HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: banksie@khantazi.welly.gen.nz (Philip R. Banks)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Computer emissions (was RO3 and the A5000 Multisy)
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 20:51:20 +1200
Reply-To: banks_p@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz
Organization: My Arc.

mcg@waikato.ac.nz writes:

> That'll kill some but not all the noise....

   That is all I am after. You see I get complaints from my parents about TV
reception when my machine is on. As I usually want to use my machine at the
times they want to watch TV (and I need my Arc fix soooo after using Macs
and X boxes all day.) this leads to arguement.

   If it reduces the interference level even a bit it will be worth it.

    Philip

--
Philip R. Banks                                                         @@@@@/|
Syntax: mail <banks_p@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz|banksie@khantazi.welly.gen.nz> @@@@/#|
                                                                        @@@/##|
What price the crown of a king on his throne,                           @@/---|
When you're chained in the dark all alone?  ---A.P.P.                   @/    |
From: D.M.Johnson@newcastle.ac.uk (Dave Johnson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: >Arm and 486 and things
Date: 9 Apr 92 13:42:07 GMT
Organization: University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, NE1 7RU

ssurawls@susssys1.reading.ac.uk (Mister E) writes:

>Do computer concepts still make Atari ST programs? They were going to produce
>a package called "Calamus" I think, but there was some kind of legal wrangle
>with the author and so they had to drop it. I think the ideas became
>Impression.

I'm not sure, Calamus was never done by CC its by a german company (very nice
too). Caligrapher (sp) was released by CC a while back but is not any more it
is release by someone else. I haven't seen any CC ads for ST stuff for a while

Dave J.
From: lithgow@uslp.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Clever filesystems (Was Re: help! checkmap fails)
Date: 7 Apr 92 02:01:43 GMT

[In message "Re: <9204061129.AA28250@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>", Richard Black writes:]
>(Re: help! checkmap fails)
>
>Neither Ultrix nor HP/UX perform de-fragmentation.
>You may post this information if you wish, I couldn't be bothered.
>
>I think this person is confused about what fsck is.
>
>Richard.

The fsck program wipes a UNIX FS's bottom after it has dirtied it.

In the interests of speed, UNIX has a buffer cache that stores potential
reads, previous reads, and previous writes. The kernel also stores the
super-block in core. The super-block contains an overall map of the FS,
and is changed continuously. When a file system is mounted, the copy of
the super-block *on disk* has it's 'dirty' flag set. If you attempt to
mount a file system with this flag set, it will fail. So you have to run
fsck (File System ChecK) to make sure the super-block and the actual File
System match. If nothing much was happening when the system went down,
they will match, but it will still take a *long* time to manage this. If
stuff was happening, then all sorts of problems occur, up to complete
loss of you system. (UNIX has a lost+found directory so that fsck can put
files with no directory entries for them (?) in there.)

This is one of the huge faults of UNIX as a desktop machine. Veritas
fixes this. (And about time, too!) (BTW, the RS/6000 version of AIX also
has a file system that fixes this, I'm not sure who else does.)

I presume the R??? from Acorn suffers this problem?

- Malcolm.

lithgow@usl.com
These are my opinions. All true, of course. (In my head.)
UNIX is a registered trademark of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
From: kortink@cs.utwente.nl (John Kortink)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: ChangeFSI & Translator
Date: 13 Apr 92 22:51:42 GMT
Organization: University of Twente, Dept. of Computer Science

osmith@acorn.co.uk (Owen Smith) writes :

>In article <1992Apr10.061058.18236@cs.aukuni.ac.nz> epoo1@cs.aukuni.ac.nz
>(Edouard Malachi     Poor           ) writes:
>
>>But there is one other person who has written high quality dithering
>>engines for the Arc... The ever talented John Kortink!
>>
>>Seriously John, do you think it would be a useful addition? Would it
>>be hard to do? My guess is not, but then again I don't know whats
>>involved...
>
>Well yes such a SWI might be useful, BUT it needs to be carefully thought
>about and designed. Also, I've been using ChangeFSI quite a bit recently and
>have seen !Translator handling some of the same images, and I must say that
>although !Translator is a lot faster, ChangeFSI nearly always produces
>considerably superior output.

