HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Fast modems on the Arc.
From: epoo1@cs.aukuni.ac.nz (Edouard Malachi     Poor           )
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1992 00:12:46 GMT
Organization: Computer Science Dept. University of Auckland

In <1ADDDlj010n@st-andrews.ac.uk> gta@st-andrews.ac.uk (Graham Allan) writes:

>kai@nicedel.north.de (Kai Schlichting) writes:

>> It is notably unstable,when you download (within the desktop) and start doing
>> something else...ZMODEM errors like hell, the best thing is: put the machine
>> into a fast mode (0;12 *argh*) and do NOTHING but watching the download
>> happen.It seems ,that interrupt latency is that high,that it can't do a proper
>> Wimp_Redraw for some tasks (like !Edit *argh*) without loosing a bit/byte on
>> the serial port.

>Do you have the standard 'fix' modules like IRQutils loaded? (from the RISC
>OS extras disc). The readme file for it says:

>  Since the development of RISC OS, a new module IRQUtils has been produced
>  which improves the IRQ latency of RISC OS 2.00 under some circumstances. 
>  This can make it easier to use certain devices (such as the serial line) in
>  the desktop environment. It can also improve operation outside the desktop,
>  especially when the device is being used in background.

>So, if you're not using it at the moment, loading it may solve your problem.

I can certainly testify to that... When I had a vanilla 2400 modem I never had
any problems, but when I got a 2400 v42bis ZOOM I found that when locked at
9600 I would get errors at disturbing regularity... I think I mentioned it
to David Pilling (as I was useing TaskANSI+) but soon found out that I could
fix it by loading IRQUtils... Think I mentioned to DP that it should be loaded
in the !Run file...

But that should solve the problems up to 9600 at least. I'm about to get a
V32bis ZOOM (ie I have top lock it at 19k baud...) and I _hope_ that it
works at that speed too (othwise there will be a lot of BBS users who will\
get rather upset! :-)

I do find it a bit galling that a Mac Plus (that has to really push to crack
the 800 dhrystone mark) can handle 57k baud without blinking... I mean
you have to do something particulary stupid to make a 6000 dhrystone machine
with its own IO processor that _cant_ handle 9600 (on its first realese anyway...)

Edouard.
From: marlow@sys.uea.ac.uk (K. Marlow PG)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: >>>New !Creator
Date: 6 Apr 92 11:07:03 GMT
Organization: UEA, Norwich, UK

banksie@khantazi.welly.gen.nz (Philip R. Banks) writes:

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

>> He does make it fairly obvious that it is shareware, but only if you RTFM if I
>> remember correctly. I have been told that future machines, perhaps even the
>> A5000, will include a unique identity number, so he could ask registered users
>> to send the number and then the program could be limited if the number is not
>> the same as that in the code. That`s if the 5000 does have the UIN, but I
>> think it's unlikely as they would have to program an eprom for every machine
>> or something like that...

>   No way! If I have paid for software I want to be able to use it an *any*
>machine. What happens if my machine has to be replaced? Then what?
>Re-purchase the software? No thanks. Ask to get it fixed? Why should I? It
>should just go... No using the UIN is *not* a wise idea.

  Perhaps what he should do is write to a special file the UIN with details
saying when the s/w for first and last run on that machine.. then when
the UIN changes it creates a new entry and continues updating that.  That
way you would be able to move the s/w around at will, it would be possible
to see from the file if you have been using it on two machines at the same
time.. which requires you to have two copies..

  Probably quite easy to hack, but it would still need to be hacked, so it
would be efeective for the majority of users.

   Keith

>    Philip
-- 
 Keith Marlow,               *  Cyclone BBS (0603) 260973
 Information Systems P/G,    *   24 hours - Arc/Beeb/PC
 University of East Anglia,  *     - using Archiboard.   
 Norwich. Norfolk NR4 7TJ    *  - soon to be on Fidonet
From: anita@sci.kun.nl (Anita van Nieuwenborg)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Floppie-drive
Date: 8 Apr 92 13:16:08 GMT
Organization: University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands


Hi!

The disk-drive of my A310 broke down, so I have to buy a new one.
Some time ago I was told that a normal pc drive (720K) would work.
But I have some troubles finding one. I can however buy a 1.2Mb drive
(high-density-drive) for a fair price.
Does anyone know if such a drive will work?

