=========================================================================
 
INFO-ATARI16 Digest         Sat, 28 Apr 90       Volume 90 : Issue  488
 
Today's Topics:
         Disassembling TOS and documentation issues (longish)
                      Help, where can I get LINT
               MIDI Sequencers, patch librarians, etc.
          Now Available: Digital Keyclick, Beep, and Digivec
                      Ramdisk bootup (Code RAM)
                   ST Magazines anyone??? (2 msgs)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Date: 28 Apr 90 12:36:44 GMT
From: mcsun!ukc!harrier.ukc.ac.uk!gos.ukc.ac.uk!dac@uunet.uu.net  (David Clear)
Subject: Disassembling TOS and documentation issues (longish)
Message-ID: <2957@gos.ukc.ac.uk>
 
In article <2179@atari.UUCP> apratt@atari.UUCP (Allan Pratt) writes:
>What you get when you pay for the STe is the machine and the customer-
>level support that Atari gives.  That's what the person who buys a car
>gets.  He doesn't get the maintenance manual, the engineering drawings,
>the designer's notes, or the tools for repairing or improving it.  That
>price point is for users, not necessarily programmers.
>
 
When you buy an ST you get ST BASIC, right? Doesn't that qualify as
a programming tool? If ST users are not meant to program their machines
and therefore become interested in doing so, why is a programming language
supplied in the box?
 
I believe that if someone wants to buy a machine for applications only then
they'll buy an IBM compatible. If they want DTP they'll get a Mac. Think
about it. Why should someone just interested in running applications be
interested in the underlying OS, or the processor, or the hardware support?
People I know buy STs because:
        1) They're cheap ("Power without the price", who said that? :-) )
        2) There's a good software base
        3) They're a joy to program.
 
Number 3 is the important one there. I know people who have bought Amigas
because of the hardware and the multi-tasking and have ended up pulling their
hair out because the OS is so complicated. Then they see me on my ST and they
wish they had one too. They have the HAM screen. They have the 4096, five
plane screens with sprites, Copper effects, smooth scrolling, fullscreen, etc.
But, do they have an OS they can program without taking a three year course
in, "Understanding GURU messages"? No. And that's why they sell their Amigas
with their games and Exec/Intuition/DOS/etc books they thought they'd be
able to understand, and buy STs.
 
The STe has hardware this and hardware that. Very useful for games if nothing
else. I like to play with the hardware. My own circumstances mean I still have
a good old ST with old ROMs. But, my collection of Abacus books tell me how
to use the OS, GEM and hardware. They get it wrong in places and the current
ones know nothing of the new hardware (I don't think).
 
I would like to see official Atari documentation at a reasonable price. What's
reasonable? No more than the cost of one Abacus book. Atari could release
they're own information on TOS and the hardware and sell it for the same price
as "ST INTERNALS". They could release information on GEM and sell it for the
same price as "GEM Programmer's Reference". People WOULD buy official Atari
documentation because they could afford it and they would know that the
information was the most accurate available.
 
The people who would benefit would be us, Joe Public. If you think about the
number of ST owners who have net access and moan about the lack of technical
information available for the ST, just think about how many ST owners who
DON'T have net access but still want the information. People who write PD
programs can't afford to become registered developers as they get no money
from their programs. However, the quality is certainly there and it does
help to sell machines.
 
>If you have a gripe about the level of support you get for your money,
>that's legitimate.  You should complain to the president of the
>subsidiary you're dealing with, or to Charles Cherry, who is the
>Developer Coordinator for Atari headquarters.  You can even write Sam
>Tramiel.  If you do, try to be brief and specific, but not technical,
>about your problems, and name names.  If you just write and whine
>you're wasting your time and his.
 
Before, you or Ken B. wrote to the net telling us all that moaning got
us nowhere because it's easy to sit at a keyboard and flame, and that
more good would come from writing a polite letter (yes, on paper) and
sending it to the person responsible.
 
Well, sorry.
 
>I don't make decisions, so those are just my personal beliefs.  Nobody
>comes to my office, taking notes, asking, "What levels of support
>should we offer, and how much should we charge?"
 