Not a very surprising statement, from an Acorn employee. ;-)

Anyway, my (and other's) opinion is that ChangeFSI, in comparison with
Translator's sprite output, 'dims' the picture a little, so the dithering is
obviously less apparent, making it seem to look better (smoother actually).

Believe me, I have talked with co-knowledgable student friends more than
once and we can't find a significantly better colour scheme than the
one that is used. I know the ones Roger uses. Theres's just no more to get
out of the Arc's 4-bit & restricted palette. It's all a matter of taste what
looks better and what doesn't, because the dithering, because of the quite
severe colour limitations, is very upfront in an Arc sprite.

To make a really formal comparison, output from both should be compared
by the total amount of colour error that is made over a whole picture,
then express the difference in a percentage of the totals.

Even then, a formally 'better' picture could look worse and vice versa.
It's because there never is only one 'best' algorithm in this field, and,
sadly, there is currently no way to formalize 'quality' and consequently
be able to pick the best algorithm for a particular picture. The best
would probably be to give a choice between subtle variants of a base
algorithm that works well.

If you want to, ask yourself why. We are stuck with colour limitations
anyway, which, whatever you do, will always severely degrade a picture.

What's the use in sprinkling a bit of lemon juice over a pile of shit ?


John Kortink

Student of Informatics at the University of Twente, The Netherlands
NETMAIL : kortink@cs.utwente.nl          DISCLAIMER : you know ....
From: banksie@khantazi.welly.gen.nz (Philip R. Banks)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: A5000 disk format recognising
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 19:55:03 +1200
Reply-To: banks_p@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz
Organization: My Arc.

s047@SAND.SICS.BU.OZ.AU (Jeremy Lee) writes:

>       The Amiga is impossible to read on the Arc because the drive
> (I believe) uses some special hardware tricks (like the rest of the
> machine) that are difficult to achieve in software. I think it's
> something like a switch that tells when the disk has rotated to a
> certain position, but don't quote me of that. (Anyone know?)

   I was looking into this at one point. My understanding of the Amiga file
format is that is stores data on a track by track basis. The only gap on
the disc per track is the gap between the end of track and start of track
markers. All of the data is slurped into memory where a magic cookie
sequence is looked for to signal the start of track data.

   Once the cookie has been located the blitter is then used to shuffle the
data into a contiguous track block. Then the data is de-encoded to give
sector by sector blocks with the Amiga sector format to be yet decoded and
used. Again I beleive this decoding is handled by the Blitter (it being a
simple EOR'ing operation if I remember rightly) Thus the Amiga not only has
to load entire tracks of data at a go but it has to make at least two passes
at the data to decode it sufficeintly to be useable to it.

   Because no sector by sector gaps exist they squeeze an extra .5k per
track out of the disc to give 880k storage (not including format data
requirements for catalogues and the like.). Naturally this has to be
reversed if you wish to write *any* data back. God help you if the OS isn't
doing any caching of byte by byte operations.... And you wonder why the
Amiga floppy is so slow....

   The further detail to add is that the Amiga seems to be getting very
little interpretation of the data fed from the disc by the FDC. The Arc on
the other hand does seem to be. When I was doing some tests into the
feasability of reading Amiga format discs on the Arc I could not *ever* find
the magic cookie sequence needed to being decoding the data. I presume this
is because the FDC in the Arc is assuming you want certain things done when
reading in track by track data...

   However with the HD FDC on the 5000 amiga format reading should be
possible. I know of a PC program for high density PC drives that does r/w
Amiga format discs. Precisely how they are forcing the drive into it I don't
know and don't want to know right now... Mac HD format is *definitely*
possible as it uses fixed speed IBM style sectors, I believe, so the hard
part is going to be making sense of their screwy catalogue and disc map
system....