---Anita

PS: sorry if this is a repost, but I had some troubles sending it the 
    first time, and I wasn't sure if it arrived
From: shunger@waikato.ac.nz
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: re: MIDI and things
Date: 16 Apr 92 11:06:58 +1200
Organization: University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

Ok you MIDI buffs out there (I think there are some) is it possible to have
The Serial Port's MIDI card and the Acorn one going at the same time?

Things like 24+ and !inspiration (the demo anyway) rmreinit MIDI (from memory)
This can be overcome but I think it would be a great idea if a MIDI module
could be written to use the Podule MIDI and the Econet Port MIDI at the same
time (say calling them Port A and C or something) giving 16 more channels.


What does the module Midilog do please someone ?



Stephen Hunger.
From: osmith@acorn.co.uk (Owen Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: That *other* machine
Date: 14 Apr 92 17:49:55 GMT
Distribution: comp
Organization: Acorn Computers Ltd, Cambridge, England

In article <1992Apr14.213525.7424@waikato.ac.nz> shunger@waikato.ac.nz
writes:

>On the A5000 or an arc with a HD interface the problem of reading
>Mac HD disks is already solved, MacFiler!
>(you have to buy it though )

Just brilliant (sarcasm). Another icon on the icon bar (more sarcasm). Just
what I always wanted (extreme sarcasm).

This is a silly way of doing it, unless the main reason for the existence of
MacFiler is to sell someone's HD interface boards for 400 series etc. Most
people with HD are A5000 owners, hence they have RISC OS 3, so it would
therefore be better to integrate the thing a la DOSFS. As well as being
better integrated, you have less code to write - an image filing system has
less calls to support than you need to as a standard filing system on RISC
OS 2, and an image filing system doesn't have to have a thing that sits on
the icon bar to go with it, just some support code for formatting and
recognition instead.

Owen.

The views expressed are my own and are not necessarily those of Acorn.
From: aglover@acorn.co.uk (Alan Glover)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: 8 bit stuff... (inc. postings & moderation)
Date: 13 Apr 92 07:23:14 GMT
Distribution: comp
Organization: Acorn Computers Ltd, Cambridge, England

... yes, Chris and I are still here (somewhere underneath this
mountain of work).

We noticed Edouard's offer - what do **YOU** think ? Is there anyone
else out there who might like to have a go at running the groups.

One thought would be arrange a fixed tenure - eg 12 months.

I would be quite happy to stand down if the net concensus is that a
change is a good idea (... certainly it's likely to better than the
present posting rate we're achieveing :-/ ). 

Alan
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
aglover@acorn.co.uk - Co-Moderator of comp.binaries.acorn/comp.sources.acorn
Mail submissions to submit@acorn.co.uk, other mail to moderator@acorn.co.uk
From: nizar@concour.cs.concordia.ca (SABRA nizar.)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: re MIDI and the Arc
Date: 15 Apr 92 17:45:23 GMT
Organization: Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec

In article <1992Apr15.125818.7434@waikato.ac.nz> shunger@waikato.ac.nz writes:

>If anyone wants a copy of the demo of Inspiration I'll probably post it
>in the next day or so. 

	Why don't you upload it to the Manchester FTP site? The address is
utc.mcc.ac.uk . This will make it much easier for people to access.... The
comp.binaries.acorn group has been dead for quite a long time, and the
moderators seem to be quite busy at the moment.... Either send it to Albert
at the Newcastle server or upload it to the FTP site... or even both! :)


>Stephen Hunger 

	- Nizar.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
     _________________               ! " Ask not what your computer can do for
!\  !   __       _   /               !  you.  Ask  what you  can do  for  your
! \ ! !  /  /\  !   /                !  computer. "  -  Someone famous, 1980's
!  \! ! /_ /__\ !  /__               !
                     /    !   _      ! EMail:   n_sabra@pavo.concordia.ca
Tel. (514)747-1238  / /\  !\ !  /\   !          nizar@sunkisd.cs.concordia.ca
     (514)748-7524 / /__\ !/ ! /__\  !          nizar@concour.cs.concordia.ca
                                     !
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
From: nbvs@cl.cam.ac.uk (Nicko van Someren)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: help! checkmap fails
Date: 11 Apr 92 18:51:28 GMT
Reply-To: nbvs@cl.cam.ac.uk (Nicko van Someren)
Organization: U of Cambridge Comp Lab, UK

In article <FL.92Apr7112046@kurt.tools.de> fl@tools.de (Frank Lancaster) writes:
>Have you ever heard of BSD unix? Here's a quote from the fs man page:
>
>     fs_optim specifies whether the file system should try to
>     minimize the time spent allocating blocks, or if it should
>     attempt to minimize the space fragmentation on the disk.  If
>     the value of fs_minfree (see above) is less than 10%, then
>     the file system defaults to optimizing for space to avoid
>     running out of full sized blocks.  If the value of minfree
>     is greater than or equal to 10%, fragmentation is unlikely
>     to be problematical, and the file system defaults to optim-
>     izing for time.

