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Info-Atari16 Digest Vol. 89 Issue 741
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INFO-ATARI16 Digest Sat, 2 Dec 89 Volume 89 : Issue 741
Today's Topics:
atari journal
BLOOD MONEY JUST WON'T LOAD...
DC Formatter problems
Drachen
Experience with Toshiba 3 1/2 inch double sided drives?
Flash 1.6
Help with Uniterm 2.0e
PC DITTO Config HElp
Shareware MAC
Soz C V1.2 Upgrade help required
STE vs ST Shifter
STOS Basic (2 msgs)
Trash, Disks, etc. (2 msgs)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 2 Dec 89 19:58:08 EST
From: mhart@lynx.northeastern.edu
Subject: atari journal
Message-ID: <memo.211955@lynx.northeastern.edu>
What happened to the internet Atari.16 journal? The last entry I
read is dated August 7.
------------------------------
Date: 02 DEC 89 20:34:43 CST
From: Z4648252 <Z4648252%SFAUSTIN.BITNET@ricevm1.rice.edu>
Subject: BLOOD MONEY JUST WON'T LOAD...
Message-ID: <891202.20344319.018989@SFA.CP6>
Hello folks,
We've tried two real issues of Blood Money on three different
ST's, a Mega2, 1040st, and 520st upgraded to a two megs. Both
Blood Money products will not boot on any of these STs.
During bootup attempts, we get a screen that goes to black, the
drive whirrs and bumps, and then the screen goes to white. Afterwards,
the computer is reset.
Incidentally, Xenon2 boots perfectly. An earlier report on this
end stating problems with Xenon was a hardware problem.
Can anyone comment on Blood Money. It was purchased as a result
of using the Blood Money game included in a European magazine. Gotta
have it but we can't get the two bought copies to work!!!!
Larry Rymal: |East Texas Atari 68NNNers| <Z4648252@SFAUSTIN.BITNET>
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 2 Dec 89 13:08:34 EDT
From: BAILEYS%FSU.BITNET@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU
Subject: DC Formatter problems
Message-ID: <891202130458427.GKWQ@RAI.CC.FSU.EDU> (UMass-Mailer 4.04)
Could someone please reitterate the problems with DC Formatter's format
routine? I remember some net space being devoted to it, but I had not had
any problems, so I didn't really look at it. Now, two of my floppys have
bitten the dust, for no apparent reason, and I become concerned. Please
include which version is flawed (if it is flawed), I have both 3.01 and
3.02, and would like to know if there is any advantage to using one over the
other. Also, is it true that an ACC version is available via Shareware cost?
I have not yet gotten around to sending it in!
Bob Marley
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 2 Dec 89 13:10:48 EDT
From: BAILEYS%FSU.BITNET@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Drachen
Message-ID: <891202130904540.GKWQ@RAI.CC.FSU.EDU> (UMass-Mailer 4.04)
My thanks to the writer(s) of Drachen, available from panarthea. Everything
that Shanghai should have been (3-D representation of the tiles). If you
don't have this one on your HD, what are you going to do at work?
Bob Marley
------------------------------
Date: 2 Dec 89 18:53:48 GMT
From:
zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!kuhub.cc.ukans.edu!2fhdbeak@tut.cis.ohio-st
ate.edu
Subject: Experience with Toshiba 3 1/2 inch double sided drives?
Message-ID: <19153@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>
In article <3156@csv.viccol.edu.au>, timcc@csv.viccol.edu.au (Tim Cook) writes:
> Before I go out and buy one,
>
> Has anyone out there got any first-hand horror stories on Toshiba 3 1/2 "
> double sided drive mechanisms? I am told they are "very reliable", but
> then it was the person who would be selling me one who said that.
>
> This would be a mechanism suitable for replacing an SF354 mechanism (single
> sided).
>
> I was offered a 6 month warranty if I installed the mechanism (into my own
> modified SF354 case) myself, or a 12 month warranty if it was installed by
> the dealer. Are these values reasonable? I'm looking at A$200 for DIY,
> A$250 for dealer installed and 12 month warranty, or A$220 for DIY and 12
> month warranty (presumably after the dealer has ratified the installation).
