=========================================================================
 
INFO-ATARI16 Digest         Wed, 29 Nov 89       Volume 89 : Issue 723
 
Today's Topics:
                              breakdown
                               Calamus
         Floppy Problems After 4 MB Memory Upgrade ... solved
                        Help with Uniterm 2.0e
                            ISOLATION....
                    NEED INFO ON PROGRAMMING MOUSE
                               Word-Up
----------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Date: 29 Nov 89 18:35:11 GMT
From: usc!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!markez@ucsd.edu  (Mark R
 Zbikowski)
Subject: breakdown
Message-ID: <1251@uwm.edu>
 
I have been having a few problems with my ST recently.
 
1.  My monitor sound is very quiet, even with the volume at maximum.
I noticed this several months agos, and it seems to be getting worse.
It is an SC1224, Goldstar, manufactured May 1986.
 
2.  Recently, while working with my Kawai K-1 and 520, the MIDI out
stopped working.  The MIDI in still works, however.  It went dead
right after I turned on my amp.
 
I should probably take the components to an an authorized dealer, but
I am a very poor college student, and I would like to fix them myself
if it is possible.
 
Mark Zbikowski
(markez@csd4.csd.uwm.edu)
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 29 Nov 89 15:54:30 GMT
From: usc!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!hrc!force!covertr@ucsd.edu  (Richard E. Covert)
Subject: Calamus
Message-ID: <4720d2c8.14a1f@force.UUCP>
 
In article <8911281401.AA08045@valfar.uio.no>, arneso@IFI.UIO.NO writes:
>
> Where can I get hold of PD fonts for Calamus?
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> arneso@ifi.uio.no -  Arne Sommer                    "Powder to the People"
 
The quickest way is to subscribe to either GEnie or CIS (since you
live in the US).
 
The cheapest way is to buy them from CURRENT NOTES magazine. Or some other
pd disk company.
 
Rich Covert
 
------------------------------
 
Date: Wed 29 11 89 11:06:00 EST
From: U009%CCIW.BITNET@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Floppy Problems After 4 MB Memory Upgrade ... solved
 
Further to the previous postings regarding my problems, George Dinolt
(whom I cannot reply to, sorry George) wrote with similar experiences.
He stated:
 
> After a lot of experimenting I determined that, on my system at least,
> the problems had to do with the position of the cable from the Memory
> Management unit to the Datafree board.  ...
> ... test this yourself by just letting the Datafree memory board hang
> loose outside your system (You can leave the plastic cover off.  You
> can even leave the metal shielding off for testing purposes.  My ST
> sits at the edge of the desk so the memory board literaly hung from
> the two cables in my testing.
 
Dave Clemans (also unreachable) wrote:
 
> I would rather doubt a MMU chip problem.  It is MUCH more likely
> that you are seeing ringing and other noise problems.  A good way
> to check for this is to run a decent memory tester program when
> the board is set up for 4MB, and see where it gets errors, and what
> the patterns of error bits are.  If you get randomness, it is almost
> definitely ringing or other noise problems on the dram control lines.
 
Well there were never any memory errors with the memory testers I used
and the system was working OK under Spectre, Multifinder with lots loaded,
but the two comments together rang (!) the bell.
 
Now, the Datafree board is supposed to be able to fit above the top shield
of the motherboard (according to their documentation), but I found there
was insufficient room between it and the keyboard, so I left it off. Maybe
newer systems are different.
 
George's suggestions about operation when the board and cables dangled out
the front of the disasembled ST, in particular when the ribbon from the
MMU was routed away from the motherboard was a great help. I made a
shield from aluminum foil covered on both sides with "MacTac" sticky
plastic (for insulation). I made it about 1/2 inch larger than the
memory board dimensions but left a strip of foil about 1/4 inch wide
uncovered along the front (long) side. I folded the exposed strip back,
punched a couple of holes thru it an the insulated part where the screws
holding the motherboard were. I then fastened it down with the original
screws and a couple of small washers.
 
Dave's comments about ringing and noise suggested I should take a look at
shielding and/or terminating the ribbon cables. I figured I could do both
simultaneously by increasing the capacitance of the ribbon's conductors as
follows: I also completely wrapped the MMU cable with a long narrow strip
of aluminum foil, then covered it with tape to insulate it. I wrapped a
bare piece of wire with the foil at the MMU end and soldered the wire to
the bare groundplane on the mother board. The added capacity on the wires
would slow the rise time of the pulses and reduce the ringing, if any.
 