You miss the point.  The BSD filing system does its best to avoid the
fragmentation in the first place - and does so at a substantial cost
in terms of disc space.  File core filing systems clear up as they go
along so that a file may get LESS fragmented when you change it.
However, it seems that the real cost of useing the file core E format
is that there is nobody at Acorn who understands it :-)

Nicko

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Nicko van Someren, nbvs@cl.cam.ac.uk, (44) 223 358707 or (44) 860 498903    |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
From: naddy@rhrk.uni-kl.de (Christian Weisgerber)
Subject: Re: Fast modems on the Arc.
Organization: University of Kaiserslautern, Germany
Distribution: eunet
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1992 14:32:50 GMT

n_sabra@pavo.concordia.ca (NIZAR SABRA) writes:

>	It was mentioned in a previous post that the Arc's serial chip does
>not like (can not handle?) modems with V32.bis. Is this true? I am ordering
>the new Supra FaxModem 14.4K, which has V32bis. Can anyone think of a reason
>why this should not work on an Arc (3000 in particular)?

I have a USRobotics DUAL and it works *fine*.

The Arc's serial chip can handle high speed modems, you just need a
somewhat bizarre cable. Instructions on how to build such a cable are
usually included with any comms package.
(If you know about serial ports: DCD and CTS should be tied HI on the
Arc, the modems CTS and DCD connected to the Arc's DSR and RI
respectively. The rest is just normal.)
Note: This only applies to A300/400/3000, I don't know about the A5000,
but I suppose the different serial hardware fixes it.

About the only drawback is that the Arc's serial port is limited to
19.2k. Probably this is not a hardware limit but only imposed by
RISC OS. However if you transfer mostly pre-compressed data, then this
won't matter as your maximum throughput will be around ~1650cps using
ZModem.

[I remember asking an Acorn employee at the Acorn User Show whether they
had fixed this at the (then new) A5000.  He answered that he wasn't sure
if the A5000's maximum port speed was 9600 or 19200, but there couldn't
be a modem that needed more than 9600bps anyway (sic!).  Gave me a real
nice impression about how knowledgable some Acorn folks are :-( ]


bye
-- 
Christian Weisgerber				naddy@rhrk.uni-kl.de
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Grumbles about RO3 PRMs
From: julian@bridge.welly.gen.nz (Julian Wright)
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1992 12:05:45 +1200
Reply-To: wright_j@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz (Julian Wright)
 <1992Apr10.001954.14111@cs.aukuni.ac.nz> <1992Apr12.095458.23650@cs.hw.ac.uk>
Organization: USS Enterprise, NCC 1701a

neilp@cs.hw.ac.uk (Neil Postlethwaite) writes:

> 	I think you mean EPROM here !! Also very expensive too.

The RISC OS 3 in my A5000 is supplied in ROM, not EPROM. I understand ROMS
have been supplied for a while now...

    Cheers, Julian.
--
----------------------------| RO2:SYS 68,59243844 |--------------------------
wright_j@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz |---------------------| "I'm sig of sicknatures!"
----------------------------| RO3:SYS 68,60816742 |--------------------------
--
From: ssurawls@susssys1.reading.ac.uk (Mister E)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: >>>>>>>New !Creator
Date: 13 Apr 92 13:53:52 GMT

Philip R. Banks sez;

>   That is all bye-the-bye though. I currently cannot think of a viable
>scheme of using the UIN *without* causing restrictions on the user of the
>end software. It will be interesting to see what Acorn come up with.

I should imagine that you will need to send your UIN to a software house that
has written the program you want, and they will code it into the program. Then
it will only run on the machine that you bought it for. As far as I can
remember, you are not allowed even to run the program on your other archie if
you have one.

If you get rid of the machine, you will need to get the UID chip transferred
across. This has already happened to a friend of mine.