    Philip

--
Philip R. Banks                                                         @@@@@/|
Syntax: mail <banks_p@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz|banksie@khantazi.welly.gen.nz> @@@@/#|
                                                                        @@@/##|
What price the crown of a king on his throne,                           @@/---|
When you're chained in the dark all alone?  ---A.P.P.                   @/    |
From: lorcan@cix.compulink.co.uk (Lorcan Mongey)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Personal Computer World
Date: 13 Apr 92 02:03:10 GMT
Reply-To: Lorcan Mongey <lorcan@cix.compulink.co.uk>
Organization: Gated to News by demon.co.uk

In article <1992Apr6.124814.11711@unix.brighton.ac.uk>
rjb12@unix.brighton.ac.uk (Browning;f110or89;[05306) writes:
 
>So I would like to compile a document, containing appropriate comments
>from you, members of the Acorn community, and send it to PCW.
 
I suspect you're wasting your time. I've been defending Acorn in the PCW
conference on CIX for about a year, and all to no avail. The current
staff writers are dead set against it and really don't want to know. The
recent A5000 short review appeared only grudgingly and late after a
great deal of pressure from readers on CIX, many of whom were not even
Arc supporters, but just wanted to keep abreast of what was going on out
there. The article contained several serious factual errors, all of
which I promptly pointed out, but despite repeated reminders from me
they have not printed the corrections.
 
Recently they published an anti-Acorn letter which used Logistix as an
example of a typical Arc program (can you believe this?) but when I
offered a response which pointed out how unfair this was it was not
published. The way I see it, it's a lost cause. The pro-Acorn exiles
from PCW (Dick Pountain and, to some extent, Andy Redfern) now write for
the UK section of Byte magazine and have given the Arc some good
coverage there, so I have let my PCW sub lapse (reluctantly, after 10
years, during most of which time it met my needs) and will probably read
Byte more and more now.
 
Lorcan
From: aralph@cix.compulink.co.uk (Alan Ralph)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: 8 bit stuff...
Date: 9 Apr 92 19:35:35 GMT
Reply-To: Alan Ralph <aralph@cix.compulink.co.uk>
Organization: Gated to News by demon.co.uk

Dave Sainty sez:
>Hmm, I've now got my Hard drive cache working on my model B, does this
>make me the first 8 bit user in th world to have a cached drive?
>
>(20 sectors, cacheing directories and other system sectors)
>
>This project is coming along pretty well. Anyone interested in an
>alternative to ADFS for a hard drive? Most useful on a model B, as it puts
>te workspace in sideways ram rather than using main memory.

Yes, please do. As it happens, I've had a Morley Hard Drive (20MB) for
about 2 years now, next to my Master. That, and a Turbo board, are
currently the main reasons why I haven't moved up yet (after the financial
side, that is).

>It's now about 3 months since I FINALLY got my comms program for the 8 bit
>machines ready for distibution.

>For those that remember this project, Zmodem never eventuated, nor Kermit,
>for which there was less interest.

Shame about Zmodem... now THAT would be very nice indeed!

>The rest was done... Ymodem, scrollback, directory, ansi etc etc etc...

I've got some news for you... you have a competitor! Yep, Gareth Babb at
the World of Cryton BBS has written not one but *4* terminal proggies, all
supporting file transfers up to Ymodem-g, 3 of them also doing ANSI
emulation, 1 even with four colours!! At the moment, a new update is in
the works, with the promise of even more goodies.

The actual terminal is pretty minimal, but it does the job. I use it for
grabbing Usenet stuff so I can read it later. At the moment, it's only
available from a few BBSs in the UK, but I might be persuaded to post it
to the binaries group....

>Unfortunately, the moderators of the binaries group are ignoring all
>messages on this subject. Is there still any interest in this program?
>It's over a year since my last post on it I realise... How about a show of
>hands.

Yep. Count me in!

>And some mail from one of teh moderators would be nice too!

Yeah, come on chaps! Both the sources and binaries groups have been deadly
quiet for ages...

>While I'm about it, I've also written an UnZip program. It handles implode
>only, and I don't intend doing any more work on this or the Zipper until
>my hard drive is running. Any interest in that program?

YES! I'd love to be able to get at those pesky ZIPed archives! PLEASE
finish it and pass it around!