After re-assembling the machine, the problems seem to be gone. I copied
small files til the floppy was full several times and no crashes. I was
going to supply power to the board thru a separate pair of wires too, but
so far, it has been unnecessary.
 
Make sure the foil doesn't touch anything except the ground plane at the
front of the motherboard. Heat dissipation doesn't seem a problem
because the shield is covering the old memory, which is disabled anyway.
 
Thanks again George and Dave for the leads. I now seem to be fully
operational with 4 MB of memory.
 
Regards, Stu Beal, VE3MWM, (U009@CCIW.BITNET),
National Water Research Institute,
Burlington, Ontario, Canada.
 
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 29 Nov 89 17:33:05 GMT
From: milton!blake!charlop@beaver.cs.washington.edu  (Aaron Charlop)
Subject: Help with Uniterm 2.0e
Message-ID: <4685@blake.acs.washington.edu>
 
I have just down loaded Uniterm 2.0e from Terminator. When I tried it
from home last night, I ran into a problem. The dialing would get locked
into dialing one number if there was anything wrong with the dialup. For
example, if the number I was dialing was busy, then the modem would report
it and any keypress in Uniterm would cause an automatic redial of the number.
Also when the connection was made, all I got was garbage on the screen as if
I was using the wrong baud rate. After hanging up and trying to dial another
number, Uniterm would instead dial the previous number. The [control] C
did not get me out of dialing mode. Nothing would work and I would have to
reboot the computer. Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong. The setup of
the terminal is the same that works in my previous terminal program. My setup
is a 1040ST, TOS 1.4, TurboST 1.6, Multidesk, Cache090, Maccel2, G+PLus, and
Megadisk as a 1Meg RamDisk.
 
Thanx in advance.
 
 
 
--
Aaron the Alchemist
Charlop@uwchem.chem.washington.edu
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 29 Nov 89 15:50:23 GMT
From: usc!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!hrc!force!covertr@ucsd.edu  (Richard E. Covert)
Subject: ISOLATION....
Message-ID: <4720cf1a.14a1f@force.UUCP>
 
In article <891115.09544506.077805@SFA.CP6>, Z4648252@SFAUSTIN.BITNET (Z4648252)
 writes:
>
>     No flames, just frustration being expressed....
>     The only two bookstores in our area have stopped handling Atari magazines.
>     With the exception of this net, there is no other link for me to
> the outside ST world now.
>     I sure hope you folks in the ST concentrations are not taking your
> dealers and bookstores which stock ST magazines, etc., for granted.
>     ENJOY!  Sure wish that I could...
>
> Larry Rymal:  |East Texas Atari 68NNNers| <Z4648252@SFAUSTIN.BITNET>
 
I sure hope that the ST market here in the States improves soon because
1989 has been a real killer for US ST magazines. I count the following
as having died in 1989:
 
ST APPLICATIONS -- a fine little Mom and Pop magazine which started out in
                   life as a small newsletter but which grew into a full
                   magazine. ST APPS had many good programming articles and
                   had the best game reviews of any mag. If a game was bad,
                   ST APPS said so. Some mags just publish the PR put out
                   by the game company and little else. I really miss
                   ST APPS.
 
ST LOG          -- Another excellent ST magazine which had great C programming
                   articles and good reviews. Merged with ANALOG in the
                   November 1989 issue. Died with ANALOG in the December 1989
                   issue.
 
ANALOG          -- Not really an ST mag but died nonethe less.
 
ANTIC           -- Not dead yet, but rumors have it dying Real Soon Now.
 
STart           -- Still around, and can be bought at my local WaldenBook
                   store.
 