Ian


Posted Mon Apr 13 14:53:46 BST 1992

=+=+=+=+=+ 8< =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ 8< =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ 8< =+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Mr Ian Rawlings, Telephone Reading (0734) 662301
	EMAIL ssurawls@susssys1.rdg.ac.uk

A Dublin lawyer died in poverty and many barristers of the city sub-
scribed to a fund for his funeral. The Lord Chief Justice of Orbury
was asked to donate a shilling. "Only a shilling?" said the man. "Only
a shilling to bury an attorney? Here's a guinea; go and bury 20 of them."
From: neilp@cs.hw.ac.uk (Neil Postlethwaite)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Personal Computer World
Date: 9 Apr 92 10:35:58 GMT
Organization: Dept of Computer Science, Heriot-Watt University, Scotland

In article <4769@mccuts.uts.mcc.ac.uk> zzassgl@uts.mcc.ac.uk (Geoff Lane) writes:
>Have you noticed how bland the editorial is these days.  When they replaced
>Guy Kewney a lot of the cutting criticism of the PC market disappeared.  The
>whole magazine is now very tedious; review after review of badge engineered
>IBM clones; and is a mass review of relational databases really what the
>public wants?

	More on the PCW story.

	There were a couple of relational databases missing from the PC
review. Oracle in it's PC guise was the glaring one. FoxPro2 may be
faster than Ben Johnson on steroids but apart from the Mac I can't say
I've heard of it running on anything else. Oracle: PC, Unix, VMS etc ....
BTW, Microsoft have just taken over Fox Software. No doubt FoxPro for
Windows in on its way with the performance of a drain.

	In the May issue, I had a sort of smug feeling when Guy Swarbrick
was telling us of his Windows 3.1/Word 2 for Windows 'crashes with tedious
reqularity' problems. And in the same issue he replied to a letter saying
Arc software was reported as having lots of Address Exceptions (he quoted
someone who MUST have an old version of Impression the last issue). WfW2
wasn't the only problem software he had. 

	The story of his unreliable CompuAdd 486/33 (replaced twice) and the
Tandon NB386 with the dodgy battery compartment didn't exactly dismiss my
opinion of poorly manufactured PC's either.

	Neil
From: kim@Lise.Unit.NO (Kim Gunnar St|vring yhus)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: VIDC independant tracker play routines
Date: 13 Apr 92 12:53:37 GMT
Organization: Norwegian Institute of Technology

>>torq@hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Andy Mell)
>banksie@khantazi.welly.gen.nz (Philip R. Banks)
Me: kim@lise1.lise.unit.no (Kim 0)

>> 6 Watts? hoho, I've had my Arc hooked up to an 8KW amp rig, It was a nice
>> sound really made you jump in your seat, but theres a rather annoying
>> little buzz in the background wwhich I couldnt get rid of, even with gold
>> plated leads.

That sound is caused by SoundDMA's time-dithering, trying to squeeze anything
into it's 20.8kHz sample rate. *Tuning &3550 seems to generate least dithering,
giving 1 sample per 'sample'.

>   Actually to digress to the Logarithmic vs Linear sound type debate. I was
>under the impression that the human ear tended to hear sound in a
>logarithmic fashion which was why Logarithmic sound had been picked by Audio
>engineers. Which would mean that the extra preciseness of Linear data 
>compared to a similar number of bits of Log data would have the Log format
>winning out wouldn't it?

The human ear hears the logarithm of the spectrum of the sound, which is
completely different from the sound itself. Spectral analysis is a linear
operator, so linearity gives best results.

>   Finally someone was saying the Arc actually has 1 sound channel
>pretending to be eight channels occasionally. Actually it has eight sound
>channels pretending to be one sound channel alot of the time. This is why
>sound volume per channel drops so much when the channels are reassigned to
>play different samples...

No-sense. Go read a technical reference manual! There is only one true channel :-)


By the way, I just measured the archimede audio-filter. It is 4'th order,
24dB/Octave, starting at approx 3.5 kHz. The inbuilt speaker however, seemed to
be more sensitive to high pitches, compensating a little for the filter. This
makes everything very unpredictable, and I will therefore use the unfiltered
output, which, by the way, actually is filtered too, but only 1'st order. You
can't get great sound with a filter that removes virtually anything above 5kHz!
 
Kim 0
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: help! checkmap fails
From: jwil1@cs.aukuni.ac.nz (TMOTA)
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1992 22:38:37 GMT
Organization: Computer Science Dept. University of Auckland

banksie@khantazi.welly.gen.nz (Philip R. Banks) writes:
>alex@winx06 (Alexander Jung) writes:
>> The first question is: How can this happen? [corrupted maps]
>   By loosing power when the Map is in the middle of being updated. Or being
>reset at that time.

