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Info-Atari16 Digest Vol. 90 Issue 116
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INFO-ATARI16 Digest Mon, 29 Jan 90 Volume 90 : Issue 116
Today's Topics:
Amiga Disks read by ST & vice versa
Atari ST 130 meg hard drive for sale
Chaos Strikes Back - Call for experienced people
GEMINI shell
help: trying to mount ch3 modulator in 520
Monitor cable
MT C-shell
Shareware Policy.
Sozobon C: Ar fails
TURBO C/MAS problem
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 24 Jan 90 19:01:14 GMT
From:
snorkelwacker!ira.uka.de!smurf!gopnbg!altger!doitcr!nadia!delos!sally!root@appl
e.com (Philipp Roeder)
Subject: Amiga Disks read by ST & vice versa
Message-ID: <526464@sally>
HI.. does anybody know a possibility to read Atari Disks with an Amiga
and Amiga Disks with the Atari ST ?
A friend of mine has got a mailbox. The host is an Amiga. So I want
to give him some PD-Arc-files for download. But I can't bring my ST to him
so we cannot transfer the files by RS-232 direktly.
--> I need a program to read Amiga disks with the St
and anothe to read Atari ST disks with the Amiga. I think, if both can emulate
a PC or the Macintosh there must be a way to bring them together.
--
und tschuess...
???> Philipp Roeder; Hauptmannsreute 40; 7000 Stuttgart-1; West-Germany <???
???> root@sally ...!uunet!mcsun!unido!nadia!delos!sally!root <???
???> Telefon: 49 711 2261199 * Fax: 49 711 295663 <???
???> Wenn mir jetzt ein Spruch einfiel
------------------------------
Date: 29 Jan 90 15:32:25 GMT
From:
snorkelwacker!usc!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!hrc!force!covertr@bloom-beacon.mit.edu
(Richard E. Covert)
Subject: Atari ST 130 meg hard drive for sale
Message-ID: <48538617.14a1f@force.UUCP>
I have a ABCO dual Seagate 65 megs hard drive system (total = 130 megs) in
a shoe box cabinet for sale. The system uses two Seagate 65 megs drives,
an ICD Host Adpater and ICR boot software. I can provide the latest ICD
hard drive booter for this system.
I am asking $1,000 fo rthis drive system.
Please call me at home at (602) 993-6463
or leave me email at att!gtephx!covertr
--
Richard E. Covert, Lead Engineer of Software Tools Group
AG Communications Systems, Phoenix AZ (602) - 581-4652
TCP/IP: covertr@gtephx
UUCP: ?ncar!noao!asuvax | uunet!zardoz!hrc | att?!gtephx!covertr
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 90 08:43:00 EST
From: U009%CCIW.bitnet@ugw.utcs.utoronto.ca
Subject: Chaos Strikes Back - Call for experienced people
Message-ID: <90Jan29.092251est.57448@ugw.utcs.utoronto.ca>
haven.umd.edu!cwilliam@mimsy.umd.edu (Christopher 'Merlin' Williamson)
writes:
>
> Anyone out there played Chaos Strikes Back a lot? I have explored all
> four branches but am trying to tie everything together.
>
> Also has anyone out there tried to make a map of CSB? (god, it would
> be a nightmare but Im curious what it would look like)
>
My wife had been playing CSB about 4 hours a day since we got it on Dec 22,
and just finished it yesterday. She started out with a methodical approach
to mapping (1/4 squared paper and 4 outliner pencil colors) and succeeded
in mapping the entire dungeon as she went along. One hint was to watch your
compass, particularly as you go up or down stairs.
At one point, she thought she had discovered a bug. Consulting the Oracle
(she only it required twice, by the way) gave a hint about a situation with
a pit; doing what the Oracle said didn't solve the problem. We decided to
look at the various messages on GEnie service, and no-one had the same
problem. It turned out she was carrying too much stuff. Throwing a lot of
it across the pit lightened her party up a lot and she could move more
quickly. It turned out the Oracle was right, but you had to be fast.
She reviewed all the solutions and hints from the GEnie forum after she had
finished and came to the conclusion that the differences in the games
played by many of the people were due primarily to the differences in the
initial strengths and weaknesses of the members of the party. She started
out with a party of just sufficient strength to complete Dungeon Master,
while others on GEnie had used parties uploaded by someone else. One person
said his party was to the highest level mastery in all categories and was
having problems she never saw in her play. I think if she takes her current
party (having developed skills during this game) back to the beginning, she
may have a quite different adventure the second time thru.