Alan.
From: dahe@cl.cam.ac.uk (David Elworthy)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: The draw format and Acorn
Date: 6 Apr 92 08:25:55 GMT
Reply-To: dahe@cl.cam.ac.uk (David Elworthy)
Distribution: comp
Organization: U of Cambridge Computer Lab, UK

In article <1992Apr3.122642.18790@doc.ic.ac.uk>, ijp@doc.ic.ac.uk (Ian
Palmer) writes:

> Now my question comes in two parts :
> 
> - Is it the draw application (as supplied with RO2) that could not
> cope with rotated text or was it both the program and the 'draw
> format' (ie. the file format of draw files). Ie. had the rotated text
> been provided for at the time of the origional draw application, but
> not implimented - or is it completely new ? The relevance of this is
> do other programs that were written pre RO3 cope with the features in
> the RO3 draw application.

It was (at the root of it) the font manager, which couldn't do rotated text.
As I recall, Draw, in its RO2 version, didn't have any provision for
rotated text
because there was no point at the time.

> - Now I guess that the draw file format is a format
> that has the ability to be added to in the future to include more
> object types, etc. This is where my real question lies. What happens
> if you create a picture using RO3 draw, using rotated text, etc. and
> then load that picture into the RO2 draw application ? As a second
> part to this, have Acorn defined some standard as to what happens when
> a program encounters a draw file that contains a 'new' feature that
> the program has no knowlege about.

I'm not sure what happens with different properties of an object type that
already existed. The programming standards say that if you find an object type
that you don't understand, then you should ignore it.

> Of course if I had some manuals I probably wouldn't need to ask these
> questions :-(

It's in the RO2 PRMs. Surely you can find someone who has a copy if you won't
buy your own.

>                             E-mail : ijp@doc.ic.ac.uk
>  ___           __       Snail mail : Department of Computing, Huxley
Building,
>   /  _   _    /_/ _   / _ _   _  _   Imperial College, 180 Queens Gate,
> _/_ (_|_| )  /   (_|_(_| ) )_|/_)    London. SW7 2BZ. England.


-- david elworthy
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Christchurch BBS. 
From: rsteele@sky.canterbury.ac.nz (Robbie Steele)
Date: 13 Apr 92 21:01:45 +1200
Distribution: world
Organization: University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand
Keywords: CHCH, NZ, BBS, ACORN

For all you Acorn computer owners:

  Enterprise IV:The Next Generation BBS has come into obit around Christchurch New Zealand.  It supports the World Famous Acorn computers Range as well as other smaller computers (ie IBM).

   If you have a modem (or a friend has one) and can afford the phone bill, then call the BBS today.... We are always looking for new users.... (Mention you saw this on UseNet and you get instant validation! - if we're there)

   Data Line: in new zealand : (03) 355 2116
	 outside new zealand : dial international codes for NZ and then the above number.

   Voice Line: is just the same but has "8967" at the end, not "2116"....

-- 
>> Robbie <<     CoSysop of Enterprise IV:The Next Generation...(nz) 03 355 2116
----E-Mail line-------- rsteele@sky.canterbury.ac.nz ---------------------------
From: lithgow@uslp.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Yet more grumbles about Acorn (Was Re: The draw format and Acorn)
Date: 9 Apr 92 05:47:18 GMT

[In message "Re: Yet more grumbles about Acorn (Was Re: The draw format and Acorn)", Ian Palmer writes:]
>O.K. lets assume a company bring out a package, say a desktop
>publishing package (for sake of argument) and they sell it openly for
>one computer. Someone opens their new package and finds that there are
>no instructions. They write to the company asking for the instructions
>and the company state that they are busilly porting the software for
>other computers, and fixing bugs in the package, and will only release
>the instruction when all that is completed (even though there will be
>absolutly no change to the functionallity of the package). 
>
>With the case of RO3 there isn't even a real case of porting it for
>other computers, as I would assume that it was created to work on all
>Arcs, not just the A5000. Fixing bugs makes no difference to what
>calls the user should make to get 'such and such' to happen.

What, didn't you get any *user* manuals with your A5000? No? Well, then
your analogy is valid, otherwise it isn't. After all, we're talking about
*programmers reference* manuals here. How many DTP packages come with
them?

IBM didn't even release *any* programmers reference for the old IBM PC XT
bios, they just released a listing of the source (in assembly language)!
Those were the bad old days.

