252) writes:
        (speaking of the laptop Mac)
>that the laptop uses the same plastic as that of motorcyle helmets.  Maybe
>so, but I could flex the case.  It creaked and would squeak.  It did not
 
As a motorcyclist of long standing, I would have to say that this
claim is nonsense.  Many, many different plastics are used in mc
helmets, with varying degrees of flexibility, strength, shatter
resistance, hysteresis, and what have you.  If they meant lexan, or
one of the engineering thermosetting compounds, then my reaction is
"Ho Hum".  That's what your description sounds like.  They are used in
bottom-of-the-line stuff.  Middle-of-the-line is usually
fibreglass/expoxy; top-of-the-line is generally kevlar/expoxy, and can
be very expensive (I paid $440 for my kevlar/epoxy full coverage hat).
 
        Ross
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 7 Dec 89 20:54:34 GMT
From: brunix!pgs@uunet.uu.net
Subject: Wanted: Nethack 3
Message-ID: <22411@brunix.UUCP>
 
I would very much appreciate an executable copy of Nethack 3.  I have had
lousy luck assembling the binaries posted to the net.  If someone has an
assembled, ARC'ed version of the game lying around, I'd REALLY appreciate
a copy.
 
Failing that, I'd be willing to foot the long distance bill and download
the files from someone directly.
 
Thanks in advance.
 
===============================================================================
  Peter Sarrett      |  PO Box 439            | "So much time and so little to
  pgs@cs.brown.edu   |  Brown University      |  do.  Stop.  Strike that.
  uunet!brunix!pgs   |  Providence, RI  02912 |  Reverse it."
  pgs@browncs.bitnet |  (401)863-6977         |               - W. Wonka
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 6 Dec 89 21:29:13 GMT
From: trwrb!gibson@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU  (Greg Gibson)
Subject: Word Writer format company
Message-ID: <227@trwrb.UUCP>
 
I use Word Writer because it has a spell check and thesaurus.  However, I
can not get the paragraph format command to work.  Does any know how to
make the Word Writer paragraph format command to work? I think anyone
selling a word processor without a properly working format command should
be jailed for fraud.
 
Thank You,
Gregory Gibson
 
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End of INFO-ATARI16 Digest V89 Issue #771
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