The maps are quite complex but show the four dungeons do mesh neatly on all
ten levels.
Best of luck, and remember, it just takes time. Be methodical, keep track
of what's happening and map. Be aware there are occasional magic
transporters in the dungeon (hint: the walls and/or floors don't move when
you do). The puzzles are neat and always solvable, usually in more than one
way.
Regards, Stu Beal, VE3MWM, (U009@CCIW.BITNET),
National Water Research Institute,
Burlington, Ontario, Canada.
The future lies ahead... and behind us lies... lies... lies.
------------------------------
Date: 29 Jan 90 14:56:55 GMT
From: cs.umn.edu!davidli@ub.d.umn.edu (David Paschall-Zimbel)
Subject: GEMINI shell
Message-ID: <1990Jan29.145655.7121@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu>
In article <1990Jan28.001808.15102@lth.se> qralph@dna.lth.se (Ralph Haglund)
writes:
>Also - heard about the new shareware GEMINI-shell? It is up on version 1.1,
>some similarities with Neodesk, but quite a bit of differences too. It is
>GDOS-based. A couple of fonts to select among, also it is quite interesting
>because - well, you have seen these COMMAND shells, right? Well, it got one,
>which runs in a GEM window among the icons - neat!
I saw this up on GEnie the other day and downloaded it. It doesn't seem to
work with TOS 1.0, so I can't comment on its utility. The documentation was
in German (naturlich), but wasn't difficult to follow, even though I've only
had the equivalent of 2nd year college German -- and that a good many years
back. If I read correctly, you need at _least_ the Blitter TOS (1.2) in
order to use the program.
The files in the ARC take up the good part of a double-sided floppy disk.
-- David Paschall-zimbel
------------------------------
Date: 29 Jan 90 16:09:38 GMT
From: watmath!mwtilden@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (M.W.Tilden, Hardware)
Subject: help: trying to mount ch3 modulator in 520
Message-ID: <33727@watmath.waterloo.edu>
In article <33568@watmath.waterloo.edu> mwtilden@watmath.waterloo.edu
(M.W.Tilden, Hardware) writes:
>
>I recently got two channel 3 modulators for my upgraded 520 st
>from Atari. I was annoyed to find out that one of them had a
>74ls86 (quad XOR) whereas the other did not. Both units also
>had a two-cable wire coming out of it which gave no indication
>as to where they were supposed to connect.
>
>The questions are: which of these is the REAL 520 modulator, and
>where the hell do those funny wires go? Mounting one at random produced
>zero results and my Sams Computerfacts on the 520 are no help. Would
>anyone who's had experience mounting these things please tell me the
>obvious thing I'm missing.
Well, since no one replied, I figured it out myself and now have a 520
boasting not just channel 3 but also a seperate NTSC/PAL output with
audio.
The basics of the device is a motorola 1377 NTSC/PAL encoder with a
custom Matsui channel 3/2 modulator. The 1377 is fairly complete with
the exception of the chroma-burst ocillator which, for some reason, is
supposedly generated by an unpopulated section on the 520 motherboard
near the shifter chip. That's what the two extra wires are for. They
turn out to be completely unnecessary however as the modulator board does
come with the spots for the colorburst crystal (3.58 mHz) and the adjustment
capacitor (variable 30pF). Both are radio shack available. Mounting is
5 min with a soldering iron (including warm-up time) and adjustment is made
by running a color screen and adjusting the variable cap until the color
is right.
One thing I did have to do (because I've re-mounted my st into a larger
box with drive and everything enclosed) was to run a 7 inch extender bus
on the connectors to the modulator. This made experiment and adjustment
very easy. I used normal ribbon cable with alternate grounds to cut
down on cross-noise. No problems with the exception of the power pins;
the modulator needs both 12 and 5 volts and, for some reason, my 520
did not provide these on the modulator connections. I tapped pin 14
on a 1488 for the +12 and a bypass cap for the +5.
I found that the 1377 chip has a high current drive output (pin 9) which is
directly feedable into a 75 ohm load through a 100ohm resistor. This
connected to the classic rca jack means you can run high quality NTSC
images straight into a VCR for animation purposes (very possible with
the proliferation of 8mm and SVHS decks with flying erase heads. Anyone
recommend a really good animation program?). The 1377 also has a pin which
selects either NTSC or european PAL format. A simple switch gives you
access to either although for PAL you do have to change your scan rate
to 50 hz.
