INFO-ATARI16 Digest         Sat, 18 Nov 89       Volume 89 : Issue 674
 
Today's Topics:
                             360k floppy
                          Asst. Dribble....
                 Atari ST Multitasking/Multiuser OSs
                        Atari TT Block Diagram
                           GEM help needed
                            German company
           Info about 296n - PLEASE IGNORE ****************
                                JILCAD
                               Modula 2
                               Word-Up
----------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Date: 18 Nov 89 18:06:05 GMT
From:
 gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!lavaca.uh.edu!uhnix1!uhnix2!uace0@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
  (Michael B. Vederman)
Subject: 360k floppy
 
In article <1989Nov18.045347.26261@rpi.edu> vicc@unix.cie.rpi.edu () writes:
>Well I got my 360k floppy working - sort of. The Atari reads the drive
>just dandy, but it wont write worth a damn (except to the directory)
>
>A previous poster mentioned a program PCF554.PRG which would be
>necessary to use 360k, where can I get this?
>--
>Frank Filz
 
You can use DC FORMATTER to do the same thing.  Just write an executable boot
sector to drive A: that has the set seek rate option enabled.  From the main
menu, just set the seek rate to 6, then go to the executable boot sector
menu.  Next select the set step rate option, and write out the boot sector to
drive A:  Now when you boot of of drive A:, the step rate for drive B: will be
set so you can read and write to the 5 1/4" drive.
 
Of course, other boot sector programs can also be written at the same time from
the DC FORMATTER executable boot menu.
 
- mike
 
 
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Double Click Me | Double Click Software | P.O. Box 741206 | Houston, Tx, 77274
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Support BBS: (713)944-0108 | SHADOW | DC FORMATTER | DC UTILITIES | and others
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 18 Nov 89 17:08:22 GMT
From:
 gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!caesar.cs.montana.edu!ogccse!bla
 ke!ramsiri@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu  (Enartloc Nhoj)
Subject: Asst. Dribble....
 
In article <8911180154.AA07354@jupiter.nmt.edu> ehsnsr@JUPITER.NMT.EDU (Eric
 Hobbs) writes:
>
>Anyway, enough with the bickering. Oh, and by the way, BoBR, if I said anything
>to upset you, I'm sorry. I just don't like it when people criticize something
>that I spent so much money on. I've got friends with Macs and IBMs who do
>that :-).
>
>"Enough's Enough!!"                Eric Hobbs
 
 
Remember, BobR and others are criticizing the machines/ATARI co etc.
Not you.
If you keep your ego detached
from your DMA port, you will surely be a much happier
kind of guy.
 
-kevin
ramsiri@blake.acs.washington.edu
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 14 Nov 89 17:57:17 GMT
From: hpfcso!hpldola!hp-lsd!col!don@hplabs.hp.com  (Don Allison)
Subject: Atari ST Multitasking/Multiuser OSs
 
Here's the gist of the reply I tried to mail to George (which died on our mail
server--couldn't figure out how to get to him):
(By the way I'm glad to hear that SOMEONE has had a good experience with
MT C-shell and Beckemeyer...it's almost encouraged me to dig it out and
try it again, given the amount of money I've invested in it)
 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
I purchased everything that Beckemeyer put out for a while (C-shell, MT C-shell,
Micro C tools, RTX, ansiterm, vsh, etc, etc...) and upgraded every time I got
a notice of a new version.  I spent a lot of money on their products, in
general, and my overall impression in the end was unfavorable to the point
that I no longer have MT C-shell vsh, ansiterm, etc on my hard disk (I do
use some of the utilities from the c toolkit (whatever it was called) with
Gulam).
 