>
> The Australian dollar currently buys about 77 US cents.
>
> Any info appreciated.
>
> --
> Tim Cook Systems Administrator, Victoria College Computer Services
>
> parrot - n. An animal that has the ability to imitate man, but not the
> intelligence to refrain from doing so.
I have a Toshiba DSDD drive, and it is excellent.
Not only is it slightly faster than the standard Atari drives, but it
also reads and writes past track 80 reliably. I use DC Format to stuff
more than 800K onto my disks with no trouble.
They are also cheaper than Atari drives. I picked mine up for $99 (US).
--Jim Sisul
The University of Kansas
------------------------------
Date: 29 Nov 89 04:24:00 GMT
From: mnetor!tmsoft!masnet!canremote!calvin.bruner@uunet.uu.net (CALVIN BRUNER)
Subject: Flash 1.6
Message-ID: <89120107511624@masnet.uucp>
I'm having some difficulty using flash with my modem. For some reason,
when the modem gives a "No Answer" or similar message, Flash doesn't
seen to recognize it and in the command bar, says it is still dialing?
This is more of a nuisance than anything else, but I'd like to solve the
problem. I have checked to make wure that I put the correct fail
mesaages into the dial directory, and properly saved them. I must be
missing something obvious, but what?
Thanks in advance!
---
* Via ProDoor 3.1R
------------------------------
Date: 2 Dec 89 18:53:00 GMT
From: apollo!weber_w@beaver.cs.washington.edu (Walt Weber)
Subject: Help with Uniterm 2.0e
Message-ID: <473088e9.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM>
In article <4685@blake.acs.washington.edu> charlop@blake.acs.washington.edu
(Aaron Charlop) writes:
>I have just down loaded Uniterm 2.0e from Terminator. When I tried it
>from home last night, I ran into a problem. The dialing would get locked
>into dialing one number if there was anything wrong with the dialup.
Aaron -
There is a glitch with the 'redial' command in the dialer menu. It apparently
decrements FIRST, and then checks for retries == zero; if you have retries set
to equal 0, it is VERY persistent at that point (:-).
Set retries to 1, and it will not attempt redials.
>Aaron the Alchemist
>Charlop@uwchem.chem.washington.edu
...walt...
Walt Weber Hewlett Packard NARC @ Apollo Systems Division
(508) 256-6600 x8315 People's Republic of Massachusetts
-The views expressed herein are personal, and not binding on ANYONE-
------------------------------
Date: 2 Dec 89 20:41:34 GMT
From: cs.utexas.edu!psurge@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Troy Carpenter)
Subject: PC DITTO Config HElp
Message-ID: <7277@cs.utexas.edu>
This is for the person who wanted help in their CONFIG.SYS file on PC-DITTO
I have a 20 meg hard drive with 4 partitions, 3 gem and 1 mac. The Gem
partitions are C,D, and E. This is what my CONFIG.SYS file contains:
buffers=25
device=pc_dhd.sys
device=pc_ddrvr.sys
The first is to reset the number of buffers to handle the hard drive, the
second is the hard drive handler, and the third is the high capacity drive
handler, it allows MS DOS to read ST disks (on my system as drives F & G).
If it means anyting I am using PC DOS 3.3, I think.
------------------------------
Date: 29 Nov 89 14:30:00 GMT
From: mnetor!tmsoft!masnet!canremote!greg.trice@uunet.uu.net (GREG TRICE)
Subject: Shareware MAC
Message-ID: <89120107511652@masnet.uucp>
Why does everybody assume that a Mac emulator has to use Mac ROMs or any
Mac code at all? There are an infinite number of ways to do a given job
and it is perfectly possible for somebody to carefully read all the Mac
documentation and then sit down and write code that will do exactly the
same job as the Mac roms, but have not a byte in common with them in
code. This is the situation with most IBM compatible systems. Though
they are functionally identical to the IBM product, their ROMs contain
different, but functionally identical code.