Oh, and to answer my own question, the 74ls86 is to kick start the
chroma transformer into purity regardless of temperature. Either
the transistor or the 86 version work fine but color bleed is more
restricted on the 86 version.
The audio is straight from the atari with a 15uF capacitor to act as
a decoupler. This can be picked off one of the three pins feeding
straight into the modulator section on the pcb. One is power, one
is NTSC signal. Backtrack to find sound. Feed also into an rca jack.
The one adjustment on the ch3 modulator section is volume control. Adjust
until your tv sounds right to you (remember to check with normal tv levels
first).
All in all, it's a beautiful all-in-one module. I had to pay $60 canadian
for each of mine (from an Atari corperation tech-type) which means they're
only $30 stateside. It's worth it though. Saved me a lot of work making
my own. The nice thing is that there's no reason why these same
modules can't be used on PC's or anything else that generates RGB and Sync.
My next step is to figure out how to make a this st gen-lock. Done
entirely from hardware, there won't be any of this software fiddle-faddle.
I want to be able to run Uniterm or Degas over top of "married with
children". Imagine reading news and watching tv at the same time. I've
done it with a gen-locked 40 char terminal and it works fine. Very
addictive. An 80 col st will mean media-glut unlimited.
Remember; the best reprogramming is done with a soldering iron.
I'll let you know.
--
Mark Tilden: _-_-_-__--__--_ /(glitch!) M.F.C.F Hardware Design Lab.
-_-___ | \ /\/ U of Waterloo. Ont. Can, N2L-3G1
|__-_-_-| \/ (519) - 885 - 1211 ext.2454,
"MY OPINIONS, YOU HEAR!? MINE! MINE! MINE! MINE! MINE! AH HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!"
------------------------------
Date: 29 Jan 90 15:17:31 GMT
From: mcsun!unido!quando!hintz@uunet.uu.net (Stefan Hintz)
Subject: Monitor cable
Message-ID: <1305@quando.UUCP>
In article <900124224428.248715@DMZRZU71-UNI-MAINZ--GERMANY>
Ritzert@DMZRZU71.BITNET writes:
>I am just putting two megas into a VAX/PDP11 tower. This frees the desk
>of two boxes but the monitor cable (SM124) is too short. Any source or
>suggestion for a replacement?
>As far as I know, the original cable uses a 75 Ohm coaxial connection
>for the video signal and 5 shielded leads for the rest. Is that true?
>Thanks!
>Michael Ritzert
>mjr@dmzrzu71.bitnet
I did build a monitor-switch-box with one Atari-monitor-plug on one end
and two Atari-monitor-sockets on the other end. The cable has only one
shielding around the bundle of wires. The cable is about 1 meter long.
The picture quality is so good as it was. I have connected all 13 pins
to both of the two sockets, which are connected to a SM124 and a SC1224.
I only interrupt the monitor-sense-wire for switching between color and
monochrome.
But be warned :
I also have a longer cable (2 meter) with on monitor-plug and one monitor-
socket. I only works fine with the SC1224, but with the SM124 every black
pixel is transformed into two black pixels. So all text looks bolded and
the desktop-grey becomes black. The cable has also one outer shielding.
Conclusion:
75 Ohm cable is not needed, if it not to long.
Stefan Hintz, Dortmund, West Germany
------------------------------
Date: 29 Jan 90 16:26:11 GMT
From:
zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!image.soe.clarkson.edu!rob@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
(Johan Soerensen)
Subject: MT C-shell
Message-ID: <9001291531.AA07781@lo-2.efd.lth.se>
--
Johan Soerensen d89js@efd.lth.se
Lund Institute of Technology, Sweden
------------------------------
Date: 29 Jan 90 15:43:37 GMT
From: cs.umn.edu!davidli@ub.d.umn.edu (David Paschall-Zimbel)
Subject: Shareware Policy.
Message-ID: <1990Jan29.154337.26580@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu>
In article <1990Jan29.032848.2760@chinet.chi.il.us> saj@chinet.chi.il.us
(Stephen Jacobs) writes:
>My personal reference is the port of umoria to
>the ST--I asked people to send me picture postcards for my trouble; perhaps 10
>people have.
Stephen writes cogently about the Shareware issue, so I wanted to address a
few points which he didn't take up.
First -- although a given shareware program may be downloaded by thousands of
people, the actual number who use the program with any regularity may number
in the tens, or if lucky, the hundreds. For example, I have downloaded (at
one time or another) many shareware programs. How many do I actively use?