We know that you take time out to post to the net. Alot of Atari flames are
directed personally at you and I'm sorry about that. This article is not
written as a personal attack. I know that you just work for Atari and so
can't walk up to Mr Tramiel and say "Listen, Sam, buddy, I'm getting a load
of grief from the net. These people want information and they want it NOW."
But, when we in netland see your name and address, all we see is ATARI! Like
it or not YOU ARE ATARI. I bet lots of people would love to mail Mr T. and
flame him if they could, but they can't. So you're it. I guess we would like
to think that you whisper things you read to other people in Atari, who
whisper to others, etc and in the end the information *may* get to someone
who can do something about it.
 
Please may we have some good Atari technical documentation at a price everyone
can afford. Please suggest this to someone who can make decisions of this
nature.
 
"Power [to program] without the price".
 
Dave.
 
--
% cc life.c                      | David Clear <dac@ukc.ac.uk>
% a.out                          | Computer Science, University of Kent,
Segmentation fault (core dumped) | Canterbury, England.
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 28 Apr 90 06:38:47 GMT
From: usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!math.lsa.umich.edu!hyc@ucsd.edu  (Howard
 Chu)
Subject: Help, where can I get LINT
Message-ID: <11869@stag.math.lsa.umich.edu>
 
Of course, as I'm sure you're soon to discover yourself, when you split a
huge source file into small modules and stop trying to
#include "filename.c"
you'll discover the need for duplicating variable & function declarations
throughout each source file. (Thus the ubiquitous "filename.h" ...  ?-)
--
  -- Howard Chu @ University of Michigan
  ... the glass is always greener on the side ...
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 28 Apr 90 17:58:00 GMT
From: umich!terminator!terminator.cc.umich.edu!weiner@CS.YALE.EDU  (Jeff Weiner)
Subject: MIDI Sequencers, patch librarians, etc.
Message-ID: <1990Apr28.175800.13815@terminator.cc.umich.edu>
 
Does anyone out there know of any other PD/Shareware sequencers or patch
librarians other than midiseq.arc?
 
If so, please mail me one, let me know of one's existence, or better yet,
post it to terminator.
 
Thanks and have a swell day,
Jmw
 
 
--
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%weiner@terminator.cc.umich.edu                 "Ted, I believe strange things%
%University of Michigan                          are afoot at the Circle-K..."%
% :)Have a swell day:)                                                        %
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 28 Apr 90 17:24:04 GMT
From: haven!wam!dmb@purdue.edu  (David M. Baggett)
Subject: Now Available: Digital Keyclick, Beep, and Digivec
Message-ID: <1990Apr28.172404.16456@wam.umd.edu>
 
I've posted three new shareware utilities to terminator (35.1.33.8).
They include:
 
        Digital Keyclick -      Replace keyclick with digitized sounds
        Beep -                  Rewrite of Dan Wilga's newbell
        Digivec -               Trigger digitized sounds with various
                                system events
 
Digital Keyclick allows you to map digitized sounds onto the keyboard in
almost any way you want.  Beep is just like newbell, except that it
lets you specify playback speed in Hertz.  Digivec will replace any
system vector(s) with a routine to play a digitized sound. (e.g.,
play a sound when a bus error occurs, play a sound when a GEM critical
error occurs, etc.)
 
This is the first release of these.  I've been using them for about a
month without problems, but please report any odd behavior.  They
don't do anything risky so they should work on all vesion of TOS.
 
All three are in the arcfile atari/music/samples/digistuf.arc
 
They'll show up in comp.binaries.atari.st soon.
 
Have fun,
 
Dave Baggett
dmb@cscwam.umd.edu
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 28 Apr 90 17:15:24 GMT
From:
 clyde.concordia.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!neat.cs.toronto.edu!omicron.cs.
 fsu.edu!fsucs.cs.fsu.edu!boyd@uunet.uu.net  (Mickey Boyd)
Subject: Ramdisk bootup (Code RAM)
Message-ID: <9004281712.AA10115@fsucs.cs.fsu.edu>
 
In article <29383@cup.portal.com>, Dave_Ninjajr_Flory@cup.portal.com writes:
>>>There was a PD program called TPORT that loads a ramdisk at bootup.
>>>I use it in conjunction with CODERAM (from Codehead Utilities)
>>>or Pagestream. I have all the fonts autoload into a ramdisk, then
>>>switch disks and run
>
>If you have CodeRam then why are you using the other program. If you
>have the documentation you should have gotten when you bought
>Codehead Utilities you would know that with CodeCopy you can make a
>.CCP file which is an image of the stuff in the CodeRam disk. The ram
>disk can be configured to automatically load this file and run it on
>boot up. On a warm reset the computer boots from the Ramdisk, VERY
>fast.
>
 
It didn't work for me (perhaps an auto folder problem).  I did not try very
hard, because I am currently building a hard drive.  I must humbly admit
that I have not read the documentation et al.  Standard "if all else fails,
read the instructions". . . .
 