... or by crashing an A5000 while doing virtually any kind of disc access
;-(


A warning: Don't *ever* use the reset button when break will work... Use
ctrl-break rather than ctrl-reset... ONLY use reset if ctrl-break fails to
have the desired effect... This is because filecore disables break while
vital disc updates are being done, so you can't cause problems with maps
with ctrl-breaks. However, reset can't be disabled, so it is possible to
interrupt a map-write half-way through with reset, which trashes your
disc...

-- 
_________________  "I'd like to answer this question in two ways:
  /____ _ _/_ __       First in my normal voice, and then
 // / //_//_ /_/       in a silly, high-pitched whine." (Monty Python)
From: nicho@VNET.IBM.COM
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: >>>New !Creator
Date: 8 Apr 92 07:40:53 GMT
Reply-To: nicho@vnet.ibm.com

In <18ZJ3Qj013n@khantazi.welly.gen.nz> Philip R. Banks writes:
>Not to mention what happens if I have some friends round, who bring
>their arcs with them, and I want to let them use my legal copy of
>the program on their machines?
  You can't ... that is a violation of (most) licences. If you want
to be able to do that, you would require a multi-user licence.

>Aside from the issues of whether it is legal to have several copies of a
>package running from one floppy on several machines simultaneously
  See above.

 -----------------------------------------------------------------
               ** Of course I don't speak for IBM **
Greg Nicholls ... nicho@vnet.ibm.com or nicho@cix.compulink.co.uk
                  voice/fax: 44-794-516038
From: banksie@khantazi.welly.gen.nz (Philip R. Banks)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: help! checkmap fails
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1992 19:25:00 +1200
Reply-To: banks_p@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz
Organization: My Arc.

jwil1@cs.aukuni.ac.nz (TMOTA) writes:

> A warning: Don't *ever* use the reset button when break will work... Use
> ctrl-break rather than ctrl-reset... ONLY use reset if ctrl-break fails to
> have the desired effect... This is because filecore disables break while
> vital disc updates are being done, so you can't cause problems with maps
> with ctrl-breaks. However, reset can't be disabled, so it is possible to
> interrupt a map-write half-way through with reset, which trashes your
> disc...

   This is sound advice to *any* Arc user. I know of a friend who has
trashed his SCSI drive on an A3000 twice by pressing reset at bad times...
And given that it was 100 Megs and pretty much full he was *not* amused.

    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: ssurawls@susssys1.reading.ac.uk (Mister E)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: > Personal Computer World
Date: 7 Apr 92 18:14:21 GMT

Rich Browning (rjb12@bton.unix) writes;

>Right, people. It's flame time again. But (J. Kortink & I. Rawlings take
>note)

Yes sorry everyone :-(

>Over the last two years or so, to my intense displeasure, the above
>magazine has seen fit to do its best at destroying Acorn's market
>presence. By ignoring the Arc in those articles in which the machine
>has every right to be mentioned, or by trying to be smart when replying

Personal computing world is not the only culprit by FAR.

In a recent amiga magazine, they were reviewing the new Amiga OS. They said
the the new OS has outline fonts as standard, and is the first personal
computer to have outline fonts!

On Kiss FM recently there was a competition in which you could win a copy of
Top Banana, a game originated on the arch and ported to the amiga etc
afterwards. They said the program would only work on the Atari ST and Amiga.
No mention of the originator.

I went with a friend of mine to Diamond computing to see how much he could
sell his amiga for to upgrade to an archie. We told them he was selling his
machine to upgrade to an A3000 and they said "well, that's a different way to
go!" so we just left them to play with their joysticks.

When the amiga version of Zarch was released (known as Virus!) one review (in
Computer Weekly or something like that, I have the review at home) said that
it is a game that has come over from the *SLOW* world of 32-bit computing!
Slow! The amiga version moves like treacle and is running in a 16 colour mode.
And it has this fantastic all-singing all-dancing Blitter that amiga owners
keep on about to help it along.

As for compiling a list of comments to PCW then would it be possible to post
the article of interest up as some don't have access to PCW?

I for one would be interested in helping, but perhaps some examples of their
past offences would be helpful. Even if you only have page refrences, that
would enable us to run fuming to our libraries and come out loaded with
firepower.

Ian


Posted Tue Apr 7 19:14:12 BST 1992

=+=+=+=+=+ 8< =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ 8< =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ 8< =+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Mr Ian Rawlings, Telephone Reading (0734) 662301
	EMAIL ssurawls@susssys1.rdg.ac.uk

>>        You are ALL individuals...
>
>Yes. We are all individuals.
 
I'm not.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn