HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: eeklund@nyx.cs.du.edu (Eivind Eklund)
Subject: Re: New hardware reference guide?
X-Disclaimer: Nyx is a public access Unix system run by the University
	of Denver for the Denver community.  The University has neither
	control over nor responsibility for the opinions of users.
Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix at U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 92 15:29:55 GMT

In article <1992Nov9.202005.13562@sth.frontec.se> bjst@sth.frontec.se (Bjorn Stenberg) writes:
>eeklund@nyx.cs.du.edu (Eivind Eklund) writes:
>> The problem is that I want my code to run on older machines too. SO - I
>> need some doc on how to find out wether the machine is running the older
>> chipset etc...
>
>You don't really mean you want hard core hardware specs just to CHECK for
>the hardware, do you?
>There are (OS) routines for checking things like that. Please surprise me
>with a reason why these routines wouldn't be good enough.

Because we are not told about them. I want info about them NOW - not at
some indeterminate time in the future - ie when CBM release the new
RKMs...   This is something we NEED to be compatible, come on CBM, don't
make all my programs crash until your docs are released (I can't afford to
register as a developer - $400 is too much for my wallet at the moment)

Eivind Eklund AKA Vishnu CRB
eeklund@nyx.cs.du.edu or phone +47-(0)-9-944946 (BBS, shout to get ME)
From: rfentima@ub.d.umn.edu (Robert Fentiman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
Subject: AMOS
Date: 15 Nov 1992 16:30:52 -0600
Organization: University of Minnesota, Duluth
NNTP-Posting-Host: ub.d.umn.edu

For those who have been following the AMOS discussion, it has been
bought to attention that this subject belongs here (rather than on a
bunch of other message bases).  Anyway, I recieved this mail concerning
AMOS, and the sender, not having posting privaleges on Internet news,
asked if it could be posted.

---------------------------- Begin incuded message -------------------------

Hi guys, sorry to have to e-mail you all, but my news access is read-only and I
wanted to shove my $0.02 worth into this great AMOS debate.

As far as I see it, the arguments for and against AMOS are:

   1.  AMOS *is* fast and easy to learn.  It's possible to throw bobs around
       and suchlike with a few commands and without delving into the RKM's
       and learning complicated system structures.
   2.  AMOS does things in a *different* way to the standard Kickstart 
       libraries approach.  It's still legal - it asks for all of its resources
       at the start and gives them back when it's finnished.

Point 1 is what makes it a good language - especially for people who are new
to programming or have moved up from, say a C64 and want to treat the Amiga as
the same kind of machine, only with bells and whistles.
Point 2 causes the problems, but to me that's not the be-all and end-all of it.
A lot of people don't really care if their game/database/whatever runs on a WB
screen or not, just as long as it's easy to use and gives the kind of results
they want.  On a standard 1 Meg, 2 drive setup, multi-tasking is next to 
impossible anyway, so what does it matter ? (Yes, 1Meg,2 drive A500's are still
the majority machine.)  But it *does* multi-task cleanly, even if you do have touse a different key to swap screens (ooh, tricky stuff!)
Yes, for anything which *needs* to interface with WB smoothly, ie a CLI utility,screen grabber, etc AMOS is not a suitable language. I'd use C for something
like that, in the same way I'd use assembler to write a demo and an AREXX
script for and multi-program control program. (And yes, I *do* have some,
admittedly varying, experience in all of these.)
So in summary, AMOS isn't the perfect language, any more than any other is.  It
is good for some things though, especially for beginners, which is what I
believe this debate was all about.
Thanks for your time, I just wanted to get all that off my chest.  If one of
you would like to post this to the net, feel free, and I hope it's cleared up
some of this debating.
TTFN
Tim.

--
"So Calvin, what if someone decides to invade America?"         Belgarion
"Simple, Hobbes will eat them. It's what tigers do."          

Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
From: hadig@kaa.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (Thomas Hadig)
Subject: Problems with SAS/C 6.0 library
Keywords: SAS/C 6.0
Organization: Rechnerbetrieb Informatik  /  RWTH Aachen
Date: 16 Nov 92 11:12:33 GMT

Hi,
I found a bug in the SAS-C Amiga 6.0 library : function stat

stat xors the lower nibble, so if you have read permission, 
st_mode&S_IREAD will be zero. The bit is set, when you have 
no read permission. Same same thing happens with :
  S_IREAD  S_IWRITE   S_IEXECUTE   S_IDELETE
The other bit work correct :
  S_ISCRIPT   S_IARCHIVE(?) S_IPURE

I hope you will fix this bug in a patch,
Thomas Hadig

(has been reported to EMITS)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thomas Hadig, Otto-Petersen-Haus Zi.1009, Ruetscher Str.155, D-51 Aachen
       hadig@rog.rwth-aachen.de
       hadig@pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: u0g78@teach.cs.keele.ac.uk (MN Steed)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
Subject: Re: found g++ in gcc, but can`t seem to co
Date: 17 Nov 92 17:59:49 GMT
Organization: Keele University, England
Originator: u0g78@teach.cs.keele.ac.uk

From article <1992Nov17.093739.9098@eua.ericsson.se>, by etxpihl@eua.ericsson.se (Tomas Pihl):
> In <1992Nov17.070253.1820@sol.cs.wmich.edu> 22black@sol.cs.wmich.edu (Martin Black) writes:
> 
>>> How can a simple C++-program that just do a cout << "Hellp world" end up as a 
>>>54kb binary file?
>>[laugh]  if you think that is big [laugh] try running it on sunOs.  I get a
>>hello world to be at 250k.  In fact as soon as I include the iostream.h and
> Holy smoke! I just tried it on Sun's `CC' with Cfront 2.1 and the file is
> about 24kb.

Getting slightly off of the point about amiga's perhaps.....

Anyway, I'd guess the 24kb sun executable is on a SunOS 4.1 machine? Where
the sun's use run time binding, rather than link time....

Here, using cc on a Sun SparcII, many programs compile to be 16kb, or 24kb,
but soon as you start using gcc on the Sparcs, the program size jumps upto
150-240Kb.

Still, I'd like to know why g++ on the Amiga (presumably gcc 2.2.2) ends up
with a 54kb binary, as it uses the ixemul.library for most of it's functions
(doesn't it??) If not, does anyone know what ixemul.library actually does? 
Unix emulation??
-- 
Martin N. Steed	

JANET:    u0g78@uk.ac.keele.cs.teach.bilbo
InterNet: u0g78@bilbo.teach.cs.keele.ac.uk
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
Subject: MatchFirst/MatchNext questions...
From: david@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (David Eaves)
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 02:05:28 GMT
Organization: Computer Science Department, University of Canterbury
Keywords: MatchFirst MatchNext


Hi,

  I have been writing a few utilities for AmigaDOS 2.0, and am
having a bit of trouble with the pattern matching routines MatchFirst
and MatchNext.  I seem to get some quite wierd stuff back from them at
times (garbage file names etc).  I'm a bit stumped by this, and wondered
if it may be due to my program moving/creating/deleting files within
pattern matching.  What I wish to know is are all file operations legal
during pattern matching (ie can I create a new file as a result of each
MatchNext call, for example).  Thanks in advance for any help,

						Dave

=========================================================================
== David Eaves, Computer Science Department, University of Canterbury, ==
=========== New Zealand.  EMail: david@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz ============
=========================================================================
Xref: sparky comp.sys.amiga.programmer:16050 comp.sys.amiga.hardware:19918
From: jcmurphy@acsu.buffalo.edu (Jeff Murphy)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer,comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Re: Attn Commodore: You are making a Big Mistake (Hardware
Date: 18 Nov 92 23:39:37 GMT
Organization: UB

In article <37138@cbmvax.commodore.com> spence@cbmvax.commodore.com (Spencer Shanson) writes:
>In article <Bxvrpv.31E@acsu.buffalo.edu> jcmurphy@acsu.buffalo.edu (Jeff Murphy) writes:
>I am no UNIX expert, but is there a reason why the display side of a UNIX port
>could not sit on top of the graphics.library? After all, to bring up a UNIX
>screen would involve duplicating the work that has already gone into the A4000
>kickstart.

	Hmm. At best that would most likely be a kludge, since the graphics
library would have no way of knowing that it was working in a multi-user
environment and would therefore not know how to behave. Also: is the
graphics.library stand-alone... or does it depend upon other OS code  that
might not be as easily ported?