 
--
 
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
    ---------------------------------+-------------------------------------
              Mickey Boyd            |    "Nobody can be exactly like me.
          FSU Computer Science       |      Even I have trouble doing it."
        Technical Support Group      |
      mail:  boyd@fsucs.cs.fsu.edu   |              - Tallulah Bankhead
    ---------------------------------+-------------------------------------
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 28 Apr 90 13:04:43 GMT
From: cunixf.cc.columbia.edu!cunixa.cc.columbia.edu!cmm1@rutgers.edu
 (Christopher M Mauritz)
Subject: ST Magazines anyone???
Message-ID: <1990Apr28.130443.153@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu>
 
In article <CMM.0.88.641242861.cmm1@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu>
 cmm1@CUNIXA.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Christopher M Mauritz) writes:
>I gave my ST to my little sis a while back and now she wants to
>buy some magazines related to the ST so she can learn more about
>her new paperweight.  Well, after a long search of EVERY magazine shop
>in Grand Central Station and The World Trade Center (these shops have
>every conceivable magazine!), I came up empty-handed.  There is not one
>ST magazine for sale at any of these shops.  I guess that says it all.
>Meanwhile, I noticed quite a number of Amiga and even Apple II rags.
>(Do I hear violins playing?)
 
OK, I guess this note was a bit heavy on the cynicism. :-)
HOnestly, I am really interested in finding a place that sells
ST mags so that I can buy a few for my sister.  Places in DC
would be great, as that is where the ST is moving to.
 
>
>Chris
>
>------------------------------+---------------------------
>Chris Mauritz                 |Where there's a BEER,
>cmm1@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu   |there's a plan.
>(c)All rights reserved.       |
>Send flames to /dev/null      |Air Warrior is king!
>------------------------------+---------------------------
 
 
------------------------------+---------------------------
Chris Mauritz                 |Where there's a BEER,
cmm1@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu   |there's a plan.
(c)All rights reserved.       |
Send flames to /dev/null      |Air Warrior is king!
------------------------------+---------------------------
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 28 Apr 90 17:21:32 GMT
From:
 clyde.concordia.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!neat.cs.toronto.edu!omicron.cs.
 fsu.edu!fsucs.cs.fsu.edu!boyd@uunet.uu.net  (Mickey Boyd)
Subject: ST Magazines anyone???
Message-ID: <9004281719.AA10188@fsucs.cs.fsu.edu>
 
In article <1990Apr28.130443.153@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu>,
 cmm1@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Christopher M Mauritz) writes:
>HOnestly, I am really interested in finding a place that sells
>ST mags so that I can buy a few for my sister.  Places in DC
>would be great, as that is where the ST is moving to.
>
>------------------------------+---------------------------
>Chris Mauritz                 |Where there's a BEER,
>cmm1@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu   |there's a plan.
>(c)All rights reserved.       |
>Send flames to /dev/null      |Air Warrior is king!
>------------------------------+---------------------------
 
Well, I would suggest Current Notes.  It is based in the DC area, so many
of the ads are local.  It is my favorite Atari magazine.  They can be
bought in several places in the DC area (Potomac Mill Mall has a newsstand
that carries them), or you could get a subscription.  Address is:
 
   Current Notes
   122 N.Johnson Rd.
   Sterlning, VA  22170
 
One year costs $24, and consists of 10 issues.  The DC area has many Atari
users groups, and several really nice Atari stores.  I am in no way connected
with Current Notes, other than as a satisfied subscriber.
 
 
--
 
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
    ---------------------------------+-------------------------------------
              Mickey Boyd            |    "Nobody can be exactly like me.
          FSU Computer Science       |      Even I have trouble doing it."
        Technical Support Group      |
      mail:  boyd@fsucs.cs.fsu.edu   |              - Tallulah Bankhead
    ---------------------------------+-------------------------------------
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
 
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End of INFO-ATARI16 Digest V90 Issue #488
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