Apple didn't release Inside Macintosh volume 1 for yonks, as far as I
know. Commodore didn't release the Amiga's programmer's references for
years, I believe. Etc, etc.

So go ahead, whinge (it is a deplorable state of affairs, after all). But
whatever you do, DO NOT IMPLY THAT ACORN IS SUBSTANTIALLY WORSE IN THIS
REGARD THAN OTHER MANUFACTURERS! (Sorry, the caps lock key got stuck.
;->)

>So why do you consider that they would be special runs. What is going
>to change, are Acorn going to suddenly change all the SWI names?
>Change that *FX162 no longer writes to cmos RAM but instead formats
>your hard disc. 

It only takes one addition, subtraction, or minor change to make manuals
invalid. The RO2 manuals were already out of date by the time they were
released. If the RO3 manuals were released now, they would be even more
so. Why are you criticising Acorn for attempting to maximize the validity
of their manuals, and their value to you?

- Malcolm.
lithgow@usl.com
These are my opinions.
From: nizar@concour.cs.concordia.ca (SABRA nizar.)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: SVGA Monitors on Arc?
Date: 13 Apr 92 04:10:26 GMT
Organization: Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec

Hello,

	I was wondering if it is possible to attach a SVGA or VGA monitor to
the Arc? I can get the adapter to change the 15pin VGA plug to the Arc's 9pin.
Would the syncs be the same? I heard that it is possible to use VGA monitors
with it, but you are limited to 640x480... if I get a SVGA, would it be
possible to handle the higher res modes?

	Thanx.

Nizar.
From: osmith@acorn.co.uk (Owen Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Scandal: Acorn betrays customers! (:-)
Date: 6 Apr 92 13:24:46 GMT
Distribution: comp
Organization: Acorn Computers Ltd, Cambridge, England

In article <17gHQ9j010n@arc.terminal.nicedel> kai@nicedel.north.de
(Kai Schlichting) writes:

>do you know that Acorn betrays you of a good feature on your machine
>just in order to save a small cable of about 7cm of length with a worth
>of approximate 0.1 British Pence (= 0.001 British Pounds) ?
>Greedily, A3000 owners look to the old A310's and see that those machines
>recognise a diskchange automatically,when the machine wants a specific,
>already known,named disk (to save/load/whatever from/to it).
>All what Acorn lacks,is the previously described cable ,which must
>connect the diskdrive's pin 2 with the main PCB,and that's all
>with most of the drives.

This was done for a reason, and it wasn't to save money. Check before you
flame please! Indeed I've already said all this once before about four
months ago. The only reason I'm bothering to say it all again is to smother
yet another silly anti Acorn flame war.

The A400/1, A540 and A3000 have different drives to the older machines. The
older drives assert "disc changed" without doing anything mechanical, you
just have to twiddle another line called "reset disc changed". So it can be
polled quite quickly and indeed that's what ADFS does - ten times a second.
On the newer drives, "reset disc changed" doesn't work. ADFS spots this and
realises that instead it needs to step the head. However it still does it
quickly, ten times a second, so it sounds absolutely dreadful and frightens
the life out of naive users as the head rams agains the end stop ten times a
second. This was discovered after RISC OS 2 was in ROM, so a work around was
sort and found - not include the disc changed line in the cable. ADFS
notices that "disc changed" doesn't work at all and so gives up on the idea.

RISC OS 3 polls the drives slowly (once a second) if it needs to step the
head to get "disc changed" to work - watch the disc light on an A5000 blink
once a second when it is looking for a disc. This feature will also work
with A400/1, A540 and A3000 machines if you change the cable when you
install RISC OS 3.

Next time why don't you ask WHY before you rev up the flame thrower?

Owen.

The views expressed are my own and are not necessarily those of Acorn.
From: d1dd@dtek.chalmers.se (Daniel Deimert)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: What is Archimedes 5000+  ???
Date: 6 Apr 92 13:11:34 GMT
Organization: Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg Sweden

Earlier today, I read a posting in a national newsgroup about a demonstration
of new machines. As an example they mentioned the "Archimedes 5000+".
Yes, a PLUS.

What is the difference between 5000+ and 5000?

Daniel


--
Daniel Deimert			Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden
d1dd@dtek.chalmers.se