-- 
jcmurphy@acsu.buffalo.edu                 cit network installation and repair
opnsmurf@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu             standard disclaimers apply.  sunyab
Xref: sparky comp.sys.amiga.programmer:16277 comp.sys.amiga.hardware:20189
From: podesta@qut.edu.au
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer,comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Re: Attn Commodore: You are making a Big Mistake (Hardware
Date: 24 Nov 92 13:14:20 EST
Organization: Queensland University of Technology

In article <70081@cup.portal.com>, joeles@cup.portal.com (Joel Edward Swan) writes:
>>I think you missed my point earlier that a lot of people buy machines
>>because of the demos. This is something that is very unique for the Amiga.
> 
> All I can say to this is BULL.  I've been with the Amiga since 1985.  I know
> 0 (that's zero) people who dished out between $500US and $3000Us to buy an
> Amiga for some demos.  I DO know of dozens who have bought Amigas because
> they run software that either makes money for them or can entertain for more
> than 5 minutes.
> 
BULL.

I know dozens of people here in Australia who bought the Amiga specifically
for the games AND DEMO scene. I know only one or two that have Amigas (a3000)
who bought it mainly for other purposes - mainly graphics and ray-tracing.
Even these people would be very unhappy if the games/demo scene died off.

James.

Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
From: jazz@netcom.com (David C. Navas)
Subject: Re: Subtasks, IEEE library pointers - y.a.Q
Keywords: Libraries
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 1992 02:46:48 GMT

In article <1992Nov23.174625.22275@oracle.us.oracle.com> dnavas@oracle.uucp (David Navas) writes:
>	If you have lots of local libraries what's the difference between
>	searching a local and searching a global list?
>		O(logn) if you're smart and start using a decent search
>		structure (like an AVL tree, or even better, a
>		radix sorted/searched array of some kind).

Geez ORACLE has a bunch of idiots working for them :)
While the math isn't really right, I hope the meaning is clear....

BTW -- I already owe Dale a zombie, wonder if he'll want a large volume of my
flesh to go along with that now ;)

-- 
David Navas                                   	jazz@netcom.com
Co-author of: Web Data Acq. and Anal.		dnavas@oracle.com
Upcoming products: Shadow V (shipped!), Jazzbench 2.0.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
From: etxpihl@eua.ericsson.se (Tomas Pihl)
Subject: Re: found g++ in gcc, but can`t seem to co
Reply-To: etxpihl@eua.ericsson.se
Organization: Ellemtel Telecom Systems Labs, Stockholm, Sweden
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 07:00:23 GMT

In article 254@bernina.ethz.ch, wild@nessie.cs.id.ethz.ch (Markus Wild) writes:
> In article <1992Nov13.235545.9456@news.cs.indiana.edu> "Stefan Berg" <sgberg@peach.ucs.indiana.edu> writes:
> >The program I tried to compile just compiled fine on a Sun using g++.
> >It is a fairly simple program. I`m running gcc2.2.2 (fix1-fix3) on my
> >Amiga.
> >
> >The error messages I get are all of the form:
> >
> >"test.o: Undefined symbol XXX referenced from test segment"
> >
> >Where XXX is _cerr, ___ls__FR7ostreamPCc, and many others.
> 
> If using gcc, you have to explicitly specify to link with -lg++. When using
> g++, the driver takes care of specifying -lg++, so you don't have to specify
> it explicitly.

I had the same problem. I've tried to specify -lg++, but it didn't work. I turned
on verbose mode (-v) and saw that -lg++ now suddenly was -lg ?!. So, I renamed
libg++.a to libg.a and everything work just fine.  Don't ask me how g++ could end
up as just g...

One more question when I'm on the air:

 How can a simple C++-program that just do a cout << "Hellp world" end up as a 
54kb binary file?
 
________________________________________
/ Tomas Pihl
/ ELLEMTEL Telecom Systems Lab, Sweden
/ email:   etxpihl@eua.ericsson.se
From: heinz@edohwg.adsp.sub.org (Heinz Wrobel)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
Subject: Re: A Style Guide Question
Date: 17 Nov 92 19:29:56 GMT
Organization: Edotronik GmbH

In article <17474@pitt.UUCP> dan@cs.pitt.edu (Dan Drake) writes:
>2.) Use (ALT|CTRL|right amiga) key to activate the buttons in all cases.
>Alt doesn't work because European languages use it.  Control is awkward
>for left handed people to use like me. (I like to keep one hand on the
>mouse, and one on the keyboard), Right Amiga is somewhat awkward too.

