=========================================================================
 
INFO-ATARI16 Digest         Fri, 19 Jan 90       Volume 90 : Issue   72
 
Today's Topics:
                            ARC 6.02 bugs
                         Help with Sozobon||
                  IBM PC / ATARI ST Disk Screwed Up
                           reserving memory
                            TT availablity
                           uucp on an Amiga
                    WANTED: LONG. & LATITUDE DATA
----------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Date: 19 Jan 90 21:15:26 GMT
From: shlump.nac.dec.com!engage.enet.dec.com!oldtmr!wallace@decuac.dec.com  (Ray
 Wallace)
Subject: ARC 6.02 bugs
Message-ID: <1432@engage.enet.dec.com>
 
In article <1422@engage.enet.dec.com>, wallace@oldtmr.dec.com (Ray Wallace)
writes:
> I could not get ARC 6.02 to work with UNARC. ARC bombs everytime UNARC calls
> it.
 
It turns out that I can not get ARC 6.02 to work with any of the graphical
shells I have for ARC (ARCSHELL, ARCGSH21, UNARC). All of them produce either
two or four bombs (it keeps changing) when they go to execute ARC. The older
version of ARC (v5.21b I think) runs fine with all of these shells.
 
Has anyone else had trouble with ARC V6.02 running under these shells? I
assume it is working for most people since no one else has mentioned the
problem.
 
---
Ray Wallace
                (INTERNET,UUCP) wallace@oldtmr.enet.dec.com
                (UUCP)          ...!decwrl!oldtmr.enet!wallace
                (INTERNET)      wallace%oldtmr.enet@decwrl.dec.com
---
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 19 Jan 90 17:58:02 GMT
From: van-bc!ubc-cs!alberta!myrias!mj@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU  (Michal Jaegermann)
Subject: Help with Sozobon||
Message-ID: <632771884.17691@myrias.com>
 
From article <0017900052080999@thelake.mn.org>, by steve@thelake.mn.org (Steve
 Yelvington):
> [In article <1037T6M-RIIT@FINTUVM>, T6M-RIIT@FINTUVM.BITNET writes:]
>
>> 3)  Well well, there is still the make utility (the doc of which I just
>>     can't understand and got no UNIX manual at hand). I cook up a file
>>     called MAKEFILE with
>>         hello.tos: hello.o
>>             cc -o hello.tos hello.o
>>     in it - copied straight from a USENET news article sometime in August.
>>     Wonder if there's any sense in this... well, type make.
>>     "No targets provided near line 2". I take the monitor and smash it on
>>     the wall and eat the ST and go hang myself.
>
> This, of course, is the primary purpose of make. By causing budding
> programmers to smash monitors and hang themselves, the supply of
> programmers is restricted, and salaries can be kept high.
 
In a spirit of purpouse stated so eloquently above Steve forgot to tell
you one small thing. :-).  A white space between left margin and "cc"
on line 2 in your makefile does not consist of blanks, but IT HAS to be
a TAB character (0x09, ctrl-I).  This is a misfeature on an original
Un*x make and got stumped generations of beginning C programmers.  I
guess that we are doomed to live with it, like with segments on PeeCee.
Otherwise your makefile is fine (it is using built-in default rules to
produce .o files from your source .c).
 
 
        Michal Jaegermann
        Myrias Research Corporation
        Edmonton, Alberta, CANADA
        mj@myrias.COM
        ...?uunet,alberta?!myrias!mj
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 19 Jan 90 21:47:00 GMT
From: shlump.nac.dec.com!carafe!goldstein@decuac.dec.com  (Fred R. Goldstein)
Subject: IBM PC / ATARI ST Disk Screwed Up
Message-ID: <7624@shlump.nac.dec.com>
 
In article <2646@cunixc.cc.columbia.edu>, ia4@cunixd.cc.columbia.edu (Imran
 Anwar) writes...
>...One of the staff there solved the problem by "Formatting a Low Density 3.5"
>Disk on a High Density Drive" command available in the menu. Sure enough,
>the floppy formatted as 720K on the 1.4M machine worked fine on the 720K drives
>including my Atari ST drive.
>
>So I spent the whole night typing some reports and saved them on this floppy.
>The next day, at school, I had to use the 1.4M drive PC as that is the one
>connected to a Laserprinter. But, surprise, that very drive that had formatted
>the disk showed it to be blank (even though the files showed up on the 720K
>drive PCs). It simply said, File Not Found.
>
>What could be the problem?
>...My question(s). Any idea of what could have happened? Solution?
 
I own both an ST and a PClone witha 1.44 drive.  Unlike the one you
used, mine has no trouble at all reading/writing 720k formatted disks.
Unlike 5.25" disks, there's no difference in track size between the
two densities, just in track density and write current.
 
Probably the 1.44 drive is broken!  But the other likely problem is that
you screwed up the disk by swapping IBM-formatted disks on the ST.
Remember that the ST uses disk serial numbers to determine media change.
MSDOS disks don't have serial numbers.  So swapping two MSDOS disks
on an ST, without inserting an intermediate Atari-formatted disk, will
make the ST think you've reinserted the same disk, and it'll use the
old FAT info.
 
I format disks on the ST using IBMFMT, a freeware utility that writes
MSDOS-formatted disks with the random serial number.  TOS 1.4 does the
same.  Other formatters don't, and you should be careful not to confuse
the ST serial number checker.
       fred
---
Fred R. Goldstein   goldstein@carafe.enet.dec.com
                 or goldstein@delni.enet.dec.com
                    voice:  +1 508 486 7388
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 19 Jan 90 17:34:44 GMT
From: voder!pyramid!athertn!alex@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU  (Alex Leavens)
Subject: reserving memory
Message-ID: <16863@laurel.athertn.Atherton.COM>
 
Well, the first thing you don't want to do is to malloc()
all of the currently available memory.  Doing this (as you've
found) is a good way to cause things to lock up, because other
applications (the desktop is one) need free memory, too.
 
In addition, when you malloc() all of free memory, you're making
the assumption that you're the only process running, which
may or may not be true.  What if you have desk accs running?
What if you have a multi-tasking system?  You haven't left any
memory for anybody else.  Not nice.
 
As for how much memory you _should_ reserve, this is kind of a
tough question, for it depends very much upon what your application
is doing.  I recently wrote a cardfile database that mallocs()
memory;  in my case, I malloc() only the amount of memory that
I need in order to fit that card into memory.  This has advantages
and disadvantages:
        1) The advantage is that I only take a little bit of memory
from the system each time (I actually take a bigger chunk than just
a single card, because the MWC malloc() routine carves out a medium
sized chunk from GEM, and then parcels it out to me).  Thus, any
other application which is running can still get memory if it needs
it.
        2) The disadvantage is that because I make a _lot_ of mallocs(),
I have to use folder100.prg in order to increase my memory pool size,
otherwise I run out.  (That's not really a big disadvantage).
 
In other words, it pays to behave nicely in the system, and use only
those resources that you really need right now;  don't assume that
you're the only application that's running, and don't assume that
just because you got back NNNN bytes free from Malloc(), that you
can therefor grab NNNN bytes from the system.
 
--
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|--alex | alex@Atherton.COM |  Caution!  Falling Opinions, next 6 miles   |
|        Now who are you gonna believe--me, or your own lyin' eyes?       |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------|
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 19 Jan 90 22:39:06 GMT
From:
 cs.utexas.edu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!sherlock!stefan@tut.ci
 s.ohio-state.edu  (BUCHHOLZ)
Subject: TT availablity
Message-ID: <1794@clyde.concordia.ca>
 
In article <1990Jan17.230810.17704@Solbourne.COM>, stevem@katmandu.Solbourne.COM
 (Stephen Matson) writes:
>>
>>
>>        Later Atari, I'm not waiting around for your lies anymore.
>>
>>   "FRODO LIVES"                                "COLORADO!!"
 
>Well, good riddance to bad rubbish. Ohhhh, poor baby! He can't get
>a TT... Well, frankly, I, and more than a few of us could not care
>less. Apple or Amiga *deserve* someone like him. And "FRODO
>LIVES"??? The rallying call for extreme nerds. I'm surprised that
>anyone uses that old saw, it's about 20 years old, ne?
 
...(?)
>I've seen enough people cry to their mothers that Atari did/does
>this, wahhhhhh! I don't wanna play anymore with them...
 
>Well, wake up to the real world buddy, pull your head out. Do you
>think for a moment that when Apple announces, it will ship on time,
>every time? Remember the announcements for the Macintosh, and
>especially the much ballyhooed new type of disk drive *that did not
>work*??? Millions spent on the drive, and it didn't work better
>than the Sony 3.5" drive. So they made that oddity, the GCR drive,
>and you get a computer that costs more, uses a totally odd drive,
>than other current systems that at least have similar performance.
 
>Gee, grow up, and get a life...
 
>Mark Newton-John
 
        Guys, lets try to leave religion in the churches.  I really think
that this OTARI-devotion is getting slightly out of hand.  This (and all)
newsgroups are in place for people to share info.
 
        I personnaly love reading this religious stuff but there's a limit...
 
        As for the TT: look at the specs (whatever is out) and I think the
                        availability date will be insigificant.
 
        Merry Xmas.
 
        Stefy
--
--
   (ames att sun)!pacbell! \      Sakura-mendo, CA
           ucdavis!csusac! - sactoh0!mfolivo
              uunet!mmsac! /      the good guys!
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 19 Jan 90 22:18:56 GMT
From: sei!bmc@pt.cs.cmu.edu  (Brian M. Clapper)
Subject: uucp on an Amiga
Message-ID: <5719@dx.sei.cmu.edu>
 
A friend of mine owns both an Atari ST and an Amiga, and he would like to
be able to talk UUCP with other machines over a modem.  Is there a utility
that runs on either platform that will support such a protocol?  It doesn't
have to be a public-domain program; he just wants to know if anything like
this exists.  Failing that, is there a version of Unix or Xenix that will
run on the Amiga?  (That's the sledgehammer solution.)
 
If you know of any thing that fits the bill, I'd appreciate the info.
Please respond to me via electronic mail (at "bmc@sei.cmu.edu"), as I do
not normally read this newsgroup.
 
--
 
Brian M. Clapper
<bmc@sei.cmu.edu>
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 19 Jan 90 12:28:07 GMT
From: usc!srhqla!quad1!ttidca!woodside@apple.com  (George Woodside)
Subject: WANTED: LONG. & LATITUDE DATA
Message-ID: <9154@ttidca.TTI.COM>
 
In article <111500081@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu>, glk01126@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu writes:
>       I am looking for data pertaining to the longitude and latitude of as
>       many cities in the world as possible in order to write an
>       astrological plotting program.  Does anyone know where I may
>       find them or could someone possibly send them?
 
The Austin Code Works, of Austin Texas, sells code for MS-DOS systems.
Their listings can be found in some MS-DOS related magazines, and, if I
recall correctly, either C Programmer's Journal or Dr. Dobbs.
 
Among their listings are disks with geographic data bases on them.
 
--
* George R. Woodside - Citicorp/TTI - Santa Monica, CA *
* Path:       woodside@ttidca                          *
*   or:       ..!?philabs|csun|psivax?!ttidca!woodside *
 
------------------------------
 
End of INFO-ATARI16 Digest V90 Issue #72
****************************************