It's been a while, but some of the things I discovered were 1)bad documentation,
especially the lousy installation instructions (after installing it and
starting multiuser mode, my modem went into permanent off-hook...turns out
I wanted to run single user multitasking but they were expecting a login
from the rs-232 port and were running a getty, which was in an infinite
loop echoing to the modem which was echoing to the getty, which was...this was
not documented anywhere, I got lucky and finally figured out how to
permanently kill the getty), 2) non-UNIXlike operation (in trying to fix
the previous problem, I did an init 1, wanting to go to single user
multitasking...unfortunately that was single user single tasking, and
things like piping to lp no longer worked!  :-(  I was not pleased.),
3) generally slow, sluggish feel, 4) a lot of utilities I had come to know and
expect in a unix-like environment missing (this was really frustrating,
because just about the time I'd convince myself that maybe it could be a
useful development environment, I'd try something simple only to find that
that feature wasn't implemented), and worst of all, 5) the system kept
crashing when I tried to do almost ANYTHING (ESPECIALLY vsh! This was
the most frustrating thing and was the point where I gave up and cleaned the
stuff off my hard drive--I tossed Ansiterm earlier when it didn't do the
binary file transfers it advertised it would, that were the reason I'd
purchased it...I even reinstalled it from the floppy and read and followed
the directions in the manual :-) and it didn't work!).
 
My experience (and what I have heard from friends) indicates that if you
want a cheap unix-like environment, buy a PC and MKS-Toolkit...this is
single tasking but does support pipes, etc, and feels WONDERFULLY like
unix!  It has vi, awk, grep, etc, etc--all the things you know and love.
If you really want multitasking, consider using MINIX (I have friends
who are having fun playing with it, personally I have never used it on
an ST so I can't speak from experience here) along with the Free Software
Foundation tools--c compiler, flex, bison, emacs, etc.
 
These are just my opinions and impressions, I'd be interested in hearing
what others tell you about their experiences.
 
Don Allison
don@hp-col.col.hp.com
 
(One other frustrating thing was that when they announced on-line manual
pages, I immediately sent them an order, along with a check.  A few
months later, they sent me a notice telling me that I could be a beta
tester for the man pages, and if I would agree to use them a predefined
amount in the next month I could keep them free--this after they had
my check!)
 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
And on a different note, I was hoping for something like 24 bit color in the TT!
Does anyone know how many planes the ATW has?  (I requested some information on
the ATW at SIGGRAPH this year, but haven't heard anything yet).
 
Don Allison
don@hp-col.col.hp.com
 
As usual, these opinions are strictly my own, and even I disavow them on
alternate days!
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 18 Nov 89 15:54:53 GMT
From: eru!luth!sunic!mcsun!unido!tub!tmpmbx!netmbx!hase@bloom-beacon.mit.edu
 (Hartmut Semken)
Subject: Atari TT Block Diagram
 
In article <10132@stag.math.lsa.umich.edu> hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu)
 writes:
>Ah-hah! So, the WD1772/2793 is the magic part number, eh? What'll it
>take to put one of these in an ST for 1.4MB floppy capability? Does
>anyone here have access to Western Digital folks for pinouts & other
>specs for this chip?
 
Well, You want to have an 1.44 Meg drive for the ST?
 
It's really easy: just switch the clock frequency of the WD1772 to 16
MHz (taken from the shifter) and attach a high density drive (like the
TEAC FD 235 HFN).
 
Set the seekrate for the drive to 6 Milliseconds (will become 3 with the
doubled clock).
 
Format high density disks with my little formatter (posted here).
 
A high density 5.25 inch drive is possible too. But these have no
automatic HD-recognition...
 
Works well for me.
 
hase
--
Hartmut Semken, Lupsteiner Weg 67, 1000 Berlin 37 hase@netmbx.UUCP
Dennis had stepped up into the top seat whet its founder had died of a
lethal overdose of brick wall, taken while under the influence of a
Ferrari and a bottle of tequila. (Douglas Adams; the long dark teatime...)
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 17 Nov 89 15:06:34 GMT
From: att!chinet!saj@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU  (Stephen Jacobs)
Subject: GEM help needed
 