I understand that the ANTIC/STart publishers have written off the entire
Atari US market. Witness the fact that the ANTIC "THE CATALOG" does not
appear in STart any longer. and the fact that ANTIC has stopped developing
new ST software. It is a sad day when a major software publisher stops
publishing new software for your computer. I also understand that ANTIC now
publishes an Amiga magazine which is going strong.
B
 
And that's all of the full magazines that I have ever seen in the US. There
are a couple of tabloid newsletters/magazines but they have NEVER been sold
by WALDENBOOKS or by B.Dalton's Booksellers. They are ST INFORMER, ST WORLD
(the US tabloid not the UK magazine)
 
So, the questions is "Why have these magazines died?".
I think that the answer is that magazines rely mainly on advertisments for
survival. The subscription costs does not cover the cost of publishing a
magazine. Advertisements do that. And when Atari Corp decided not to allow
mail order sales of ST products the advertisements stopped in the magazines.
Add to that the fewer number of third party software and even fewer hardware
vendors for the ST and you can see why ST mags are dying.
 
Finally, the question is "Can it be changed?"
I think that it can. And I hope that Atari Corp follows through. I have read
that Charles Cherry wants to introduce a new technique whereby ST SW publishers
send a demo oversion of their products. Atari Corp would press a CD ROM with
ALL of the current ST SW (demos of course) which the full service ST dealers
could demo to ST customers. This would give an advantage to ST Dealers over
the mail order companies, which couldn't demo the SW. And it would not mean
that dealers would have to demo actual SW. Dealers would demo a CD ROM with
demo SW. A great idea. I hope that Atari Corp follows thru on this.
 
Rich Covert
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 29 Nov 89 04:11:42 GMT
From:
 cs.utexas.edu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!watmath!ria!uwovax!4231_5224@tut.ci
 s.ohio-state.edu
Subject: NEED INFO ON PROGRAMMING MOUSE
Message-ID: <4402.257310ae@uwovax.uwo.ca>
 
HELP!!!!!!!!!
 
What I want to be able to do is to change the mouse position on the
Atari 1040ST here at University of Western Ontario.  It is necessary
to do this because the darn thing decides it wants to change the background
every time you first move the mouse.  I want to have the mouse on but
it wrecks my screen if it starts up in the wrong position.
 
Can anyone out there help me please?????
.
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 29 Nov 89 17:32:44 GMT
From: usc!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!hrc!force!covertr@ucsd.edu  (Richard E. Covert)
Subject: Word-Up
Message-ID: <47212a9c.14a1f@force.UUCP>
 
In article <8679@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>, abc@cs.purdue.EDU (Rick Hunter) writes:
> In article <4529@blake.acs.washington.edu>, themod@blake.acs.washington.edu
 (Chris Hinton) writes:
> >
> > entry to work with a 1040ST with a double sided drive and a Gemini 15X
> > printer.  Everything is okay, I load it up, go through the install program
> >
> >    Chris Hinton
>
> Funny you should mention this. When I first got a copy of this program
> I had the same problem. Except, I was using a Gemini10X. I could not get
> the thing to work with the printer unless I did some fancy formating
> with page length and width. Even then it was not guaranteed to work.
>
> What did I end up doing? My brother coughed for a new printer that
> is known to work with it. I could not determine exactly if the problem
> was in the software or my outdated printer. For all the trouble you are
> going through I would suggest buying a new printer. Oddly, I could
> get it to work with the Star NX-1000 at the store where I bought the
> program. Hope this helps. Has anyone else had this problem with the
> older Gemini printers?????
>
> Alan Chan
> abc@arthur.cs.purdue.edu
 
 
That is funny, because I bought my Gemini-10X over 10 years ago, back
when the original Epson mx-80 came out. And the Gemini-10X was NEVER
100% compatible with the Epson mx/fx-80 printers. All kinds of programs
broke when using the old Gemini-10X. Which is a shame because the Gemini-10X
was a very reliable dependable printer. I perferred it over the mx-80 printers.
I used my Gemini-10X with my S-100 buss computer (remember the z80 and cpm80?).
and it worked fine in most applications.
 
But the 10X never worked quite right with ST programs.
 
Oh well, buy a new 24 pin printer, it has better printouts and you can buy
a new 24 pin printer for < $300.00 (USD of course).
 
Gee, and I thought that the 10X printers would be all gone by now. shows just
how good they are if they are still in use after 10 years!!
 
 
rich Covert (gtephx!covertr NOT force!covertr, force is my Apollo node name,
as in Let the Force be with you!! :-) ).
 
------------------------------
 
End of INFO-ATARI16 Digest V89 Issue #723
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