It should be perfectly possible to produce a Mac emulator that used no
ROMs at all, but was wholly disk based (given sufficient memory to hold
the quondam ROM code in RAM).
---
* Via ProDoor 3.1R
------------------------------
Date: 1 Dec 89 18:45:52 GMT
From: thelake!steve@UMN-CS.CS.UMN.EDU (Steve Yelvington)
Subject: Soz C V1.2 Upgrade help required
Message-ID: <1101891245522835@thelake.UUCP>
In article <8912010805.AA03513@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>,
S61304@PRIME-A.POLY-SOUTH-WEST.AC.UK (Rat) writes ...
>Being a beginning C programmer, I have managed to coax my copy of Sozobon
>Version 1.01 to compile, link and all that sort of stuff on single files.
>However I have not used anything other than the supplied CC utility, to
>drive all the other elements (hcc and top etc) and especially I haven't
>yet managed to get 'make' to work. This has slowed to a total halt my efforts
>to compile up the version 1.2 of Sozobon (supplied in source format only :-(
Ieee! Source code only? The net distribution included binaries as well as
sources.
>I have tried to use the make facility on the supplied files. I had my normal
>Soz C work disk in the A drive and the 1.2 source in a ram disk, installed
>as drive d:. I then made the source files the active window and ran the make
>utility by selecting it using the right-left double click technique and then
>selecting open from the desktop. But it still didn't work.
Under (almost) no circumstances should you try to use any of the Sozobon
programs directly from the Desktop. In this example, how are cc and make
supposed to know where to find hcc, top, ld and jas? They look at the
environment, which is for all practical purposes the dark side of the moon
if you run from the Desktop. If PATH= doesn't point to the folder that
contains the executables, and the executables are not in the current
working directory, the compile will fail.
>I do have a copy of the Gulam shell, but I haven't used it very much yet.
>However I will dig it out and blow the dust off it if necessary.
Do so. Definitely.
In addition to providing a proper environment string, Gulam (or any other
competent shell) will pass arguments to the Sozobon compiler and utilities
without mangling them. GEM Desktop uppercases everything, and the Sozobon
programs are sensitive to the case of arguments. cc -o and cc -O do not
mean the same thing.
-- Steve Yelvington, up at the lake in Minnesota
... pwcs.StPaul.GOV!stag!thelake!steve (UUCP)
------------------------------
Date: 2 Dec 89 16:40:31 GMT
From: pasteur!cory.Berkeley.EDU!soohoo@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Ken "nmi" Soohoo)
Subject: STE vs ST Shifter
Message-ID: <20207@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
In article <1989Dec1.183920.12339@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu> cbdougla@uokmax.UUCP
(Collin Broadrick Douglas) writes:
>In article <20157@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> soohoo@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Ken "nmi"
Soohoo) writes:
>>The STE shifter outputs 4 bits of color per gun, which means that
>>the DACs required to go to your video are gonna be different, no?
>>It would mean Atari would have to lay out another chip that's
>>an ST replacement shifter w/o the extra color bit... Seems kinda
>>pointless for them, lots of R&D $$, little return, plus they'd
>>need lots of packages to hit all the shifter versions out there...
>
>
> Except for one thing. In Medium res the Atari get 16 colors per screen. I
> may be stupid but doesn't this already mean that the shifter has to output
> 4 bits (4 bits = 16 colors)? All they would have to change is the total
> number of colors available (from 512 to 4096). And that is just the
> difference of having more shades of the same colors. The primary colors
> (Red, Green and Blue) each with 16 shades gives a total of 4096 colors
> (16~3).
>cbdougla@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu
>
Collin,
You're confusing "bit planes" and "bits per gun"...
Lemme explain:
The number of bit planes in a specific resolution determines the number
of color _table_ entries you can access for a given pixel in that
resolution -- in Atari's low res case, 2~4 = 16, medium, 2~2 = 4,
high 2~1 = 1... Ok, no each color table entry can be filled with a
number that's going to determine which color is sent to the screen,
and in the ST's case that number has 3 bits assigned to each RG~B,
for a grand total of 2~9, or 512, colors possible to be assigned per
color table entry... So you can have 16/512 colors on the screen at the
same time without resetting the color table mid-screen...