Use RAMIGA. The easiest way is to add menu shortcuts, but you could check
for RAMIGA with any other keypress, too. That's at least a lot more
consistent for hot keys than messing with CTRL or ALT which messes up
certain keymaps.

>dan.
>
>taz!dan@vax.cs.pitt.edu
>dan@speedy.pitt.edu

--
Heinz Wrobel, Edotronik GmbH (ECG018)
FAX +49 89 850 51 25 / TEL +49 89 850 25 20 (HOME!&VOICE, sometimes...)
"It's good to have a mouse, it's faster if you can do without one..."
"He who doesn't develop with an A2024 doesn't know about font independent
 user interfaces..."
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
Subject: Serial port RI (Ring Indicator) signal
From: jbickers@templar.actrix.gen.nz (John Bickers)
Date: 20 Nov 92 14:42:14 PST
Organization: TAP

    If the TXD line of an RS232 cable is connected to the RI pin on
    the serial port, will the hardware change state (1/0) quick enough
    to keep up with a baud rate of 57000?
--
*** John Bickers, TAP.                   jbickers@templar.actrix.gen.nz ***
***    "Radioactivity - It's in the air, for you and me" - Kraftwerk    ***
From: chrisg@cbmvax.commodore.com (Chris Green)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
Subject: Re: New hardware reference guide?
Date: 17 Nov 92 12:38:34 GMT
Reply-To: chrisg@cbmvax.commodore.com (Chris Green)
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA

In article <1992Nov16.134153.6356@ifi.uio.no> olavka@ifi.uio.no (Olav Lur}s Kalgraf) writes:
>Actually I used the 2.0 includes, and used calls to old graphics lib
>fillpoly functions. BUT if 3.0 was coded in a sencible way, these functions would
>be optimized, and recoded to use the AGA chipset, NO? Anyway all I
>did was making a 1 BITPLANE rotating polygon and timing it with the raster

	So your problem was rendering speed. Use OwnBlitter and bang the blitter
yourself (or simply use the CPU to render your polygon. 32 bit chip ram
on 1200's and 4000's will help here). Problem solved. Open an NTSC/PAL
intuition screen, use ChangeVPBitMap/ChangeScreenBuffer for double buffering.
Be sure to pay careful attention to BitMap->BytesPerRow because the alignment
restrictions may change in future chipsets.
	This technique is FAR more likely to work on future machines than 
taking over the whole machine at the hardware level. And, your screen
will be depth arrangable and draggable.
	So, you don't need the AGA hardware docs to do filled polygon
demos, right?

-- 
*-------------------------------------------*---------------------------*
|Chris Green - Graphics Software Engineer   - chrisg@commodore.COM      f
|                  Commodore-Amiga          - uunet!cbmvax!chrisg       n
|My opinions are my own, and do not         - icantforgettheimpression  o
|necessarily represent those of my employer.- youmadeyouleftaholeinthe  r
|"A screaming comes across the sky..."      - backofmyhead              d
*-------------------------------------------*---------------------------*
From: heinz@edohwg.adsp.sub.org (Heinz Wrobel)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
Subject: Re:  A couple of questions
Date: 19 Nov 92 19:32:27 GMT
Organization: Edotronik GmbH

In article <1992Nov16.222301.21722@jato.jpl.nasa.gov> jdickson@jato.jpl.nasa.gov (Jeff Dickson) writes:
>>>>1. Can a packet sent to DOS be aborted? I send an ACTION_READ to a console,
>>>>and need to get rid of it when I exit. I just can't ask the user 'please hit
>>>>a key so I can exit.' And since the exit is based on the termination of
>>>>another process, there is no way to not send the packet when I'm about to,
>>>>'cause I don't know when it is going to exit.

If "exit" means "closing the console" then you're fine with just closing
it. When you close a "CON:" window all pending packets are returned
automatically. This is probably a side effect but is used even in C=
examples.

--
Heinz Wrobel, Edotronik GmbH (ECG018)
FAX +49 89 850 51 25 / TEL +49 89 850 25 20 (HOME!&VOICE, sometimes...)
"It's good to have a mouse, it's faster if you can do without one..."
"He who doesn't develop with an A2024 doesn't know about font independent
 user interfaces..."
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
From: csg019@cch.coventry.ac.uk (-~=Zaphod=~-)
Subject: Re: Attn Commodore: You are making a Big Mistake (Hardware
Organization: Coventry University
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 13:01:33 GMT

In article <paulk.29lk@terapin.com> paulk@terapin.com (Paul Kienitz) writes:
>> I will definately but a FALCON if CBM do this.
> 
>Looks like Atari has found its proper market niche.
> 
>The thing about demo writers is, if you all desert the Amiga, the
>rest of us are no worse off.  In the end, you simply DON'T MATTER.
> 
>Application writers matter.  And the biggest problem in upgrades is
>apps that follow the rules 96% of the time and do just a few weird
>illegal things because they could get away with it at the time.

I think you are completely and utterly wrong there.

In the UK and Europe, games built the amiga, *not* applications. Ask most 
people in Europe why that bought an amiga and i bet most of them say
"For the games." i bought mine for the games and the demo scene.
I think in the USA the amiga might be taken a bit more seriously due to the
fact that the americans tend to own higher spec machines.

The fact is, if you try to write technically taxing games or demos using the 
OS routines to run on a 68000 amiga they will be unplayable. And you *WILL*
be able to write the game to a better standard by hitting the hardware
correctly, and still run it on an A9000 with 100 tetrabytes of RAM. 
-- 
*******************************************************************************
*        ///  A member of S.H.I.T. (Super High Intelligence Team)    ///      *
*       ///        Fight, defeat and kill organized laming.         ///       *
****\\\X//********Steven Haggerty**csg019@uk.ac.cov.cck ok?*****\\\X//*********
From: aj639@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Michael Cox)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
Subject: AMOS PRO EQUATE FILES HELP
Date: 18 Nov 1992 12:03:47 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: aj639@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Michael Cox)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu

I just received AMOS Pro!!!  I was wondering if anyone has tried using 
equate files.  It says they have to be in Devpak format.  What does that
mean?  ASCII??  ASSEMBLED??  OBJ???

Mike
-- 
Okay, look for AmoNER #5 on: ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (128.174.5.59) in /amiga/amoner
nic.funet.fi (128.214.6.100) in /pub/amiga/programming/amos
Je suis venu ici pour macher du chewing-gum et pour botter des fesses.
Et maintenant, je n'ai plus de chewing-gum . . .
From: breese@monet.imada.ou.dk (Bjoern Reese)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
Subject: Re: New hardware reference guide?
Date: 22 Nov 92 15:34:51 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Math. & Computer Science, Odense University, Denmark

In article <1992Nov19.134939.8521@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de>  
mlelstv@specklec.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de (Michael van Elst) writes:
> In <1992Nov16.130752.18379@imada.ou.dk> breese@monet.imada.ou.dk (Bjoern  
Reese) writes:
> >with or without a Guide, they will try. So I say, it is better
> >to release a new Guide, in order to set guidelines and to
> >prevent fatal errors.
> 
> Why ? The only thing a new hardware guide will do is speed up the rate
> of programs that use the hardware directly in a way that seems to work.

Yes, but if C= doesn't release a new hardware guide, someone out there
will release some kind of docs based on their experiences (including
their errors.) This will speed up the banging rate too. So IMHO C= has
the choice of controlling the madness or let anarchy rule.

--

Bjoern Reese                   |     Email: breese@imada.ou.dk
Odense University, Denmark     |     Voice: +45 65 932 182 (private)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
From: dnehring@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de (Dirk Nehring)
Subject: SAS/C 'se' Problems
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 19:10:23 GMT
Organization: Universitaet Bielefeld, Technische Fakultaet.

I have the problem that I can't evoke the compiler in 'se' with F4
(Build runs correctly with the editor). Have I anything forget to install?
i.e. some env-variables or a assign. On the screen there only flashes
the window 'Compiling..' for a moment and disappears than rapidly.
I have a A4000 with the Commodore Shell.

cu Dirk


-- 
************************************************************************
* Name:      Dirk Nehring  Universitaet Bielefeld       /// Only Amiga *
* EMail:     dnehring@TechFak.Uni-Bielefeld.de      \\\///   makes it  *
* Phone:     (+49 5232) 89130                        \XX/   possible ! *
* SnailMail: Hoerster Bruch 57, D-4937 Lage-Hoerste                    *
************************************************************************
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer