=========================================================================
 
INFO-ATARI16 Digest         Tue, 30 Jan 90       Volume 90 : Issue  128
 
Today's Topics:
               Help Needed with Atari H/W interfacing.
               Is there a (reliable) CHKDSK for the ST?
                    Problem with asm in MEGAMAX-C
                    SCREENSAVER LIKE STARS FOR MAC
                            software theft
              ST stores in houses (was Monitor Burnout)
             Tick-tick-tick-CRASH! is not dead in TOS 1.4
----------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Date: 30 Jan 90 17:40:28 GMT
From: ingr!b11!jmack@uunet.uu.net  (Cery McCormick)
Subject: Help Needed with Atari H/W interfacing.
Message-ID: <7322@b11.ingr.com>
 
> I wrote the article in question. If you want to add something like a
> 'LS138 decoder to a few of the higher address lines, then you can do
> what you want. reading from addresses FB00xx writes device '0' with data
> xx (note the simplification in my design - the data is actually offset
> by one bit since A0 doesn't exist on the cart. I later found out that
> -UDS can be used as A0). Addresses FB01xx could then access device '1'
> etc. The '138 will decode 3 address lines to 8 chip selects (0-7).
> If you need more, cascade them or use 4 to 16 line decoders, etc.
>
> Unfortunately, I can reach neither of the writers from here. I think
> the information may be of interest to other hackers on the net, so I
> am posting the reply and suggesting further discussion take place here
> for the benefit of all.
>
> Regards, Stu Beal, VE3MWM, (U009@CCIW.BITNET),
> National Water Research Institute,
> Burlington, Ontario, Canada.
>
> The future lies ahead... and behind us lies...   lies...   lies.
 
On the subject of cartridge port interfacing, I am currently working on
something that someone else may wish to build.
 
I have designed a method of putting 1Meg of DRAM on a small PC board that
plugs into the cartridge port. This amounts to a very easy to 'plug-in'
1MEG RAM-Disk.
 
By using the large amount of available address bits as input, I am able
to do two 'reads' to supply the 1MEG address.  The first read supplys
the ROW address (10 bits), and the second read supplies the COLUMN
address (10 bits).  These values are latched so that a PAL on the board
may perform the actual read of memory, after which a third read can get
the data.  If the operation is a write, data must be supplied before
giving the ROW and COLUMN addresses.
 
Let me know if anyone is intertested in schematics for this project.
 
Cary McCormick
P.O. Box 6333
Huntsville, AL
35824-0333
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 31 Jan 90 03:29:56 GMT
From: wuarchive!mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!romwa@decwrl.dec.com
 (Royal Ontario Museum)
Subject: Is there a (reliable) CHKDSK for the ST?
Message-ID: <1990Jan31.032956.28008@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca>
 
Sorry if this has come up before, but I am really in need of info
regarding a reliable way to verify the integrity of the FAT.
Hopefully, the program should also go ahead and fix lost clusters,
etc. as automatically as possible.
 
Many thanks.
 
Pavneet Arora
...!utgpu!rom!pavneet
 
Royal Ontario Museum
100 Queen's Park
Toronto, Ontario
M5S 2C6
(416) 586-5626
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 30 Jan 90 22:47:14 GMT
From: mcsun!ukc!harrier.ukc.ac.uk!gos.ukc.ac.uk!dac@uunet.uu.net  (David Clear)
Subject: Problem with asm in MEGAMAX-C
Message-ID: <2776@gos.ukc.ac.uk>
 
In article <9001300801.AA16463@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> K298027@CZHRZU1A.BITNET
 (Michael Mueller) writes:
>asm ?
>init:   move.l #1234,A0
>        move.l #init,A0         ; this is not accepted !!!!!
>        bra    init             ; this is OK
>?
>
>Why is the second mnemonic not accepted ? Has anybody an idea how to use
>labelled adresses ?
 
The second move.l ought to work (that is, it's correct assembler syntax).
You could try:
 
                movea.l #init,A0        ; if the assembler's fussy
 
                or
 
                lea     init(PC),A0
 
                or
 
                lea     init,A0
 
                        as two alternatives.
 
In case you're not familiar, lea loads the EFFECTIVE ADDRESS of the operand
into the address register. So, whereas `movea.l init,A0' would put the
CONTENTS of `in' into A0, `lea init,A0' put the address of `init' into
A0.
 
On a simple level, `movea.l #N,An' and `lea N,An' are equvalent.
 
On the other hand, you simply may not be able to use `init' in that context. It
may be a compiler restriction. I haven't used it so I'm guessing. Try lea and
that might work.
 
Dave.
 
 
--
% cc life.c                      | David Clear <dac@ukc.ac.uk>
% a.out                          | Computer Science, University of Kent,
Segmentation fault (core dumped) | Canterbury, England.
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 30 Jan 90 20:21:39 GMT
From: cs.umn.edu!davidli@ub.d.umn.edu  (David Paschall-Zimbel)
Subject: SCREENSAVER LIKE STARS FOR MAC
Message-ID: <1990Jan30.202139.13049@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu>
 
In article <4858f0b6.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM> rehrauer@apollo.HP.COM (Steve
 Rehrauer) writes:
>Hmmmm.  A question for the closet legal-eagles among us: What becomes of
>copyrighted software published by a magazine which goes belly-up?  If ST-Log
>is dead, does that do anything at all to the distribution restrictions placed
>on their software (assuming there were any restrictions - never did buy an
>ST-Log w/disk)?
 