None. [For Stephen -- I may have downloaded it, but only to reupload it to
a BBS where people more interested in playing the game might get a look at it.
I don't even have it on an archive disk...]
Secondly, there are a number of programs out there that are priced out of
their market. I don't use Charles Johnson's ARCshell because he wants $15
for it. It's as easy for me to type
% arc -x archive.arc *.*
as it is to fire up the program. I don't use Pinhead for much the same
reason -- the utility of the program _to_me_ (your mileage may vary) is not
worth what he wants for it.
Finally, there are some programs which do not work well, or which conflict
with other portions of my system. For example, I don't use the QuickST
speed enhancement because it produces weird ghost cursors in MicroEMACS and
other such behavior when used with some non-GEM programs.
I _do_ have several shareware programs under consideration. However, the
shareware programmer/author should be aware that the time between download
and evaluation may be _months_ or _years_ rather than weeks. For instance,
the two main programs I'm considering at this time are Opus 2.2 (I've used a
spreadsheet on the average of once per year for the past 3 or 4 years ... and
it's been on a minicomputer at work), and a GDOS-based documentation program
whose name escapes me at the moment, but it is supposed to print 5 1/2 x 8 1/2"
pages sideways. The latter will probably get used once or twice within the
next month to see whether such documentation printing is worth the time and
effort as opposed to just printing out ASCII text.
I do maintain a large set of archive disks. No doubt there are copies of
the ARCshell, Pinhead, QuickST, and other shareware programs on those disks.
The reason -- there may come a time in the future when I want to pass a
utility along to a friend who might benefit from its use, or there may come
a time in the future when I might be able to put that certain utility to
good use myself.
-- David Paschall-Zimbel
By the way ...
I was very pleased with the 'freeware' release of DCShowit from DoubleClick.
It's a good quality program which works nicely the first time. As Stephen
mentions ...
>... On the other hand, if
>AFTER impressing people with a nice program I have some goodie to sell, that's
>a different matter.
Releases such as DCShowit, which is useful in its own right, make me more
amenable to considering other programs, such as DC DeskTop when it arrives.
------------------------------
Date: 29 Jan 90 15:37:05 GMT
From: mcsun!unido!laura!klute%heike.informatik.uni-dortmund.de@uunet.uu.net
(Rainer Klute)
Subject: Sozobon C: Ar fails
Message-ID: <1923@laura.UUCP>
Hello world,
I discovered a serious bug in the archiving utility Ar coming
with Sozobon C. It is not possible to add an object module
larger than 64 KByte to a library.
A (very) short look at the source code delivered that this must
have something to do with the 'lseek'. Then I tried to dig
deeper into the problem and wanted to trace it with my Laser C
source code debugger. This required a recompilation.
Well, it turned out that an include file AR.H is missing, and
this is the reason for this article. Unfortunately I do not
have the e-mail address of Sozobon, Inc. to report my problem.
But perhaps *you* have AR.H and are able and willing to mail it
to me.
Thanks in advance
Dipl.-Inform. Rainer Klute klute@heike.informatik.uni-dortmund.de
Univ. Dortmund, IRB klute@unido.uucp, klute@unido.bitnet
Postfach 500500 |)|/ ...uunet!mcvax!unido!klute
D-4600 Dortmund 50 |\|\ Tel.: +49 231 755-4663
------------------------------
Date: 29 Jan 90 17:33:48 GMT
From: shlump.nac.dec.com!lowlif.dec.com!gilliam@decwrl.dec.com
Subject: TURBO C/MAS problem
Message-ID: <7896@shlump.nac.dec.com>
In article <1993@atari.UUCP>, kbad@atari.UUCP (Ken Badertscher) writes...
>
>The original posting asks "Is the ST version of Turbo C for real?"
>
>Yes, it's for real; it's from Borland. It's not sold by Borland in the
>US, however, for reasons I can't fathom. The package is a solid one,
stuff deleted
>--
> ||| Ken Badertscher (ames!atari!kbad)
> ||| Atari R&D System Software Engine
> / | \ #include <disclaimer>
---
Is the documentation in English? Does it have a GEM interface? If so, are
the dialogues in English? I was under the impression that an English
language version of Turbo C for the ST is not available.
Mason Gilliam
(INTERNET,UUCP) gilliam@star.enet.dec.com
(UUCP) ...!decwrl!star.enet!gilliam
(INTERNET) gilliam%star.enet@decwrl.dec.com
---
------------------------------
End of INFO-ATARI16 Digest V90 Issue #116
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