I've spoken with Mark Williams tech support a few times.  One thing that came
out was that the minor version number x in MWC 3.0x indicates distribution
channel, not software differences (I'm not exactly sure, but I think 3.05
is software store, 3.06 is upgrade from version 2 and 3.09 is direct purchase
from Mark Williams Co).  Other than that, their manual is full of enough
errors and omissions to choke the net repeating, but very few of them are real
show-stoppers.  The solution is to let them know when you find one, and NEVER
to use only a single source for documentation on TOS (which is where most of
the mistakes are).
   I strongly suspect that the effort needed to produce an ANSI compliant MWC
would be within the capabilities of the company.  It's mostly a question of
whether they could make a worthwhile amount of money on it.  I would almost
certainly purchase it, even as a new compiler rather than an upgrade, and
even with GNU C available.  Another thousand people as crazy would probably
be a good start.
                                        Steve J.
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 18 Nov 89 20:48:20 GMT
From: mcsun!unido!cosmo2!nsm-elec%cosmo.UUCP@uunet.uu.net  (Armin Schreppel)
Subject: German company
 
You are asking for "Verlag Heinz Heise GmbH & CokG" the correct adress is:
 
Verlag Heinz Heise GmbH & Co. KG
Helstorfer Str. 7
Postfach 61 04 07
3000 Hannover 61
 
Tel.: 0511 / 5352-0
Fax.: 0511 / 5352-129
Telex 923173 heise d
-----------------------
 
 
###########################################################
>     nsm electronic     <> Armin Schreppel               <
> printed circuit boards <> Tel. : 09471 / 1799 (Voice)   <
>   Oberer Muehlweg 10   <> Fax. : 09471 / 5661           <
>  8412 Burglengenfeld   <> Telex: 652305 nsm d           <
>     West Germany       <> UUCP : nsm-elec@cosmo         <
###########################################################
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 14 Nov 89 23:19:45 GMT
From: gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!orion.oac.uci.edu!jtang@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
 ( James )
Subject: Info about 296n - PLEASE IGNORE ****************
 
If you are not interested in that, PLEASE IGNORE THE LAST POST.  I was going
to e-mail, but forget to delete the Newsgroups: line.
 
sorry
 
james
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 18 Nov 89 21:20:12 GMT
From: dartvax!eleazar.dartmouth.edu!dav@CS.BU.EDU  (William David Haas)
Subject: JILCAD
 
Did anyone out there ever locate JILCAD?  Can someone post it?
I know its in the ACCUSOFT PD library and I guess I will send a
letter to get it monday.  They have no phone and I am in a bit
of a rush for it.
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 18 Nov 89 04:21:47 GMT
From: att!chinet!saj@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU  (Stephen Jacobs)
Subject: Modula 2
 
 piet@cs.ruu.nl (Piet van Oostrum)
In-reply-to: V053QHYX@UBVMSC.CC.BUFFALO.EDU
 
In article <8911150806.AA02970@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>, V053QHYX@UBVMSC writes:
 `I just d/l'ed and unzood modula 2 from ftp terminator..its all in german?!
 `Can anyone translate it??I'll create a new resource file for it if I can find
 `smeone to translate it..I'm sure other users would like it also..!!
 
If you could read German, you would have noted that changing the resource
file is explicitly forbidden. At least it was in the first version (I will
look in the current).
--
Piet* van Oostrum, Dept of Computer Science, University of Utrecht
 
Sorry about the odd way of quoting. I'm learning a different newsreader, but
anyway, this is now saj speaking.
    I interpreted the notice the same way as Piet did.  I said something about
it to a native German friend, who couldn't understand what I was talking
about.  He re-read it, and said that he could see why I read it that way, but
what it meant was that the authors of the compiler were absolutely not going
to provide translations of the documentation or the resource.  Of course
he's a pretty cheerful fellow by nature, but unless another German says
otherwise, I think what we have here is an idiom.
                               Steve J.
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 19 Nov 89 00:35:21 GMT
From:
 gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!caesar.cs.montana.edu!ogccse!blake!themod@tut.ci
 s.ohio-state.edu  (Chris Hinton)
Subject: Word-Up
 
  I just purchased my copy of Word-Up on Friday and I am already having a
problem, can you beleive that?  Anyway, I set it up according to the manual
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
without a hitch.  Then I load it up, make a little document and try to
print it out and it just send garbage to the printer.  Why?  Any help
would be appreciated.
 
   Chris Hinton
 
------------------------------
 
End of INFO-ATARI16 Digest V89 Issue #674
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