In the case of magazine articles, the copyright reverts to the author in most
cases.  (It depends on the individual contracts signed by the author).  I would
assume that such would be the case for software published in a magazine format.
Several programs which first appeared in ST-Log are now available on commercial
disks or shareware.  Opus, for example, appeared in ST-Log a long while ago,
has been considerably enhanced and is now a shareware program.  Some of the Kid
Programs by Ms. Brumleve (boy I hope my spelling is correct!) were originally
'careware', became published in the magazine and are currently much enhanced
and either semi-commercial or shareware.
 
User groups could provide programs from ST-Log, according to the blurb in the
masthead of the magazine.  There were some restrictions.  Many of the programs
have appeared on Delphi and GEnie, uploaded by someone from ST-Log.  In most
cases, the programs were minimally useful without the magazine to document
what was going on ... game instructions, etc. were found in the magazine and
not on the disk.
 
>  Alternatively, I wonder if the people at ST-Log (or Flynt
>Publishers) would/could allow the software (such as the above screen saver)
>to be released here?
 
Several screen saver programs have appeared on GEnie in the past few months.
I don't know if any of them came from the article published in ST-Log.  I can
check my own archives to see whether they're shareware, etc. and let people
know if there is some interest.
 
-- David Paschall-Zimbel
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 30 Jan 90 20:09:19 GMT
From: cs.umn.edu!davidli@ub.d.umn.edu  (David Paschall-Zimbel)
Subject: software theft
Message-ID: <1990Jan30.200919.7714@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu>
 
In article <27273@brunix.UUCP> rjd@cs.brown.edu (Rob Demillo) writes:
>       (2) The Atari communities theft ratio is higher than
>               any other platform. (40-50% based on a two year
>               old Compute! article.)
 
I do not consider it valid to take statistics from a 2-year old article in a
popular press computer magazine to enhance your current argument.  The
statistics would have had to have been compiled sometime back in 1986, which
is more like 3 years ago -- at which time the Atari ST was barely up and
running in the United States market.
 
It is, unfortunately, very difficult to assess the reason for poor software
sales.  The folks at Spectrum Holobyte, for example, were complaining about
poor sales (due to theft) BEFORE a single advertisement for their product
hit the magazines.
 
(I actually got a chance to play with the program for about 3 days, and was
not impressed.  Count one person who didn't go out and, as one anti-pirate
suggested "Buy anything that comes out for the ST so developers will write
more software.")
 
My own software purchases totalled about $100 in 1989.  Perhaps one of the
reasons for lower than expected software sales could be that the publishers
aren't providing me with any software that I particularly want, let alone
need.  Multiply one person by 200,000 and you have a 20 million dollar market,
while publishers might be expecting perhaps a 100 million dollar market.  It's
easy to blame theft for poor sales, while the real problem may be that some
products simply don't attract enough attention (or fulfill enough peoples'
neds) to merit more sales.
 
-- David Paschall-Zimbel
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 31 Jan 90 02:10:41 GMT
From: silver!jburka@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu  (Jeffrey C. Burka)
Subject: ST stores in houses (was Monitor Burnout)
Message-ID: <34386@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
 
Bits 'n PCs of Indianapolis runs out of a house...sort of.  The store is
in a house, but I'm not sure if anybody actually lives there.  I may
be mis-remembering, but I seem to recall that they had trouble with
Atari over becoming a 'business dealer' because they were in a house
as opposed to a flashy storefront (don't quote me on that one (at least
not by name!)).
 
A good store with good support, software- and hardware-wise.
 
Jeff
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 31 Jan 90 03:56:53 GMT
From: bane@mimsy.umd.edu  (John R. Bane)
Subject: Tick-tick-tick-CRASH! is not dead in TOS 1.4
Message-ID: <22199@mimsy.umd.edu>
 
The dreaded keyboard-repeat-and-lock crash bug is apparently not gone in TOS
1.4.  For those of you who haven't seen it before, what happens is after
several minutes of fairly steady typing in an editor (I use Word Writer),
the keyboard suddenly starts slowly retyping the last seven or so keys you
typed, over and over again.  After about 10 repeats, your program crashes.
 
This hadn't happened to me for over a year until tonight; I had hoped that
it was some bad desk accessory that I had abandoned.  WRONG.  This time, I
have some information that may be useful to some real ST wizards, as I was
running under Neodesk and landed in its error handler.  The strange thing is
that I landed there twice; once from Word Writer, and again after exiting
the handler when it tried to reload Neodesk.  The second time locked the
keyboard for good, necessitating a reboot.
 
I would like to try and narrow down the conditions under which this happens.
If you've had it happen to you, please send me mail describing your
system set-up and what you tend to be doing when it hangs on you.  Eventually
I'll summarize it to the net.  A descrption of my system and the dump follow.
 
520 ST, upgraded to 2.5 Meg with Tech-Specialites board
BMS-100/Adaptek 4000/Quantum 80 Meg hard disk
Mono Monitor
DAs:
Neo Control Panel and Printer Queue (corner clock on)
Extras (a file-selector replacement which is STILL better than TOS 1.4's)
Disk Manager (a floppy munger from Michtron)
Desk Pac Plus (a calendar/calculator/notepad thing from Advanced Environments)
 
Register dumps: C1 = first crash, C2 = second crash, * = same as C1
 
           C1              C2
d0            38        *
d1         808b0           708b0
d2          2300        97702300
d3             4        *
d4             e        *
d5             0        *
d6             5        *
d7          800e           7000e
 
a0        e40105        *
a1         83c18           77d0a
a2        275de6          fcab7a
a3         84cc4               0
a4         79d7a           77cf0
a5              0       *
a6          7a38        *
a7          7a24        *
 
SSP         7a24        *
USP        84cbc           79080
instr       3d50        *
sr:         2300        *
pc:       fe3a1e        *
--
ARPAnet: bane@mimsy.umd.edu
UUCP:...umcp-cs!bane
 
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End of INFO-ATARI16 Digest V90 Issue #128
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