Oh, anyway, so the STE's shifter has the same number of bit _planes_
per resolution, but an additional bit _per RG&B gun_, so that each
color table entry can be one of 2~12, or 4096 colors... SO now you can
get 16/4096 colors on screen at the same time.
A DAC takes the value in the color table entry and converts it from the
0's and 1's representation into a voltage value for the monitor. With
an extra bit being sent to a DAC that only understands 3 bits, we have
a fundamental problem, and unfortunately I don't think it can be
ignored.
--Kenneth "kens" Soohoo (soohoo@cory.Berkeley.Edu)
Atari Hacker (Atari's Hacker...)
"It could be worse, you could get hit by a bus..."
My opinions are my OWN, _not_ necessarily Atari's. But "hey", who knows?
------------------------------
Date: 29 Nov 89 04:22:00 GMT
From: mnetor!tmsoft!masnet!canremote!calvin.bruner@uunet.uu.net (CALVIN BRUNER)
Subject: STOS Basic
Message-ID: <89120107511597@masnet.uucp>
I just heard on my local BBS that TOS 1.4 does not work with STOS basic.
This is surprising as STOS is a fairly recent product. Anyway, I'm
looking for a second confirmation of this, and if true, whether anyone
in Europe happens to know if Mandarin is going to fix?
---
* Via ProDoor 3.1R
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 3 Dec 1989 0:17:45 MET
From: LarsErikOsterud <larserio@ifi.uio.no>
Subject: STOS Basic
Message-ID: <CMM.0.88.628643865.larserio@kvart.uio.no>
One of my friend has STOS and TOS 1.2 but we tried it on my MEGA4 with
TOS 1.4 - It worked OK, BUT you can't move the mouse-pointer !!!!!
Lars-Erik / ABK-BBS +47 2132659 / ____ ______ ________________________
Osterud / larserio@ifi.uio.no / /___ / The norwegian ST
__________/ ______________________/ ____/ / Klubben, user association
------------------------------
Date: 2 Dec 89 16:50:48 GMT
From: cs.utexas.edu!execu!sequoia!rpp386!mark@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Mark
Lehmann)
Subject: Trash, Disks, etc.
Message-ID: <17394@rpp386.cactus.org>
>Does anyone out there have or know where I can get a program to change
>the Trash and file cabinet icons on the desktop? The old desktop is getting
>pretty boring and I am due for a change. Thanks.
> Roman Baker
There is an excellent program for TOS with GEM called NEODESK 2.05. It
totally repleaces the GEM user inerface on the ST. With NEODESK, it is
possible to make your ST interface look like the MacIntosh interface.
NEODESK 2.05 is available from Gribniff Software.
Mark Lehmann
--
+------------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| Mark Lehmann | |
| mark@rpp386.cactus.org | |
| ?bigtex|texbell?!rpp386!mark | |
------------------------------
Date: 1 Dec 89 19:01:24 GMT
From: thelake!steve@UMN-CS.CS.UMN.EDU (Steve Yelvington)
Subject: Trash, Disks, etc.
Message-ID: <1101891301242836@thelake.UUCP>
In article <9911@saturn.ucsc.edu>,
dstr012@ucscg.UCSC.EDU (10003012) writes ...
>Does anyone out there have or know where I can get a program to change
>the Trash and file cabinet icons on the desktop? The old desktop is getting
>pretty boring and I am due for a change. Thanks.
>
> Roman Baker
NeoDesk (from your local dealer, or $31.95 from E. Arthur Brown Co.,
612-762-8847) does this and more. Each file .ext can be associated with
its own icon. Program icons can be dragged out onto the Desktop, so you
can click and go without having to navigate through folders. It also
provides "hot keys," a printer queue, faster windows and even a digital
clock, all in 21K of RAM. It's what the Desktop should have been all along.
-- Steve Yelvington, up at the lake in Minnesota
... pwcs.StPaul.GOV!stag!thelake!steve (UUCP)
------------------------------
End of INFO-ATARI16 Digest V89 Issue #741
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